advocacy, practice, and justice
IN SESSION
A woman in a blue shirt writes on a whiteboard covered in sticky notes while a man in a hoodie watches.
Up Arrow Students in Professor Shanahan’s Justice Lab clinic.
PHOTO: DAVE BARBAREE

Student Advocacy in Action: Empowering Social Justice through Legal Practice

This fall, Penn Carey Law launched Justice Lab, a new clinic that empowers students to tackle systemic inequities in the civil and criminal justice systems. Led by Practice Professor Colleen F. Shanahan, the Clinic builds on her groundbreaking research into what she and her co-authors call “lawyerless courts”—the 75% of civil courts where individuals, often facing housing disputes, debt collection, or family matters, must represent themselves.

Across Philadelphia and beyond, many people navigate these courts without the guidance or benefit of legal representation. Through Justice Lab, Shanahan is equipping students with hands-on experience to become advocates for social justice. Working with organizational partners, they take on complex, real-world challenges that reveal how legal systems can better serve those most affected by inequity.

Shanahan’s scholarship examines the mismatch between the problems people bring to these courts and the laws and procedures the courts use to address them. In many cases, individuals spend only minutes before a judge, yet the outcomes can have life-altering consequences. Focusing on courts that disproportionately affect vulnerable communities, her empirical work sheds light on what happens in lawyerless courts, while her procedural and theoretical work offers new ways of thinking about and designing civil justice systems.

Portrait of a smiling woman with short hair wearing a green dress, leaning against a wooden wall.
PHOTO: DAVE BARBAREE
“
Justice Lab students experience being lawyers who plan, do, and reflect on their advocacy, through work that teaches them to be architects, not just agents, of legal systems.”
Colleen Shanahan
Practice Professor of Law
Through Justice Lab, Shanahan translates those insights into action. Each semester, students will take on multidimensional projects designed to create positive change within the legal system. Some projects address local issues in Philadelphia, while others have broader statewide or national implications. In its inaugural year, Justice Lab is working on projects related to access to justice in debt collection cases, fines and fees reform, juvenile justice reform, and compensation for wrongful convictions.

Shanahan describes Justice Lab as an evolving initiative in which students advocate for change within court systems, city and state legislatures, and state and federal agencies. The interdisciplinary approach encourages students to explore the intersection of law, policy, and community advocacy—all of which play a critical role in achieving systemic reform. In the clinic, students learn to advocate for justice in a variety of ways—whether through media advocacy, legislative drafting, policy advocacy, community organizing and education, or reforming court procedure.

The Justice Lab currently Supports

Icon of a balance scale
Fines and Fees Reform
Blue icon of a person and a book behind a red icon of a judge's gavel.
Juvenile Justice Reform
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Access To Justice In Debt Collection Cases
Blue icon of an open door next to a red icon of a pair of handcuffs.
Compensation For Wrongful Convictions
A woman points to a diagram on a whiteboard while three students watch and listen.
Up Arrow Professor Shanahan teaching students in her Justice Lab clinic.
PHOTO: DAVE BARBAREE
Each semester, the clinic will take on new projects to ensure that the work remains timely and relevant. When the focus is on Philadelphia, many of the issues addressed have wider implications that extend beyond the city. The design of the clinic means that the success of a local project can lead to replication in other jurisdictions, helping to spread the impact of Penn Carey Law’s advocacy.

Justice Lab exemplifies how experiential learning at Penn Carey Law equips students not only to practice law, but also to use it as a tool for meaningful, lasting change.

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