Multicultural Lawyering: Navigating the Culture of the Law, the Lawyer, and the Client

This book is a mix of policy, legal history, professionalism, and lawyering skills. It asks readers to explore multiculturalism through several different lenses. First, readers explore the reasons behind calls for diversity in the legal profession, examining how ordinary people view the culture of the law. Next, readers explore their own cultural backgrounds, consider implicit bias, and examine how to best navigate their own cultures as they interact with legal systems. Then, readers examine how to best represent clients with a particular focus on understanding client goals and helping translate client values and culture into legal system values and culture, while always remaining cognizant of their own values and cultures.

Finally, readers explore case studies where failure to appreciate culture has had critical consequences. The book provides perspective through essays about multicultural values in legal systems in other countries. It can be used as a textbook in a multicultural lawyering course or seminar, in a professional identity and culture course, or as a supplement to a clinic, skills, or doctrinal course. Lawyers and other legal professionals can use this book to explore multiculturalism and its effects in the legal system.

Kimberly E. O'Leary is a Professor of Law at Cooley Law School.

Mable Martin-Scott is the Assistant Dean of Lansing Campus and a Professor of Law at Cooley Law School.