Justice for all: Building a generation of anti-racist lawyers

Inclusivity Included: Powerful personal stories

Rutgers Law School Co-Dean and Professor of Law Kimberly Mutcherson discusses the leading role lawyers (at law schools in particular) can and should be playing in the battles against racism and for racial justice.

Dean Mutcherson co-developed the Law Deans Antiracist Clearinghouse Project, a comprehensive phase guide to help law schools develop a sustainable anti-racist agenda. In this podcast, she reveals how law schools and law firms can turn statements of solidarity into action plans to combat racism.

For more information, please visit Reed Smith's Diversity, Equity & Inclusion page.

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Transcript:

Intro: Hi, I'm John Iino and I'm Iveliz Crespo. Welcome to the Reed Smith podcast. Inclusivity Included: Powerful Personal Stories. In each episode of this podcast, our guests will share their personal stories, passions and challenges, past and present, all with a goal of bringing people together and learning more about others. You might be surprised by what we all have in common, inclusivity included.

Iveliz: Hey, everyone and welcome to our podcast, Inclusivity Included. As always, I'm joined by my co-host John Iino.

John: Hey Iveliz, great to be back.

Iveliz: I'm very excited to introduce today's guest, Dean Mutcherson, who serves as the Co-Dean and Professor of Law at Rutgers Law School. Dean Mutcherson is a racial justice advocate and an award winning professor whose scholarship focuses on reproductive justice, bioethics, family and health law. She recently received the Association American Law School's inaugural Impact Award in part for her co creation of the law Dean's anti racist clearing house project, an online repository for law Dean's faculty and the public that contains resources and information addressing racism, police reform and other complex issues. Dean Mutcherson also happens to be a friend and a mentor to me. So thank you, Dean Mutcherson for joining us.

Kimberly: Uh Thank you. It's a huge, huge pleasure to be here with both of you.

Iveliz: Now, before we delve into your impressive resume and the incredible work you are doing to advance racial justice. I want to talk about who you are. In true form, Uh Our podcast is called Powerful Personal Stories. And I know that you have an incredible story that I really want to share with, with our listeners. So, you know, we can start with, you know, what drove you to enter the legal profession and ultimately to become professor and a law school dean.

Kimberly: Yeah, absolutely. So I was one of those people who knew from very young that I wanted to be a lawyer. I was about 10 years old, um, when I decided that I wanted to be a lawyer and, you know, I sort of stuck with that vision throughout all of my schooling. I went straight from college into law school and I, I went to law school to be a public interest lawyer. You know, I really sort of thought of the law and the reason why I wanted to go into law was about justice and being able to use the tools of law to as cliche as it sounds, you know, make the world a better place. So I went to law school and I did not enjoy it but managed to have a lot of really great experiences there. Graduated, became a public interest Lawyer and was working in New York as a public interest lawyer. And through a series of very odd kind of events, I ended up moving from my little nonprofit where I was working to working at NYU law school in their lawyering program decided that, you know, I was, I was pretty good at this teaching thing and this scholarship thing and somehow ended up staying in academia, which was not my path at all. But I felt like one of the things that I could do, particularly once I got to Rutgers as a, as a public law school, I could still really be a public interest lawyer just doing it in a different kind of way. So I was, you know, happily living my life as a tenured law professor and then was asked to be Vice dean, which was supposed to be a three year gig. And I said, all right, fine, I'll do it. I don't want to. And then the person who was our dean got a job elsewhere and I got called to the chancellor's office probably in November or so of 2018. And she said, you don't know this yet, but your dean is leaving and I would like you to step in and be the dean starting on January 1st. So I had about a month and a half to adjust to the idea that I was going to be the Dean of the law school. And then I got the job. And I am the first woman, the first black person, the first queer person to be the dean at the law school um in Camden. And it has been a journey to say the least, but I get to get, I still get to do good things and I still ultimately think of myself as a, as a public interest lawyer so.

Iveliz: I think that's fantastic and, and kudos to records, right, for making the right decision and, and, and having you, you know, sit at the helm, I think one of the things that, you know, you said that really spoke to me, you know, you didn't enjoy law school and, and I think that that's an experience that I can relate to. And part of why I didn't enjoy law school is because I felt like, uh you know, I wasn't connected and none of the faculty really represented me, they didn't reflect me. And so it's really empowering to see you as another queer person, as a person of color, as a woman of color, you know, sitting and, and, and leading the law school in this right direction. And it's just, it's fantastic and I, you know, I admire the work that you're doing so much.

