Best Practices for Legal Education

Lillian Moy

The events of the last year in Ferguson, Staten Island and Baltimore have focused the public and the legal community on racism and unconscious bias in the criminal justice system, particularly in policing. Seeing Black, an article by Jennifer Eberhardt and three other psychologists, discusses their research and findings that many law enforcement officers “see black” resulting in their unconsciously seeing criminal activity and criminal defendants. It’s not much of a leap to conclude that others in the justice system, including lawyers, also unconsciously and automatically “see black.” and may make negative judgments about key aspects of our work, e.g., the credibility of your client or a key witness.

I cannot explain unconscious or implicit bias in this blog. I commend to you this video which talks about one community’s study of implicit bias and their attempts to mitigate bias in their juvenile justice system. In the…