by Kristin Booth Glen*

I.  INTRODUCTION

This year is CUNY School of Law’s twentieth anniversary.  Preparation for our year-long celebration has provided an opportunity to think about our history, and the ways in which the values and aspirations that led to the Law School ’s creation have been embodied and evolved.  Anniversaries, especially big ones, are occasions not only for fundraising, but for “naming” what has been created over the years and sharing our hopes for the future.  With this in mind, we have chosen “Building a Community of Justice” as the best way to begin to shape the Law School ’s next decades.

The phrase works well as a logo, but also, on a more profound level, it provides a framework through which to understand our accomplishments and keep us on course.  The anniversary, the process of definition, and the slogan itself have led me to think about what, in legal education, we understand as our community or communities, and how we relate to, engage with, and further their growth and well being.  And, of course, because I am a dean, I must also consider what we can get from them.

II.  LAW SCHOOLS IN COMMUNITY

At a minimum[1], law schools are located in geographic communities – the city, town, and the particular neighborhood in which they are situated; in communities of affinity – legal education, the legal profession, and/or some more specialized part of it[2] and, in the case of religiously based law schools, a religion or denomination; and finally, for most law schools, in an organizational community, the university.

    A.  Geographic Community

Community involves a commonality of concerns and, at least ideally, a reciprocity of obligations and benefits.  In its position as part of a geographic community, a law school may share local concerns with its neighbors, like the location of a bus stop, or the proposed siting of some environmentally dangerous or aesthetically displeasing object or entity.[3]  It will share concerns about public safety – competent and responsive police and fire protection, the availability of regular and affordable transportation, and safe, affordable housing.[4]  It may provide benefits and/or services to its community, and it may seek or enjoy material and other support from it.

The geographic community to which a particular law school belongs will vary in size and population depending on the number of other law schools in the state or city; a law school which is the only such institution in a state, especially if it is a public law school, will experience itself (and be experienced) as part of a much larger geographic community than one of a number of private schools in a large city.[5]  CUNY, for example, is often identified as a “ Queens law school” rather than a “ New York City law school,”[6] or even a “state law school,”[7] although we are part of all of these geographic and political communities, as well as our closer, more intimate community of Flushing , Queens .  Given these sometimes multiple identities, how does, could or should a law school relate to, or constitute itself as, a member of its geographic communit(ies)?

First, the law school may, and I would argue, should, assume some responsibility for the well being of its immediate neighbors.  In most law schools, the loci for community assistance or empowerment are their live-client clinics and pro bono programs.  The former serve individual clients, usually those unable to afford legal services, in a variety of matters.  At CUNY, for example, students assist clients (especially victims of domestic violence) with family law problems, older persons with benefits, guardianship and estate planning, and immigrants with naturalization and asylum claims.  Clinics at other law schools specialize in creating small businesses or dealing with tax, securities or bankruptcy issues.  Law school clinics may also address more generalized community needs, like fair housing, environmental safety, community economic development or alternative dispute resolution services.  In addition to, or in lieu of work done through clinics, supervised externships may provide assistance to over-burdened not-for-profits and public agencies as well as prosecutors, public defenders and the court system in the law school’s city or state. 

Many pro bono programs are purely legal – providing students with opportunities for client representation similar to that offered by law school clinics, albeit without direct faculty supervision.[8]  The ways in which law students provide legal services, directly through clinics, or more indirectly through pro bono programs and opportunities, demonstrate the mutual advantages that exist for both community and law school.  The community benefits the law school by providing a laboratory for learning lawyering skills and for testing and understanding the limits of legal action.  By working with and for real clients, especially poor people, law students’ vision is expanded, and their commitment to the professional responsibility of providing legal services to those who cannot afford them is nurtured and reinforced[9].  In turn, the community benefits from vindication of its members’ legal rights and legal needs that only lawyers and supervised lawyers-to-be can accomplish.