Kimberly: Thank you,

John: Dean Mutcherson, It's so inspiring to hear your journey as well. And what, what resonates with me in particular is when I graduated law school and I went to USC Law School, our keynote speaker commencement speaker was Irwin Cerris who was one of the professors at the time. Now, he's the Dean of the UC Berkeley Law School. And what he told the graduating class was now that you're lawyers, it's your charge to change the world and, and where, wherever you go, whatever you do, you know, keep that in mind. And I remember, you know, personally I felt like, well, I was going to go in corporate law, how am I going to change the world? Um And as I've, you know, certainly over the course of my career, I've come to realize, and I spoke to the incoming class uh a couple of years ago for the law school and said, you, you don't all have to graduate and become public interest lawyers to change the world because so many people feel like, ok, I, I've got to go to do pro bono public interest and that's the only way I can change the world, you know. No, we, we all can do it in, in, in different ways. And if the only people that had the attitude is to change the world are people that are doing public interest law. There's a lot of people that, that can, can be activated and who's going to be that, you know, speaking up in the corporate world, who's going to be speaking in different environments. And so if there's not folks like us in, in all different, you know, fields, all different environments, the world won't change. So, yes, of course, it's important that, you know, for, for folks that pursue public interest. But you now in the law school dean and the amazing impact that you can have that you're having as a law school dean is certainly, you know, as great or greater than, you know, whatever other path you may have been on as well. So I just love, love hearing that.

Kimberly: Yeah. There are so many moments when I have to give like little speeches, whether it's orientation or, you know, graduation or, or, or various events. And one of the themes that I constantly hammer home to students is, you know, you all are going to go out into the world and do all kinds of different work, right? You're not all going to be public interest lawyers, but you should all be justice minded. And so whether that means that you're the person in your law firm who says, you know, why is everybody around this table the exact same? Maybe we should talk about that, you know, or you're the person who makes sure that the pro bono work that folks are doing gets counted towards your billable hours, right? I mean, there are lots of ways that you can do that kind of work even if you're not working at a nonprofit or, or, or working for the government. So I think that's a really important and powerful message for folks to get.

John: Absolutely. I love that. Let's switch gears a little bit and, and talk about, uh, anti-racism. So, the concept, you know, I know that you've done a lot of work in this and then commend you for some of the things we'll talk about. But in particular, what is, when you define anti-racism, what is the role of, you know, neutrality or being neutral in, in perpetuating systems of oppression?

Kimberly: Mhm. Um, well, there's no such thing as being neutral in perpetuating systems of oppression, right? And this is, you know, these, these are not my words but they're, you know, words from Ibram X. Kendi who is sort of the, the king of anti racism right now in the world, you know, and his basic position and I think it's a really powerful one is either you are actively working against racism and against oppression or you are benefiting from and participating in deeply problematic systems and people don't, people don't like to hear that, right? I mean, people like to, I think, you know, I'm not racist and I have black friends and, you know, the whole little, you know, litany of things, but that's, that's not enough. And so it has to be that you are actively engaged in work. And again, as we were saying before, there are lots of different ways that you can be doing that, but just sort of sitting and saying, well, if I'm a good person that's really all I have to do is not being a part of the work and it's not being a part of the fight and frankly, it's not being anti racist.

Iveliz: Absolutely, you mentioned, right, that lawyers are in this unique position to drive justice and it doesn't matter, you know, what industry we go in, whether it's private, public, you know, nonprofit practice, we all have an obligation. Right? And I, you know, sometimes I go as far as saying, it's an ethical obligation, our ethical obligation is to create a more equitable legal profession.

Kimberly: Absolutely.

Iveliz: And so in line with that, you know, you've been doing a lot of work in this area. Uh talking about how law schools are uniquely positioned to advance racial justice. Would you talk a little bit more about, you know, how they are positioned and in driving racial justice, not just in the legal profession, but in the communities in which we exist in,

