New England Clinical Conference: Inspiration, Ideation & Innovation

As much a call to arms as a call to dream, this year’s NECC theme asks us to embrace the entrepreneurial mindset and consider new ways of solving problems, of teaching students, of engaging the community and the legal system. As an entrepreneur would say, we need to pivot and iterate, try new ideas, however wild they may seem and see what happens. It goes without saying that the current times demand us to think differently about how we do what we do. What are your new ideas for any part of your teaching: clinic/course design, seminar, supervision, community engagement, collaborations, student reflection, assessments, policy projects, law reform, wholly new clinics/programs, adjacent classes or projects? We invite you to share and explore them together. Along the lines of a business incubator -- where entrepreneurs take fledgling business ideas and breathe life into them until they take shape -- we aim to gather to talk about our new ideas, brainstorm on how we might make them happen, and consider alternate perspectives. We hope to challenge and inspire each other to bring our wild ideas into being and, in the process, be open to the possibility of making mistakes. Our theme challenges us to be fearless: What do we want to try in our clinics? Our hope is that proposals responding to this theme will reflect a combination of structures, including presentations, panels, discussion groups, and other styles of brainstorming, as well as different levels of development, from fully baked to untested.