Pro bono or community service programs may also provide non-legal charitable services, like participation in Habitat for Humanity, food collection, “races for the cure,” tutoring, mentoring, and the like.  These services also contribute to the community and to improving the law school’s (and sometimes the University’s) image as well.  Through active and positive engagement with its neighbors, perceptions of the law school may be transformed from an all too familiar traditional town/gown hostility to appreciation and solidarity.  Seeing the law school as a good neighbor may (and often does) lead to support[10], including financial support, for the continuation or expansion of clinic, externship or pro bono programs.[11] 

Law schools may also offer their physical plants as a community resource.  Community groups may use auditoriums or other spaces for meetings, conferences or other gatherings, or space in the law school might be utilized for a legal services office[12] or as a home for social justice organizations.[13]  Law schools may even be the sites for whole courts, or courtrooms[14], simultaneously providing learning opportunities for students and services to the court and litigants.  Law schools may also open their doors to provide community education, or they may take that education directly into the community, to institutions like public libraries, community centers and senior centers. Students and faculty may present programs in areas such as citizenship, domestic violence prevention and remedies, government benefits, living wills and healthcare proxies.[15]  Finally, as a sub-set of community legal education, law schools can engage with local primary and high schools in, for example, street law projects, mock-trials, and courses about date rape and domestic violence.[16]

In return, beside the pedagogical and personal benefits reaped by participants, the law school can utilize its community activities to seek and obtain financial and political support.  The former may take the form of contributions from individuals and businesses in the community; it may also result in increased funding by local and state legislatures.[17]  Political support may assist (or defuse opposition to) a law school in projects like building or expansion plans.

    B.  Communities of Affinity

The second community to which law schools belong, that of affinity, includes legal education, and the legal profession, embodied as bar associations or, more generally, the practicing bar.  The level of participation in each of these communities will depend on the law schools’ values, needs and strategic choices.  For religiously affiliated schools, it also includes the denomination or order to which they belong.

Within legal education, almost every law school is, in one form or another, a member of the Association of American Law Schools.[18]  Faculty, student services professionals and development staff access and contribute to intellectual and professional growth through conferences, committee service and publication in the Journal of Legal Education.  Contacts among faculty and staff of different law schools, especially at the annual conference in January, promote a genuine sense of intellectual and educational community.  Opportunities to share scholarship and best practices benefit individual law schools, while the Association benefits from the numbers of its members (and their dues) in order to serve as a meaningful voice for the legal education community generally.

While faculty may participate in the profession[19] and in bar associations[20] in a variety of ways, a law school’s strongest and most consistent connections with this community are often made through its Career Services Office and its alumni program.  Getting to know local lawyers and law firms is critical for getting graduates jobs, so career services professionals must necessarily establish and maintain relationships with the practicing bar.  Similarly, the longer a law school is around, the more likely its graduates will constitute a substantial percentage of the profession,[21] making the alumni office a major source of connection.

The professional community is important to law schools, and vice versa.  One of legal education’s primary functions is to socialize students for the profession.  The profession, which generally speaks through bar associations, is thus continuously concerned with what law schools are doing[22]; it may also be engaged in assisting them in various ways.  Bar associations provide resources for students, such as scholarships, internships, minority bar prep programs, mentoring and networking opportunities.  The profession, especially the local community of lawyers, can supply adjuncts and lecturers who enrich the law school curriculum with their real life experience.  Law schools benefit the profession not only initially by training its members, but also by providing continuing legal education (CLE) programs, through scholarship, and by collaborating on law reform efforts.

Some law schools are deeply involved with local bar associations and the local legal community, while others engage more nationally.  But because the vast majority of law faculty are lawyers, and because the vast majority of students will become lawyers, law schools are always very much part of the community of lawyers that constitutes the profession.

C.  The University Community

A third community of which most law schools are a part is the university.  Importantly, this is a community that can both tax and support.[23]  Where a law school is located on a common campus, there are practical aspects to membership.  Many resources, from food services to technology, are necessarily shared, as are concerns about such disparate matters as safety and reputation.  While resource allocation is often seen as a zero sum game, there is at least one major exception.  In the spirit of a rising tide lifting all boats, the law school and its university are closely bound in reputation.  Dramatic increases in a law school’s reputation can contribute to a similar rise in that of its university, and vice versa.

The law school may be connected to other units of the university as part of a robust intellectual community through interdisciplinary work, joint faculty appointments, and joint degrees and interdisciplinary opportunities for students.  More mundanely and materially, the law school and the rest of the University are often connected through faculty and staff unions.  As in geographic and professional communities, the law school, through contributions and shared responsibility, can be perceived by the university community as a good citizen.  As a result, it can derive a variety of benefits and, when the need arises, it can also hope for protection.