Kimberly: You know, so I, I'm one of those people, this is, this is going to sound like I'm not answering your question, but I promise you, I'm getting to it. But I am one of those people, I'm not a particularly religious person, but I'm definitely one of those people who feels like the universe will often put you where you need to be at a certain point. And much of the time that I have been a dean at Rutgers Law School has been during crisis. So it was the COVID pandemic, which we're still living through and, you know, turning our law school into a virtual law school on a dime which was absolutely bonkers. And then of course, we had the murder of George Floyd and, and all of the racial unrest that came in the wake of that, certainly not the first black man to be murdered by police. And, and unfortunately, almost certainly won't be the last. But, you know, this was a moment where me as the person who I am, it was really important for me to be the dean of the law school and to be very open about what the things going on in the world meant to me, what they meant to me as a black woman, what they meant to me as a mother to black Children and the ways in which being a law school dean was important to me because it meant that I got to work with the next generation of lawyers who were going to make the world a better place for my Children. So I've had a lot of opportunity over the last year and a half to talk to students about racial justice, to talk to students about the law as both a tool of oppression and a tool of justice. I've been able to talk to them about the role unfortunately, I think that law schools have played in pretending that law is neutral and that it is objective and not spending the kind of time that we should talking to students about the fact that, you know, what we see today didn't just get written out on tablets and passed down to us, Right? That there is a whole history of why our world looks the way that it does. And so, you know, we've been having some really, really difficult conversations at the law school about what we have been doing and what we haven't been doing and ways in which we need to think differently about our classrooms and about our curriculum. So it's a, it's on one hand, a really hard time to be a law school dean, particularly a law school dean who's a woman of color, but it's also pretty much the best time in history to have this job. So I feel lucky that we get to do this work and we are, and when I say we, you know, it's, it's not unanimous, the kind of work that we're doing in the law school right now, there are definitely people who are not comfortable, some of the changes that we're trying to make. But the hope is is that we're, we're laying a foundation for our students so that when they go out into the world, they are really critical thinkers about the law and about the role that they play in perpetuating injustice with the law or, or could avoid playing of perpetuating injustice in the law.

Iveliz: Yeah, and, and I love that. I think one of the things that made her school law school pretty difficult was not just, you know, the lack of representation but also on the way in which the law is taught. I give an example, I remember I was sitting in my torts class uh learning about these two cases that were very similar. And the professor asked the question about how do you differentiate between the two of them? Because the outcome was different. And the cases involved two sets of parents, one set of parent was uh had their child switched birth at a hospital. And then the other case involved eggs from that were fertilized by a couple being inadvertently implanted in a different couple. And the result was that the couple that had that in vitro fertilization mix up, right? Won their case. But the couple who had their baby mixed in the hospital did not win their case. And when I look, when you look at this case, they're both set in New York. But by the name of the hospital, you can differentiate where in New York they are, right? And one of the things that struck me is this is very clearly a low income hospital, right? Community hospital. And so I said to the professor, I said, you know, I think the difference here is clearly it's a racial socio-economic issue, right? These people didn't have access to the proper like attorneys, the attorneys that of the caliber that won that other case, right? And I remember the professor looked at me and said, if you keep thinking this way about the law, you're not going to be successful, right? And I remember thinking to myself after that, I mean, it kind of shook me then, but as I've gotten older in my career and I've been working at, you know, advancing equity and, and doing what I do and, and finding this, this place that I can be happy doing this work, right? I can, I can be true to myself in advance equity. And so I remember that situation and just hearing what you're saying and what you're working on, you know, I remember how it made me feel. I felt, you know, like I didn't belong there. It was further alienating me because I didn't think the way that my other classmates thought and to hear the work that you folks are working on you and your peers that are doing this work and advancing this uh anti racist law school curriculum, It's just really affirming and, and speaks to, right? That that's not, that's not an anomaly what happened to me in that in that instant is happening throughout law schools across the country. And we need to do a better job of not, you know, dissuading people from thinking that right, we need to nurture that thought, we need to, you know, provide people with resources to advance equity in the profession. And that starts with that education.

