Document Type

Article

Publication Date

January 2004

First Page

469

Abstract

As important,and difficult, as it is to offer new law students clearand helpful frameworks for the interpersonalwork of lawyering, do-ing so is only part of what a clinical textbook may aspire to. In ourtextbook-in-progress, we hope to offer both frameworks and support for students' sense of the incompleteness of every framework and for their recognition of the need for careful,flexible response to each in-dividual client. Even care and flexibility by themselves are notenough, however, and every text must choose which aspects of law- yer-client relationshipsit will emphasize most. In the sections thatfol-low, we focus on lawyers' development of "connection in context," emotional connection and common ground with clients forged even across considerable gaps of difference; on the application of these skills across especially large contextualgaps, as illustratedin an inter-view with a client with a mild intellectualdisability;and on the ethicsand skills of making one specialform of connection with a client, themoral relationship entailed in a "moral dialogue." These dialogues and commentaries explore many complex moments between lawyerand client, but they also reaffirm the central importance of a funda-mental skill and virtue - listening - in the lawyer's work of creating,in each case, a theory of the representation

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