Things Fall Apart: Hard Choices in Public Interest Law

Abstract

This essay frames the dilemmas of law school clinic and public interest law firm triage decision-making against the backdrop of the current national crisis in access to justice. The essay coincides with a moment of renewed academic interest and resurgent legal activism in inner cities for advocates pursuing law reform campaigns, academics studying social justice movements, and activists organizing low-income communities, especially historically burdened communities of color. The essay proceeds in four parts. Part I briefly traces the history of a community-based law reform campaign recently advanced in Miami and the nettlesome public interest legal ethics questions left in its wake. Part II examines the basic form and content of public interest law triage regimes and the difficult dilemmas of lawyer and law firm triage decision-making in the context of community-based advocacy. Part III considers the dominant norms and practices of the community lawyering movement explicated by the founders of the Community Justice Project, a path breaking Florida public interest law firm and a national leader in the field of social justice. Part IV assesses an alternative set of norms and practices of social justice lawyering deduced from current work on the ethics of movement lawyering.