Our policy, advocacy, and innovation lab courses help drive change. They provide hands-on opportunities for NYU Law students to combine creative problem solving with their legal knowledge to examine and develop solutions to society’s most challenging problems. Using an expansive range of lawyering strategies, students and clinical faculty work in collaboration with communities, government agencies, and non-profit organizations on cutting-edge issues to advance justice, drive innovative solutions to entrenched social and legal problems, or work to make justice more accessible and meaningful for marginalized communities.
The goal of community equity is to create vital and dynamic communities of opportunity where all people can thrive. Community equity is central to the fight for racial justice, for a vibrant democracy, and economic inclusion. The Community Equity Lab provides students an opportunity to work in collaboration with marginalized communities and community-based institutions to help build a community-centered vision of justice, and the tools necessary to achieve it. Advancing community equity requires that we reimagine how we use the law to strengthen marginalized communities and allow the people who live in those communities to lead choice-filled lives. The Community Equity Lab provides a place for exploring larger ideas around the meaning of community equity while also giving law students a chance to combine their creativity with an expansive range of lawyering skills and advocacy strategies to challenge entrenched legal problems facing marginalized communities.
The Law and Organizing Lab provides capacity to NYU Law’s Clinical Program to engage in power-building, coalitional, and campaigning work. The Law and Organizing Lab works in support of building power for traditionally marginalized communities, and preparing our students to provide client representation that is grounded in a deep understanding of how their advocacy work relates to and supports broader movements to advance structural change.