Do an interview for The Witness at EJU
While you are at this year's Equal Justice University conference, grab a partner and sign up to participate in a recording session of The Witness! As part of the 40th anniversary of EJU, the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law will be here to record episodes of The Witness, a new StoryCorps-like program that captures conversations between advocates and documents this moment in legal aid history.
You can choose your own interview partner, but we encourage you to talk with someone not just like yourself, maybe someone from a different part of the state or of a different generation. You can bring your own questions or use a list of suggested questions. We will suggest questions such as:
- Who has been the most important person in your legal career? Can you tell me about him or her?
- What are you proudest of?
- How has your legal career been different from what you’d imagined?
- How would you like to be remembered?
- Do you have any regrets?
- What are your hopes for what the future holds for me?
- What does your future hold?
- What was law school like when you were a student? How many women were in your class?
- How has poverty law practice changed over the course of your career?
- What are your impressions of the [new/older] generation of poverty lawyers?
- How does your race and gender affect the way you approach your work?
- Why did you go into this type of law practice?
- What do you wish older poverty lawyers knew about the new generation of advocates?
- Why did you go to law school?
- What worries you the most about the future?
- Who is your role model? Can you tell me about him or her?
The interviews will be modeled on the popular StoryCorps series (heard most often on Friday mornings on NPR) and will last 20-30 minutes.
After EJU, the Shriver Center will edit the interviews into segments of about 5 minutes each. The interviews will be rolled out on the Clearinghouse Community over the next several months. The episodes will promote Tennessee’s civil legal aid leaders to their colleagues across the country and will highlight the common threads that run through all poverty law practice. And, perhaps most importantly, they will be an engaging (and often entertaining) portrait of the people who have devoted their lives to this work.
Look for the sign-up sheet at the registration desk! Have questions before you sign up? Contact the Shriver Center's Director of Online Content and Communities, Amanda Moore, by email or look for her at EJU!