Tuesday, January 19, 2010

The 2010 Cover Retreat: Shaping Public Interest Law for 2015

Shortly before his untimely death in the summer of 1986 at the age of 42, Robert Cover, a beloved law professor, legal scholar, and social activist at Yale Law School, circulated a memorandum among his colleagues on the faculty, advocating the creation of an annual public interest retreat for law students, law teachers, and public interest practitioners that would serve four related purposes:

First, it would be an opportunity to break the isolation. Students from around the country with common concerns would get to know one another and would realize our national scope of problems and professional opportunity.

Second, students would interact with lawyers, legal academics, and other professionals who might provide both practical guidance and role models for the variety of possible public service careers.

Third, the conference would be a forum for thinking about reform or change of legal education.

Fourth, the conference would provide students with a jump-off or starting place for the formulation of programmatic politics of legal change.

The first Cover Retreat was held at Boston University's Sargent Camp, a rustic outdoor recreation center in Peterborough, New Hampshire, during the first weekend in March of 1988.

The Retreat has become an annual event, held at Sargent Camp during the first weekend of March.

Each year, the Retreat has been coordinated by students from a different law school, providing them the opportunity to learn how to organize such an event, to plan the program, and to select and invite public interest practitioners to be speakers and mentors. Over the years, students from Yale, Boston University, Boston College, Columbia, NYU, Touro Law Center, University of Connecticut, University of Pennsylvania, Dickinson, University of Maine, and other schools have organized the Retreat.

This year's Cover Retreat will be held on Friday-Sunday, February 26-28, 2010, at Camp Sargent, Peterborough, NH. The Retreat is being organized by the students at Western New England College of Law. Click here to download the registration form to reserve your space at this exciting retreat. Students, professors, and public interest practitioners have a chance to engage in formal and informal conversations. Lifetime friendships and networks are born at the Cover Retreat!

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