A word about the latter, as it applies to geographic, affinity and university communities.  As social-contract theorists understood, membership in a community is as much about protection as it is about creating opportunities for growth and self-actualization.  Law schools sometimes need protection – from legislatures that are under-funding them, from universities that are over-taxing them, from a hostile press that attacks them and calls for unacceptable restrictions or even closure.  The communities to which a law school belongs can be utilized and mobilized at such times, even as the law school lends its resources to those communities in their times of need.

III.  THE ROLE OF THE DEAN

How can, or should, deans situate themselves in any or all of these three communities, what benefits can be expected for their law schools, and what criteria might guide their choices and priorities?  Obviously, the answers to these questions vary tremendously, depending on the institution as well as the particular strengths and inclinations of individual deans.

In the geographic community, a dean, especially of a small school, or in a more rural area, may involve him/herself in local organizations – the Rotary Club, for example – and feel obligated to (or enjoy) participating in frequent community events.  Appalachian Law School is an exceptional example where barriers between town and gown are almost entirely permeable, and where its new dean has recently applied for membership in the Grundy Volunteer Fire Department.  Most deans are invited to serve on boards of one or more not-for-profits or quasi-governmental organizations in their communities.  Deans in public institutions are expected to spend a certain amount of time, working directly and indirectly, in the political sphere.  They may testify before city or state legislatures, host events for political leaders, and attend political functions.  Public and private deans may choose to create and utilize community advisory boards, or engage community leaders on their Boards of Visitors or Overseers.

At the other end of the spectrum, deans of elite, private, urban law schools may have little contact with local business people, politicians and community organizations, choosing to allocate the majority of their “outside” time to more national or international venues.  Such deans may, however, charge associate deans or others who work with them to be attentive to local needs and, where appropriate, to propose or facilitate collaborations and ameliorations[24].

In communities of affinity, deans may be active and prominent participants in AALS, including serving as president[25], or may promote faculty scholarship and participation in scholarly organizations through financial contributions or by example.  Deans may be active in bar association work, at both the national level, in the ABA where they chair sections and commissions, and in local bar associations where they may serve as officers, lecture or participate in CLE programs.  Where relevant to its school’s mission, a dean may take leadership in a more specialized legal community like that of legal services providers.[26]  In the University, they may take an active, willing and open-hearted role in governance, chair or serve on committees, provide leadership in inter-unit or interdisciplinary initiatives, help envision and operationalize resource-sharing or, when asked, fill University offices, such as Provost, on an interim basis.[27]

Obviously, no dean can be equally active in all these external communities; many choose one or two for the bulk of their efforts; some eschew almost all in favor of being “inside” deans – that is, deans whose focus is on the law school itself.  Internal deans, or deans who devote a substantial amount of their time to the law school may nurture junior faculty, make themselves available to students, work with staff to improve administrative tasks or morale, provide opportunities for professional growth across the law school’s workforce and interact with graduates, forging more durable relations between the law school and its alumni.

But as even this list of “inside” commitments suggests, thoughtful participation in the communities I have described is also an essential component in creating a healthy and productive community within the law school.[28]  While it has become commonplace to note the number and variety of “constituencies” a dean must negotiate with and serve; my intent here is to focus attention on the ways in which decanal choices also serve to build or enhance community in and around the law school.

IV.  THE LAW SCHOOL AS COMMUNITY

In addition to membership in geographic, affinity and (often) university communities, the law school is, itself, a community.  At the least, the law school is a geographic or spatial community, with students, faculty, staff and administration inhabiting a building or buildings that, thanks to ABA accreditation standards, are generally entirely their own.  Its members share, though not always equally, the advantages of a good reputation and the resources it provides, as well as the disadvantages (sometimes the pain) of its diminution or loss.  They have obligations to the institution – the community – and an expectation of benefits from their membership in it.  These general characteristics of law schools raise questions as to how they might be enhanced to create and sustain a more positive and nurturing sense of community, and why this might be a goal worth pursuing.

Admittedly, there are a number of challenges to community building.  The law school is, inevitably, an amalgam of smaller, sometimes antagonistic communities.  The faculty may define itself as a “community of scholars,”[29] but that pretty much excludes everyone else.  Staff may be joined only in concerns over salary and working conditions, while administrators gather the wagons in an “us and them” mentality.  Students, who enter filled with idealism and enthusiasm, may become cynical and disillusioned, and may lose any sense of common purpose with the law school’s other inhabitants, wanting only to get out and get a job.  In their most atomized form, the dean must negotiate the often-hostile terrain of separate law school communities, synthesizing identity, projecting common vision and making strategic choices.