Kimberly: Mhm. Mhm. Yeah. Absolutely. And it, you know, it's, it's painful to me that the kinds of experiences that you had in law school are the kinds of experiences that I had in law school. Um, many years before you were in law school. And unfortunately there are experiences that people are still having, um, in law schools. I remember having a conversation with, um, one of my colleagues who's an older white man, we both teach torts and he's, and we've been talking a lot about how to infuse discussions of race, particularly into first year classes. And he looked at me and he said, well, we're lucky because we teach Torts. So there's, you know, we don't have to talk about race in torts. And I thought, oh, I don't even have the time for this, you know, and, you know, the truth of the matter is that any course that you teach in law school, there is a racial component, right? I mean, there is always the history of race in this country just permeates everything. And so to pretend like, I mean, even in torts that you think the reasonable person standard is race neutral or gender neutral, right? I mean, it's, it's just sort of stunning, stunning to me. And I think part of it is that, you know, a lot of people aren't raised to talk about race, right? I mean, I have my kids are, how old are they now? They're 15 and 13. And one of the things that I noticed when they were younger is oftentimes, you know, if I said anything about somebody's race, they would say, oh, that's racist. And I was like, whatever you're being taught in school, I'm going to dismantle that because being afraid to talk about race is what gets us stuck. Right? Pretending like we are post racial or that because we had a black president, you know, that is a sign that the US is just in a very different space now. Um And anyone who thought that I hope it was erased post the Trump presidency. So, you know, one of the, one of the challenges is making sure that faculty and students are willing to have those kind of uncomfortable conversations in the classroom. And a lot of faculty aren't comfortable doing it because they don't, you know, they don't want to make mistakes and they don't want to offend people or they don't want to say something that's offensive and then, you know, it comes back to bite them and then sometimes you have the students who say, you know, it's a sort of is this going to be on the exam kind of thing? Right? Like why are we talking about this? And so that, you know, it really requires a significant shift in how we think about what we do and how we think about what skills we want our students to have when they graduate.

Iveliz: Yeah. Absolutely. And, and, you know, one of the things that I think is true is that, that's not just going to help law students strive racial justice. Right? That is going to make us better practitioners because it's going to, it's going to teach people to think broader. It's going to teach people to think more critically. It's going to teach people to, to think about these issues in their workplace when they're taking their cases and that's going to help them serve their clients better.

Kimberly: Absolutely.

Iveliz: And so there's an immediate effect there as well. Right? It's where, yes, this long term project of we want to advance justice. We don't advance equity. But also it's the short term issue where these people are going to be better suited to be better practitioners because of the skills that they're learning.

Kimberly: Yep. Yep. I think that's exactly right.

John: And what strikes me is it's so similar in terms of just how we are implementing discussions around diversity, equity and inclusion or program around inclusion and all we do, you know, I think the temptation for some law schools in their curriculum might be ok, well, we're going to have a required class on race and justice as part of the, you know, one hour curriculum. But that's just like how traditional, you know, diversity programs within organizations have just been. Ok. Well, let's just have the diversity committee and, and they'll be responsible for that stuff. Right? And what really, what we're trying to achieve and what we, we push for is that the discussions about diversity, equity and inclusion should be embedded in every single process, every single department, every single aspect of what we do and discussions about race. You know, and, and it's, it's the same thing. It's not just, oh, it's something else we have to do. It has to be embedded has to be part of that. And as you say, the challenges are getting people to focus on that and because they may be fearful because they don't know what to say. You know, they, they, they, they, they're not trained to do the right things, but it's just, you know, it's just one step at a time. We've got to make sure that it's not viewed as, that's someone else's problem. This is all of us, this is something that all of us need to embrace. All of us need to think about. All of us need to learn because like Iveliz is saying, you know, that's how we make a better society. That's how we train a better generation of lawyers.

Kimberly: Right. Yeah. Um and, and you know, the other piece of it that we talk about a lot is, you know, there, there will often be certain people in on the law school faculty, me being one of them and, and certainly there are a number of my colleagues who consistently talk about race or talk about difference or talk about injustice and inequality um in our classes. But if the, if the only people who are doing that or the majority of people who are doing that are faculty of color, often women um on our faculty and nobody else is doing it, then it looks like it's just like this pet project that some of us have as opposed to it being an integrated and important part of what it means to teach people law. So, uh you know, I'm not going to lie. There are definitely people on my faculty who probably are never going to be good at teaching about really difficult and controversial um topics and, you know, that's probably fine. I mean, they'll retire eventually they'll be replaced. But there are a lot of other people who, if given the right tools could do a really amazing job in the classroom. And so, you know, part of our, our task as the administration is making sure that we provide people with those tools, whether it is, you know, here's a whole list of law review articles about race and torts or gender and torts. And, you know, think about how you might want to incorporate one of them into your teaching or even doing and it seems silly but even doing role plays with faculty about all right, if we're talking about, you know, you sort of think about the number of criminal law courses where rape doesn't get taught because people are afraid to talk about rape in the classroom but helping somebody sort of walk through, ok. What would it, what would it look like? Right. I mean, how do you start that conversation? How do you deal with people who might say explosive things in the classroom? You know, there's something to be said for, you know, practicing some of those moments so that when they happen in class you don't just, you know, to freeze and do what a lot of faculty do, which is somebody just said something, you know, wildly offensive or just completely off the charts. So I'm gonna pretend like I didn't hear it, try to change, try to change the conversation, which is pretty much the worst thing that you can do in those situations.

