Reflections of an IJA Fellow After 25 Years

“But What Is It That You Do?”

Carwina Weng, an NYU Law student who has been a research assistant at IJA for two years, is the recipient of a Skadden Arps public service fellowship.

“…I’m glad to be working here – and not just because the money helps pay the rent. The projects I’ve worked on at IJA have unveiled fields and perspectives that a law student doesn’t always have access to in the more abstract world of Vanderbilt Hall…In addition, work on various projects involving alternative dispute resolution has sharpened a perspective of the court system not as a forum for vindicating rights and honor, as clients tend to think, but as a forum for resolving conflict. Exposure to non- and less adjudicatory methods of solving problems reminds the litigious law student that lawsuits are not the only and not always the best way to solve problems or empower clients…

Learning to think about the judicial system as such and participating in a critique of it provides a necessary grounding for the legal principles taught in law school. It’s not enough to think like a lawyer; you’ve got to know the system in which you’re operating, too…”

IJA REPORT asked Ms. Weng to reflect on the influence her time at IJA has had on her career:

Reflections on My Work at IJA after a Quarter Century Carwina Weng

Carwina Weng, a former research assistant at the IJA, reflects on her time and work. Ms. Weng joined the Indiana Law faculty in 2006 to coordinate the Disability Law Clinic, which assists clients with social security and Medicaid disability benefits. She also teaches The Legal Profession, a hybrid professional responsibility course that focuses on professional identify formation. Ms. Weng previously has taught at Boston College Law School (2001-2006) and Florida Coastal School of Law (1996-1999). In addition, she has practiced poverty law with The Legal Aid Society of New York and Greater Boston Legal Services. Ms. Weng teaches and writes in the area of clinical legal education, with a focus on multicultural lawyering and law and psychology.

When I was a law student, IJA exposed me to the study of the judicial system and the work of judges – a world that the case method of the first-year curriculum barely hinted at. This work gave me context to understand the cases we read in law school and to humanize judges who seemed distant, powerful, and arbitrary. I learned how cases come up through the judicial system, how judges approach cases and strive for self-improvement and judicial accountability, and how the social context in which disputes arise influence the judicial process.

These are lessons that in many respects have mattered more to my work since law school than the formal education I received. As a clinical law professor at Indiana University Maurer School of Law, I work with students representing indigent clients with disability claims before government agencies. To represent our clients competently, we must understand how administrative law judges think, how they balance pressures from the agency to adjudicate cases quickly with norms of due process, how agency training of judges affects their decision-making, and how culture affects interpretations of disability, as written into law and as imbibed by the adjudicator as a member of our disability-hostile culture. I am fortunate that I was eased into these issues as a research assistant at IJA before grappling with them as a clinic student myself and then as a lawyer, when my clients’ access to basic necessities of shelter, food, and money were at stake.

The importance of social context in the judicial system has carried through to my research, as well. I have focused on cultural competence, using the frames developed through social and cultural psychology to teach law students to interact with their clients and with judicial actors more effectively. My recognition that lawyers and judicial actors develop a professional culture that is layered on to their personal and societal cultures has its roots in the work of IJA in training American judges, working with foreign judges, and studying judicial processes.

I was not aware of all these lessons at the time I worked at IJA. However, I am grateful that my work there allowed me to learn them deeply enough to influence my lawyering over 25 years later.