By Brian Glaser
law briefs
“If you get a sense that a client doesn't like or trust or respect you,” that can impact the steps you take as an attorney, says Suffolk Law Associate Professor for Academic Support Sarah Schendel. She asks her students to engage with the issue of client-attorney mistrust head on in her Professional Responsibility class so that they can learn to serve their clients better.
She recently teamed up with a student to offer law professors around the country a blueprint for incorporating discussions of mistrust in the law classroom. Her forthcoming paper “Teaching ‘Mistrust,’” in the Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality, was co-authored with Samuel Bourgeois, JD ’23, who graduated in May.
The paper grew out of classroom discussions about an article in her curriculum by Stanford Sociology Professor Matthew Clair. It’s an ethnography of the Boston-area courts that focuses on how people perceive lawyers, judges and the criminal justice system, how those perceptions and experiences inform their decisions about their own cases, and ultimately whether or not they trust their lawyers and follow their advice.
Schendel brought in Bourgeois as a co-author after he shared that Clair’s article had resonated with him when he felt confusion or frustration with clients during a summer of legal services work.
Bourgeois says that he’s encouraged that the lawyer-client bond can be strengthened: “I found that while the attorney-client relationship is rife with mistrust – especially among Black and Latino/a criminal defendants, and rightfully so—lawyers and law students alike have a unique skill set that can be used in surprisingly creative ways to rebuild trust with clients.”
Schendel notes that Clair isn’t a lawyer and wasn’t writing with law students in mind, so his paper is likely to provoke complex discussions about topics like the role of race and class in the relationships clients form with their lawyers.
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winter 2024
Photograph by Michael J. Clarke
Samuel Bourgeois, JD ’23, above left, and Suffolk Law Associate Professor for Academic Support Sarah Schendel co-authored her forthcoming paper “Teaching ‘Mistrust,’” in the Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality.