Ideally, the shifting sub-communities that exist in most law schools can be brought together as a functioning learning community to further a common vision or mission.  This can be done in a variety of ways that continue to evolve and that are refined through the community’s practice and reflection.  Thinking about this potential (which can also, occasionally and happily, be glimpsed in the present) has led me to the work of social theorists like Clifford Geertz and Etienne Wenger. 

Geertz defines culture as “the webs of significance that human beings have “spun” and in which they are “suspended.”[30]  Law schools clearly have and are cultures, which affect and are affected by all the members of the law school community.  Some of these cultures are unintentional, while others may be deliberately designed and fostered.[31]  Wenger employs organizational dynamics, learning theories and practice in knowledge management to describe and define what he calls “communities of practice” – groups of people who share common values, who work or share information with and learn from each other in a dynamic, fluid and interactive way.[32]  I believe that law schools can be constituted as communities of practice, and that Wenger’s work provides a model for deans and others who might seek to enhance education and training in their institutions through community building.  Here, I briefly describe Wenger’s theory, including how communities of practice can be built and nurtured, and how CUNY’s experience bears this out.

A.  Communities of Practice

Significantly, law schools are cultures organized around learning.  Wenger’s work posits that learning is not always, or even necessarily, individualized, but rather “situated” and contextualized.  It is social as well as cognitive and arises out of participation with others who engage collectively in social practice.  Law students don’t just learn substantive law from lectures and reading, they also learn what it means to be a lawyer and a member of the legal profession, through legal work with others in and outside the law school (for example, in clinics and externships) but also from the web of relationships within the law school. 

We can socialize our students for the profession through a highly hierarchical model, or one that is more fluid and inclusive.  For example, how staff are treated (with respect, with contempt, by being ignored) is part of the learning process for students, in the same way that staff can learn to take pride in, and internalize student (and graduate) successes, or, less productively, perceive students as bothersome or worse.  There are often subtle, and not so subtle racial messages in this learning as well, with possibilities for developing respect and inclusiveness or, on the other hand, oblivion, dismissiveness or intolerance.

Like individuals, organizations also “learn” in context, creating explicit and implicit knowledge, legitimizing, and transmitting it.  Within organizations, knowledge production can be relatively individualized or, in a functioning community of practice, can be the result of shared efforts, experiments and refinements.  Where knowledge is individualized, there is high risk that it may be lost – think, for example, of the IT Director who carries it all “in his head” and whose departure can cause major dislocation – resulting in costly and time-consuming efforts to “reinvent the wheel.”  Where knowledge is collectively produced and shared, it is more readily accessible and is available for modification and improvement.  Deans may not generally conceptualize law schools in the way industrial and commercial leaders see their organizations, increasingly focusing on “knowledge management,” or KM[33], but similar principles apply.  Because the curriculum is relatively stable[34], we may not be as single-mindedly focused on innovation and progressive change as leaders in the corporate sector, but many functions of our institutions – technology is a powerful example – depend, at least implicitly, on KM.

             There is an enormous amount of knowledge produced in law schools[35], creating possibilities for innovation and growth when shared and circulated.  How do we teach our students more effectively?  How do we better prepare them for the work they will do on graduation?  How can we manage our resources more productively?  What can technology do to enhance student learning, faculty teaching and scholarship, and administrative functions?  Shifting groups of individuals within the law school community develop and, with facilitation, share learning in these and numerous other areas.  Constituting these groups, and the larger law school, as a community of practice is a way of encouraging the flow of knowledge and innovation, fostering new approaches to problem solving, promoting the spread of best practices and developing professional skills and identity.

According to Wenger, functioning communities of practice have three properties:  mutual engagement, joint enterprise, and shared repertoire.  The first involves people working together and creating relationships that allow them to “connect meaningfully…to the contributions and knowledge of others.”[36]  The second encompasses the way in which participants create shared purpose in the process of pursuing it.  While there may be – and inevitably is – disagreement, the enterprise becomes “joint” through “communal negotiation, and creates a sense of ownership, even in the face of forces and influences beyond the members’ control.” Joint enterprise also promotes mutual accountability in which participants are responsible for “not making th[e] lives [of other members of the community] more difficult.[37]  It isn’t hard to imagine the value of shared enterprise in a law school community where its absence can result in individuals making others’ lives and work very much more difficult indeed!

