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A Field Trip To Benetton And Beyond: Some Thoughts On Outsider Narrative In A Law School Clinic, Carolyn Grose

Faculty Scholarship

This essay explores the process of teaching students—and ourselves—to listen to and accept different versions of reality. Such exploration results in a proposition that is easy to state but difficult to accomplish: that in order to achieve this goal, we must challenge the students' "common sense”—their sense that they "know" how people act—by offering examples of behaviors that differ from that knowledge, without triggering the very "common sense" we are trying to combat. Toward this end, the first section of the essay presents a hypothetical initial interview with a client, and the student interviewer's reactions to her, which reflect the …