Iveliz: I mean, this mirror is exactly what John and I have been working on. We've been doing a lot of role playing with senior leadership, leadership across the board and also just, you know, from the lowest level of our employees, right? And how they're categorizing jo job tiers to our top employees. And, and we found that role playing is really effective, right? You can teach people about bias, you can teach it how it impacts workplace systems. You can tell them that it's their responsibility to make sure they're mitigating bias at every single system, right? Um And that's a systems approach. You, you, you have to look at systems visually but what's hard is when, when people are in the moment and they don't know how to respond. Right? And so that's another skill set that we need to teach people how to be an upstander in that moment, right? How to do so in a way that protects the people who are being marginalized, right? Sets the standard. Um But it's also in a way that is, is conducive to education right into learning because I think oftentimes it's so easy to immediately dismiss someone because what they said is so egregious. But what that does is it, it, it prevents that person from learning right? Now they have no incentive to speak up anymore, right? They have no incentive to change that behavior. And so I do think that that's a really important skill set that as much as we can be lawyers and litigate, right? And be in the courtroom. That's just not something that the legal profession has prepared us to do, how to prepare us to stand up in the moment. As an attorney, the first thing that we say is, it depends, right? So to weighing the options and, and thinking through things so critically that it really does inhibit our ability to speak up in those moments. And I think it's an incredibly important skill set that, that people should learn.

Kimberly: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, the other thing is, is unfortunately, and this is very true in a law school environment, but it is true without world as well. You know, people don't always recognize the power dynamics that they're working within. Right? And so they think, well, if nobody's criticized me for doing XY or Z, then Xy or Z is fine, but they don't reflect on the fact that like they're the boss. So, yeah, nobody's criticized you because they don't want to lose their jobs or, you know, your students are sitting silently in, in your class because you're going to grade them at the end of the semester. So, you know, it's not that you've just been, you know, knocking it out of the box, it's that everybody is afraid to say anything to you and that's a really challenging part of it as well, right? I mean, it's, it can be very difficult for people to speak up because, you know, they fear Reprisal or they fear repercussions or it just doesn't feel like they have the power to intervene in particular circumstances. So allowing or, or, or suggesting sometimes to our professors, you know, you may think that your students are looking at you as this, you know, very approachable person. But when they come to me to complain about you after class, the first thing they say is I couldn't say this to the professor. And so, you know, helping people understand their own status and their own positioning is also I think a really important part of this work.

John: So true. So true. Dean, speaking of the tools that we want to arm our faculty and, and, and everyone else with, I know you're one of the founders of the law Dean's anti racist clearinghouse project. Um Tell us a little bit about that and its mission and all the things we can do with that.

Kimberly: Yeah, absolutely. So, again, you know, this was a project that came out of the murder of George Floyd and all that that flowed from that and the person who really got it going um is Dean Danielle Conway, who was at Penn State Dickinson who is a force of nature. She's just amazing. Um And she reached out to a group of us. I mean, you know, I was saying that sometimes you're in the right place at the right time. You know, I am a, I am a law school dean at a time when there are more black women than there have ever been in these roles at US law schools, more women in general, more people of color in general. So it's a pretty amazing time to be in law school administration. And so, and, and, and we know each other, right? I mean, we have happy hours and we talk about the things that have happened at our jobs that week. And so Danielle reached out to me, she reached out to Carla Pratt from Washburn, um Danielle Holly Walker from Howard Law and Angela on watch Willig who's at at Boston University and she said, you know, we let's do something, let's figure out something that we can do so that, you know, we're not just watching everybody issue statements about how horrible it is that, you know, the US is still racist, but that we were actually challenging people to be responsive and especially to be responsive in their own backyards and especially to be willing to critique their own institutions. And so, you know, Danielle really came up with the idea of doing the clearing house and then, you know, the five of us really worked together to figure out, you know, what should it look like, what should it suggest, what resources should it provide? And so there are a bunch of sort of phases that are laid out in there, you know, listening phase, learning phase and the phase that I think is really important is the audit phase. And the audit phase is basically saying to people, your job is not to move forward with anything until you have really done that excavation into your own policies and practices and the experiences that people are having at your institution. And so that's everything from, you know, what does our curriculum look like to, what are our promotional practices to, you know, what kind of opportunities do we provide for our students outside of the classroom to what are our admissions policies? So, really delving into all the pieces and all of the places where you might not be doing the work that you think that you're doing. And, you know, I think some schools have been very willing to do that kind of introspective work and other schools are, you know, resting on their laurels a bit. So, you know, we'll see what happens. I think students have been such a huge part of pushing institutions forward and, and, and that's been really, really important and I think that a lot of schools are going to continue to feel pressure from students who come in and say this isn't how a law school should be. You know, there are, there are better ways to do what we're doing and the, and the, the anti racist clearing house, um you know, tries to create a framework for people to create those better institutions.