             Third, Wenger observes that communities of practice have a shared repertoire, which  “includes the routines, words, stories and actions that have been developed by the group in the course of working together.”[38]  Rather than fixed and static, the repertoire is changing and dynamic, reflecting the repertoires brought to the enterprise by individuals and the continuous reshaping that occurs “as they work with [other] individuals, subgroups or the group as a whole.”  Most people in any given law school share at least some repertoire, from widely circulated and repeated jokes and “war stories,” to shared (and not always charitable) characterizations of the larger university and its officials. 

When a law school functions as a community of practice, everyone’s learning is enhanced, there is a sense of shared identity, the institution itself becomes “smarter”[39] about how to accomplish its goals, and its members take ownership of its well-being and success.  Given these obvious benefits, how can we cultivate and facilitate our law schools as positive communities of practice? 

First, it is important to bring good people together; this implicates hiring and promoting faculty and staff who are willing and able to negotiate a shared purpose, and an admissions process that seeks out and selects students who will share in it.  These are incremental and sometimes difficult steps, but there is a faster and simpler kind of recruitment into the community – reaching out to, and re-engaging graduates whose work reflects its values and common purpose.  CUNY’s CLRN initiative, described below,[40] is a compelling example of this proposition. 

Second, a community of practice requires an infrastructure that encourages connection and collaboration:  the physical spaces in the law school can be configured to further interaction, or they can rigidify separation and hierarchy.[41]  Food can play an important role; where and when people come together to get it and share it can promote or discourage community.[42] 

Finally, returning to my original observation about the importance of anniversaries, history is also a meaningful part of communities of practice.  Providing opportunities for creating and sharing the law school’s history and accomplishments creates community, provides opportunities for reflection, and nourishes growth and innovation.

I’ve written generally about communities of practice, and why it is valuable and desirable for law schools to cultivate them.  The example of CUNY, while particularized because of its public interest niche within legal education, may prove helpful.

B.  CUNY as a Community of Practice

CUNY, like many other law schools, is consciously comprised of “group[s] of people who share a concern – a set of problems or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in that area by interacting on an ongoing basis.”[43]  Our faculty is made up of teachers who, by and large, have also been public interest practitioners and who continue to contribute through pro bono work and public service.  Our students are recruited and admitted based on their demonstrated commitment to public interest, and many staff members, active in their own communities, find the Law School a congenial and non-alienating place to work.  Others, who may originally have come for geographic proximity, or free tuition in the University, are sooner or later won over to the collective enterprise of using law to promote justice and equality.[44]  Deans and Associate Deans are chosen, in large part, for their compatibility with, and support of, the Law School ’s mission.  Because salaries for all law school employees are considerably lower than in the private sector, or other New York area law schools, people come and stay to participate in a mutual endeavor – training new generations of lawyers who will utilize “law in the service of human needs.” 

The members of the CUNY community are extremely diverse, and bring multiple and sometimes conflicting perspectives.  While we agree on a joint enterprise, our agreement is negotiated against a background of more than occasional disagreement on means to a shared end.  Yet, as Wenger predicts, this diversity also results in a more creative and effective approach to problem solving.

Communities of practice are made up of sub-communities of persons working together in specific areas, who bring their work to the larger community where it is reflected upon, and may be expanded, refined and incorporated.  What happens in the classroom is different from what happens in the alumni relations office, but when the Law School is functioning as a community of practice, the work of both, and the Law School itself, are enhanced.  The faculty, moving from theory (at the beginning) to joint practice with students (over the past 20 years), has adopted, promoted and refined collaboration as a primary mode for teaching and learning.  That same sense of collaboration motivates the work of alumni relations as we mentor and provide resources for our graduates, simultaneously learning from them, and incorporating that learning back into our classrooms. 

A powerful example of this shared learning is CLRN, CUNY’s Community Legal Resource Network.  Born of conversations with graduates over informal dinners, CLRN blossomed into an initiative to assist those who had chosen small and solo community-based practices in order to increase access to justice.[45]  Using its own resources, and additional funding from the Open Society Institute, the Law School facilitated a vibrant community[46] that resembles a virtual law firm or legal services office to assist graduates in business practices, legal research and justice initiatives, using technology to network and connect them.  These efforts are directed to increasing their individual skills, and enabling them to generate and share best practices and collective knowledge.

