Prerequisite: This reading group is open to students who are enrolled in a Spring 2026 advanced clinical with one of the clinics housed at the WilmerHale Legal Services Center (LSC).

Exam Type: No Exam

To be an effective civil legal services lawyer, one needs to develop a robust toolkit of skills beyond proficiency in the law and procedure applicable to a client’s legal problem. Effective advocates also need to know how to build and sustain relationships with clients, identify when an individual client’s case raises a systemic issue and understand how to build up a strategic litigation strategy, know how to balance our ethical duties to our clients with our obligations to courts and other lawyers, and engage in reflective practice to constantly drive our own learning and improve our practice. This reading group will offer students who have a background in or commitment to direct services anti-poverty work the chance to explore these topics using a range of texts from scholarly articles to popular media to client narratives. We will make space in our discussions to talk through present challenges that students are grappling with in their clinical work and model how collaborative and holistic lawyering offers unique benefits to advancing client representation. The reading group will also invite students to consider critiques of the legal aid model and to envision legal systems that would better achieve justice for our client communities.

Note: This reading group meets six times through the semester, dates TBD.