John: It's amazing. And is there a website or is it just simply Google to get more information and join the, join the project?

Kimberly: Yeah, there's a website which is very easy to find if you just Google, you know, law school dean, you know, Dean's anti racist clearing house. And as I said, it has a whole range of different resources. So it has articles and books and music and then it also has, you know, questions if you want to conduct an audit. So there are lots of little pieces there. And I've actually been surprised that we've heard from people who are not in the legal field at all, you know, who've stumbled across it for various reasons and, and let us know that it's been useful to them. So that's great as well.

Iveliz: So I guess just to cap this wonderful discussion off, we talk a lot about, you know, what's happening in the legal profession and, and our obligation, right? And, and you set up this beautiful framework, right? For folks that are interested in taking a deep look at their institutions. Uh and, and how they can, you know, work through some of the issues and barriers that exist at their institutions in a way that allows for places to, to, to be more inclusive of, of different, different, different identities and different groups. But, you know, one of the things that I think most a lot of people would love to know is, you know, how do we support this work? What can we do now to help, you know, support the mission of, of what you're working on and the larger mission of, you know, racial justice and advancing racial justice in our society.

Kimberly: Well, I think on a very, very personal level, you know, one of the pieces that we talked about earlier is that um being a bystander is not being a part of the work that you have to be willing to be that person who says to somebody. What you just said is outrageous and here's why you have to be the person who says I'm not going to participate on a panel that's all white men to talk about diversity, right? Or, or anything for that matter, people have to be willing to, to personally put themselves on the line and not physically, obviously, but really sort of thinking about what are the ways in which I have privilege and are there ways in which I can exercise that privilege in order to achieve this, you know, this sort of larger goal, the society that we live in. The other piece of it just sort of thinking about the law firm world, you know, I think it has been really powerful as corporations have done things like, say, you know, we're not going to work with law firms that don't really value diversity. And, you know, it would be really powerful for law firms to say to law schools, we don't want to work with law schools that don't really value diversity and who don't show that in the way that their law school um, is set up, you know, that, that's the kind of thing that would push some of these schools that are, you know, sitting sitting in on the sidelines to say, all right, we got to do something because people don't want to hire our students because they're, they don't think that our students are ready to practice in the kind of diverse world that we're going to be setting them out into. So, you know, I think at root it really is about people recognizing and as I, you know, I say this to students all the time. I don't care where you came from, once you have a law degree, you have privilege and you have an obligation to, to wield that privilege in good ways. And so, you know, I'm always sort of thinking about, you know, the fact that I have a platform because of the job that I have, the fact that, uh you know, I'm a tenured law professor. It is very hard to fire me, right? II, I should be willing to say a lot of things that other people might, might not be willing to say, but really leveraging your own privilege to achieve, you know, the better world that we sort of started with.

Iveliz: What a perfect way to end. You know, I think it's true. We can all, you know, do more for each other, right? And, and we say this all the time because we work with lawyers and oftentimes some of these folks are from marginalized backgrounds, right? And they don't necessarily recognize that they themselves will privilege just by having a law degree. I love, I love that message because it's true. We could all do more for one another. We could all do better at looking internally, right? And assessing, you know, what privileges do we have and what can we put on the line for other people? Uh So thank you so much, Dean Mutcherson for joining us. It's been a privilege. We hope that our listeners uh check out the law dean's anti racist clearing house project because there's a lot of resources there that are really important and not just looking at how law schools teach, but how organizations should, it should be right? And how should they be structured? Uh So be sure to check it out and thank you so much.

Kimberly: Thank you. This was really fun. I appreciate it.

John: Thank you so much. What an honor.

Outro: Inclusivity Included is a Reed Smith production. Our producer is Ali McCardell. This podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, PodBean, and reedsmith.com.

Disclaimer: This podcast is provided for educational purposes. It does not constitute legal advice and is not intended to establish an attorney-client relationship, nor is it intended to suggest or establish standards of care applicable to particular lawyers in any given situation. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

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