Reminder: Bellow Scholar proposals due Nov. 10

Dear Clinical Colleagues: This is a reminder from the Section's Committee on Lawyering in the Public Interest (aka the Bellow Scholars Committee) that proposals for designation as a Bellow Scholar in this year's selection cycle are due on November 10, 2008. We attach the Notice of this year's process and a brochure about the award. The Committee recently held a workshop on research methods, and we plan to circulate to the listserv the major presentation of that event. If you have any questions about the Bellow process, please don't hesitate to contact any of the members of the Committee, who are listed in the attached notice. Thanks, Dean

Dean Hill Rivkin
Visiting Professor of Law, Fall 2008
American University Washington College of Law
[email protected]
College of Law Distinguished Professor
University of Tennessee College of Law

GARY BELLOW: CLINICAL PIONEER AND TIRELESS WORKER FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE

 

     Gary Bellow was one of the founders of the Clinical Legal Education movement and also played a key role in  establishing legal services for the poor.  He began his career as a highly-respected public defender in Washington, D.C., where in the mid-sixties he was  influential in efforts to obtain funding for civil legal  services for the poor under the newly-formed Office of Economic Opportunity.  With the funding in place, Gary worked for a two-year period with Neighborhood Legal Services in the District of Columbia, then moved to California to become Deputy Director of California Rural Legal Assistance, one of the most ambitious and innovative of the new OEO programs.  In the fall of 1968, he entered law school teaching at the University of Southern California, while continuing to maintain a large and active caseload of both civil and criminal matters, all of them handled on a  pro bono basis.  Three years later, Gary left USC for Harvard, which was to be his professional home for almost thirty years.

 

     By the time he got to Harvard, Gary already had developed a highly successful clinical program at USC, and had become one of the leading theoreticians of the movement.  Clinical programs had been underway only a year or two at the schools that had them, and did not exist at many other schools.  Gary examined the question of how students best learn in the clinical setting, and began to develop innovative methods and materials.  He also realized that there was a dearth of useful material on what lawyers actually do and need to know in practice, and, with Bea Moulton, began to compile the readings that would later be published as The Lawyering Process: Materials for Clinical Instruction in Advocacy (Foundation Press, 1978).  Simultaneously, he also took on cases and became a leader in the legal services community in Boston, winning important legal victories and working tirelessly to strengthen and expand the services available to poor people.  His most tangible legacy is Harvard’s community-based Hale and Dorr Legal Services Center, which for more than twenty years has served thousands of clients each year while providing a high quality clinical experience to hundreds of law students.

 

     After Gary’s untimely death in May, 2000, the AALS Section on Clinical Education decided to establish the Bellow Scholar Program to honor his memory and further the social justice goals to which he devoted his life.

 

THE AALS CLINICAL SECTION’S BELLOW SCHOLAR PROGRAM

 

     Gary Bellow was not one to look back and savor his accomplishments. Through a long and difficult illness, until the very day he died, Gary  focused on the future: on what needed to be done to improve the lives of poor people and the skills and understanding of their advocates.  It thus seemed appropriate to make the program named in his honor forward-looking as well.  It is contemplated that the Bellow Scholars who will be named –usually  annually--will be clinicians who are embarking on important efforts to improve the quality of justice in their communities, and who would like the support and counsel of their peers as they carry out their plans.

 

    The Bellow Scholar will receive recognition for an important undertaking and the opportunity  to meet with interested peers both in developing the project and evaluating the extent to which it has accomplished its objectives.  It is hoped that these Bellow Scholar gatherings  will become a regular part of  annual conferences and workshops, and will be a forum in which the qualities that characterized Gary’s own work, particularly  innovation and critical analysis, can be advanced in the clinical community.   Unfortunately, at this point in time, the AALS Clinical Section cannot offer financial support for the projects proposed by Bellow Scholars.

 

HOW BELLOW SCHOLARS WILL BE SELECTED AND RECOGNIZED

 

     Selecting the Bellow Scholar will be the responsibility of the Section’s reconstituted Committee on Lawyering in the Public Interest.  Each year, applications will be due in mid-October,  with the Bellow Scholar for the coming year, if any, announced at the time of the AALS Annual Meeting in January.  At the next AALS workshop or conference on clinical legal education, generally in the succeeding May or June, there will be an opportunity for the new Bellow Scholar to present her ideas to a group of interested colleagues and receive their comments and suggestions.  As appropriate, this session may also include follow-up reports from  previous Bellow Scholars, so that the clinical community can continue to be involved in the process of evaluating and learning from ongoing projects.   While formal written reports will not be required, it is hoped that the work of many Bellow Scholars will be published and/or disseminated more widely in written form. 

 

APPLYING TO BECOME A BELLOW SCHOLAR

 

     The Bellow Scholar program seeks proposals that involve law students and faculty in anti-poverty initiatives or access to justice projects.  Projects that involve collaboration between lawyers and other professionals or empirical analysis are encouraged.  Applications are invited from clinical teachers in the United States and Canada, and from clinical teachers in other countries whose schools pay their way to the annual workshops and conferences of the AALS Section on Clinical Education, or who can otherwise cover their own travel expenses.  Interested applicants should submit a proposal that includes:

 

   - A detailed description of the project;

 

   - The projected goals of the project;

 

   - A timeline for completion of the project; and

 

  - A description of how the project will be      evaluated.

 

Proposals should be postmarked no later than October 15, 2002 and sent to the Chair of the Committee on Lawyering in the Public Interest:

 

Professor Bea Moulton

U.C. Hastings College of the Law

200 McAllister Street  

San Francisco, CA 94102

Proposals may also be sent electronically to  <[email protected]> or FAXed to Bea Moulton at (415)565-4865 on or before the same date,  October 15, 2002.

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