Thread by @ScottHech

"I wish they taught this in law school." Now we will. ANNOUNCEMENT: I was just appointed Lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School! In January, my colleague Alejo & I will be teaching 1Ls. On expanding their advocacy outside the courtroom. Hope this becomes a national model. Watch:

My organization Zealo.us, started off w/ a national training of defenders from around the country on a range of skills you don’t usually learn in law school. Or anywhere else for that matter. Those skills are more relevant today than ever. Part 2 of course preview:

As a public defender for close to a decade, I realized early on the limitations on my ability to create transformative change inside of court alone and how I need to think more expansively about what it would look like to take my advocacy outside the courtroom.

We'll be teaching w/ Prof. Colleen Shanahan: "As a clinical professor, I’ve seen students frustrated by a law school experience that teaches the law in black & white. I want this course to challenge our assumptions about the broad range of ways we can be lawyers."

So proud to get to teach alongside Alejo Rodriguez: "As an artist, teacher, advocate, & also someone with direct criminal justice experience, I want lawyers, & future lawyers, to be thinking more creatively about their unique role in bringing about change."

We want students at the very beginning of their law school experience to understand that: Being a lawyer was about people even more than the law. That they can change the system, not just work within it. And that they can be an advocate outside the courtroom.

For the last year, Zealous has been supporting, training, & activate a movement of people--practitioners, artists, organizers, & those who are directly impacted--learning & working together to leverage arts, communications, & new media advocacy to build capacity for change.

We’re going to learn together-with experts from across legal systems as well as storytellers, organizers, artists, journalists, those w/ direct experience-how to work w/ communities, use storytelling to change the law, engage in media advocacy, & how to develop campaigns.

This course is the beginning of what we hope will become a national model of training law students early in their studies & interested in all kinds of areas of the law. For a bit more info about our work (but in need of an update!): Zealo.us

And if you want to check out the full video without Twitter 2:20 seconds forcing me to cut it in half, here you go. Edited by the brilliant Christian Mrockza. vimeo.com/473030745