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Abstract

Since legal scholarship first portrayed community development as a paradigmatic field for lawyers to participate in affecting collective empowerment, lawyers in legal service organizations, law firms, and law school clinics have increasingly engaged in community development practice. Through the representation of community based organizations working to combat the conditions of urban poverty, community development law practice seeks to affect social change for inner city residents through neighborhood revitalization, affordable housing development, and community economic development. How do the processes of community development affect its intended beneficiaries? To what extent does the involvement of lawyers affect the practice, structure, and goals of community development work? To address these questions, this article looks at the relationship between the rhetoric of empowerment and the realities of practicing community development law - from the War on Poverty in the 1960s to Empowerment Zones in the 1990s.

Publication Title

Clinical Law Review

Volume

6

Issue

1

First Page

217

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