volume 16, number 1 - UDC Law Review

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\\jciprod01\productn\D\DCR\16-1\DCR106.txt unknown Seq: 4 11-FEB-13 12:314 UNIVERSITY OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA LAW REVIEWexperience of the Lawyering Process course at the Center, on this occasion jointlytaught by Gary and me. 9I first met Gary in September 1998, when I enrolled in the “Lawyering Process”course he co-taught with his wife, Jeanne Charn, at the Legal ServicesCenter in Jamaica Plain. . . . That year-long class was transformative formany of us. . . . the curriculum included legal ethics, negotiation strategy,professional development, peer evaluation of clinical work product, incorporationof technology into practice, and more—but also by the manner inwhich they set themselves to the daunting task. Their appetite for criticaldiscussion was voracious. Their willingness to cast away assumptions orstanding models in the face of convincing challenges was unflagging. Theircommitment to standards of excellence belied the rote critiques typicallyleveled at legal services theory and practice. At times the classroom felt likea laboratory, albeit an unusual one in that Gary and Jeanne were right therewith us mixing it up at the workbench. Gary provided the closing commentsto the students and staff who participated in orientation weekend at theLegal Services Center. . . . It was a long day of training, and we were alleager to burst outside and enjoy what remained of a beautiful day. Withoutfanfare and without warning, Gary’s brief remarks took our breath away.He spoke about moral hazards, ethical dilemmas, and the great seriousnesswith which we were obliged to pursue our clinical work. . . . Even afteralmost four decades of direct service legal advocacy, the alliances Gary builtwith his clients retained their vitality for him and their hold on him. . . . Henever shied from the challenges at hand, never provided empty reassurancesthat just doing the work was doing good enough, never fronted thathe had resolved the various tensions in operation. What he did do was to bereal and critical and generous and inspirational. 10The common threads of these recollections and vignettes are that Gary movedpeople to action and, by his example, showed us how to test and resist perceivedconstraints. Gary’s legacy is that he made you feel and believe that you could bemore competent, perceptive, generous, and, in a deep sense, ethical and openheartedthan you would have imagined possible.II.THE BELLOW SCHOLAR PROGRAMThe core idea of the Bellow Scholar Program was that, over time, we mightdevelop a collaboration among clinicians interested in a more rigorous explora-9 Gary and I co-taught the full-year course during the 1998-99 academic year because Gary wasrecovering following his April 1998 heart transplant.10 Sophie Bryan, Gary’s and my student in the 1998-99 Lawyering Process course and Gary’sstudent in the 1999-2000 Medical-Legal Connection: A Patient’s Perspective course at the Center.
\\jciprod01\productn\D\DCR\16-1\DCR106.txt unknown Seq: 5 11-FEB-13 12:31FOREWORD: THE WORK OF THE BELLOW SCHOLARS 5tion of systemic problems that we identified in our practice and teaching. I talkedwith clinical colleagues who shared Gary’s and my interest in clinics as sites forempirical investigation and study. A more developed concept of an activist communityof learners that included both clinicians and social science researchersbegan to emerge. Gary would have signed up for such an effort. He was an avidreader of the Law and Society Review and he spoke often of the need for empiricalresearch on the actual functioning of lawyers and legal institutions. I came tobelieve that the best way to honor Gary’s legacy was to build a capacity for rigorousanalysis and investigation, carried out in a community of activists willing tolearn from each other and from other disciplines, all with the goal of addressing aproblem of significance in the everyday lives of low- and moderate-incomepeople.Fortunately, Antoinette Sedillo Lopez was Chair of the Association of AmericanLaw Schools (AALS) Clinical Section in the year following Gary’s death. Shehad an immediate, positive response to the Bellow Scholar idea. Antoinette’sleadership and guidance on how best to institutionalize the project and navigateSection and AALS approval processes were crucial to translating the idea into aprogram. She revived an existing but inactive Section Committee on Lawyeringin the Public Interest and tasked the committee with implementing the program.Her appointments to the small working committee included two people who hadworked directly with Gary: Bea Moulton, co-author with Gary of The LawyeringProcess, and Kim O’Leary, who had been a full year, full-time student in the firstyears of the Legal Services Center’s operation. 11We announced the program and solicited the first round of applications in thefall of 2002. We didn’t know if anyone would apply and we had nothing to offerbut the designation of “Bellow Scholar” and the willingness of a circle of likemindedcommittee members and clinicians to stay engaged with their projectsand to convene at the annual spring clinical conference to offer our advice andsupport. We decided that we were not looking for the best single proposal butwould name one, two, or several Bellow Scholars depending on how many wellthought-outproposals we received. We designated three Bellow Scholars in thefirst cycle, all of whom happened to have been Gary’s students (Jeff Selbin andSophie Bryan) or individuals who had worked and consulted with him over a longperiod of time (Doug Smith).In its tenth year, the Bellow Scholar Program is thriving. The Committee onLawyering in the Public Interest continues to administer the program, with newco-chairs drawn each year from the previous cadre of Bellow Scholars. The Com-11 See Charn, supra note 3, at 97-99 (describing the combined clinical and poverty law curricu- Rlum carried out on-site in the clinical law office in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston).Twenty-four students spent the entire third year of law school practicing in the clinical office andtaking classes relevant to lawyering and substantive areas of practice. Gary and I and the faculty andstaff attorneys at the Center taught the courses and practiced law with and supervised the students.
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