Now, some four years later, we have seen this initiative create numerous benefits for a significant number of graduates[47] who are both more successful and more effectively engaged in their “justice missions.”  The larger Law School community has similarly benefited, in several major ways.  These include:  curricular modifications that enable us to better prepare students for the work many of them will choose;[48] enhanced recruitment, as we offer a viable career path for idealistic law school applicants who want to use their legal educations to further justice; and alumni relations, which have become a true partnership and collaboration, rather than a loss leader for identifying prospective donors.

Wenger and his colleagues observe that “[t]o remain vibrant, communities need to shift topics,…, invite new alliances, and constantly redefine their boundaries.”[49]  CLRN is an example of the way in which we have erased the line between student and graduate. 

We have now defined our community longitudinally, increasing our capacity to learn and accomplish our goals.  CLRN, other graduate connections and the client work done by our clinics, externships, student organizations and pro bono faculty and staff have also created new alliances and similarly redefined our boundaries. 

Planning for the twentieth anniversary has given us a lens for observing and naming the ways in which we work and partner with others in the larger public interest community.  Collaborating with and across other organizations, like social justice not-for-profits, legal services offices, and, in the sphere of international human rights, NGO’s, as well as other units of City University [50] energizes the Law School and expands its knowledge and effect.  This “practice” has led to a recalibration/renewal/refinement of our community’s “domain” exemplified in the move from “Law in the Service of Human Needs” to the current “Building a Community of Justice.”

CUNY’s experience, although related to a unique mission, has relevance to others in legal education.  Other goals, different from those we have emphasized – legal scholarship, applying a critical perspective to the law and the legal system, improving the profession, understanding and building global connections – can be negotiated as a common enterprise by other, different kinds of law schools.  With encouragement and facilitation, students, faculty, staff and graduates can develop ways of working with, and learning from, each other in furtherance of those goals, as well as student learning and general organizational health.  Given the alternatives – anomie, rigid and unproductive hierarchy, disengagement and alienation – the work of community building is an important choice for deans and their institutions.

V.  ADDITIONAL ASPIRATIONS FOR COMMUNITY

In addition to the notion of “community of practice,” there are two aspirational ideas of community that inspire us at CUNY.  I offer them as a parting note.

The first is Dr. Martin Luther King’s conception of the “Beloved Community.”  From his “aspiration to rebuild community from the social death of slavery and segregation,”[51] Dr. King offered a vision of the Beloved Community which would “reconcil[e] the truths of individualism and collectivism and embrac[e] diversity without sacrificing unity,”[52] in order to create more democratic, loving and just individuals.  Building on the power of law to eradicate segregation and racial oppression, law schools can commit to embracing diversity in their own communities, and promoting diversity, tolerance and justice in the larger community.  Celebrating and defending affirmative action, as the University of Michigan Law School famously did, is one example.  It is difficult to imagine any other institution, with the possible exception of religious organizations, for whom the work of building the Beloved Community is more central.

The second aspirational concept is the South African idea of ubuntu.  The phrase can be roughly translated as “A person is a person through other persons” or “I am a human being because I belong, I participate.  I share.”[53]  It connotes the way in which individuals belong in, and are defined by, a “bundle of life” which makes them generous, hospitable, caring and compassionate.  The concept of ubuntu has been powerfully utilized in South Africa ’s transition to “multi-racial” democracy, and in the construction and operation of its Truth and Reconciliation Commission. 

Both Dr. King’s “Beloved Community” and ubuntu resonate significantly with values embedded in our professional codes of ethics and norms.  And, used strategically to focus on the plight of the neediest and most downtrodden, they can facilitate enduring bonds among all individuals, and describe and create solidarity in the commitment to justice.

VI.  CONCLUSION

Whatever an individual law school’s particular values and mission, commitment to the public good is at the core of the profession for which we train our students, and of which we are, ourselves, generally members.  The MacCrate Report, perhaps the most comprehensive examination of legal education and lawyering, significantly includes not only skills necessary for successful practice, but also four primary values.  Among these are “Striving to Promote Justice, Fairness and Morality,” which, in turn, includes “treating other people (including clients, other attorneys and support personnel) with dignity and respect” and “Contributing to the Profession’s Fulfillment of its Responsibility to Enhance the Capacity of the Law and Legal Institutions to Do Justice.” [54]  Choices about the ways in which law schools relate to and participate in communities in which they are located bring varying benefits.[55]  Choices to promote and nurture the law school as a community create opportunities to embody and promote our profession’s highest values.