Cultural Humility in Cross-Cultural Lawyering
October 26, 2022 - Kelzé Riley
Although the United States is an increasingly diverse country, our legal field is not nearly as diverse. The legal system claims to be colorblind – “a claim which supports mainstream American culture and practices.”1 It asserts that to “think of individuals in terms of their communities would be to stereotype them in just the manner that color-blind decision making is intended to prevent.”2 However, there is value in acknowledging shared community characteristics to find effective ways to serve clients. According to the National Association for Law Placement (NALP), the percentage of new lawyers entering public interest careers in growing.3 This means that an increasing number of law graduates are going to be advocating for those living in poverty and/or those who are members of a marginalized community.
The 1L curriculum covertly teaches and requires us to accept doctrines that promote private discrimination and subordination of marginalized populations.4 After completing 1L, we are sent into the professional world without a discussion or recognition of the ways that the law serves to subordinate marginalized communities. The lack of recognition about how the law reinforces subordination is truly detrimental to the making of “leaders who pursue justice and advance the role of law in society.”5 How can we pursue justice without ever discussing the detrimental impacts the law has on marginalized communities? How are we to effectively serve culturally diverse populations without recognizing the differences in cultures and the systems in place that keep diverse populations marginalized? I believe that we need to introduce 1L’s to the concepts of cross-cultural communication and cultural humility and reinforce the concepts throughout the entire legal education. We have a duty through the Rules of Professional Conduct to provide competent representation, and many attorneys agree that that includes an understanding of culture.6
Before explaining these concepts, it is important to have a mutual understanding on what “culture” is. Culture is defined in multiple forms, often as “the patterns of learned and shared behavior and beliefs of a particular social, racial/ethnic, or age group.”7 It can also be described as the “complex whole of collective human beliefs with a structured stage of civilization that can be specific to a nation or time period.”8 We learn culture through socialization, and the shared patterns identify the members of a culture group while distinguishing those of another.9 Humans use culture to adapt and transform the world they live in and we are each a part of several cultures which generate its own norms. To effectively serve clients, we must have an understanding that our clients are likely coming from a different culture than we are. Therefore, we need to figure out ways to communicate in a way that reduces the number of misunderstandings and helps to build good relationships. When we fail to consider cultural differences in interactions with clients, we risk “substituting [our] own judgment for that of [our] clients and fail to pursue [our] clients true objectives.”10 Cross-cultural communication is an important skill to develop in public interest careers. The concepts of “cultural competency” and “cultural humility” are often taught in tandem, but it is important to separate them to explain why the latter is crucial in lawyering.
Cultural Competency
Cultural competence is often described as the “ability of a person to effectively interact, work, and develop meaningful relationships with people of various cultural backgrounds.”11 This includes the beliefs, customs, and behaviors of people from different groups.12 To be effective, one must recognize that cultural competency is a process of “increasing self-awareness, developing social skills and behaviors around diversity, and gaining the ability to advocate for others.” To serve clients effectively, we must understand that there are significant consequences when we lack self-awareness and an understanding of discrimination. Further, we cannot advocate for others that we simply have never tried to understand.
Cultural competency calls for us to use a learned knowledge of cultures to inform interactions with one another and clients. However, a common critique of this is that it allows us to rely on generalizations about others. A further critique of cultural competency is that it has a goal to be “all-knowing,” making it seem possible to be bias-free. Trainings on cultural competency are offered in a lot of “people-facing” professional settings, especially when the “people” are diverse. There is a risk in cultural competence trainings as they leave professionals being “overconfident” in their abilities and allows one to eventually believe that there is an “end-goal” to be met.13
Cultural Humility & Cross-Cultural Communication
In the alternative, cultural humility requires we humble ourselves to better understand one another.14 Trainings usually begin with a deep exploration of self and the background each person is coming from. After this, we can develop skills in understanding others and empathy.15 Cultural humility requires a commitment to lifelong learning and critical self-reflection.16 Further, it requires us to understand that we are multidimensional beings that have different social identities. It is a process that requires humility in how practitioners “bring into check the power imbalances that exist in the dynamics” of attorney-client communication.”17 It is preferred over cultural competence as it does not create an unrealistic expectation of “competence in the cultures of clients.”18
Cultural humility allows us to acknowledge the influence that differences in culture have on our communication and understanding of one another. It requires an acknowledgement of our own patterns of unintentional and intentional racism, classism, sexism, ableism, etc. It builds on models of cross-cultural communication and is beneficial as it helps us respect the cultural background of our clients, helps us communicate with them more effectively, and advocate for our clients in a way that puts their lived experiences first.19 Communicating effectively can look like: asking clients to explain their individual experiences, asking their preferred method of communication, not expecting clients to be available at any point in the day, or explaining legal terms as thoroughly as possible.
Most exposure to the challenges of cross-cultural communication will be through clinics, due to the nature of the clients served, but this should not be where the conversation begins or ends. In The Legal Access Clinic, we have not received any form of cultural awareness training. Therefore, we have been serving low- and middle-income clients without any discussion of the importance in recognizing differences that may arise. Two weeks ago, I did a divorce and immigration intake for a client. During this appointment, the client explained to me that they would face social isolation in their native country because of the stigma associated with divorce in their faith and culture. Further, they explained that they would experience social isolation because they married someone who is black. If I had been trained in cultural competency, I likely would have believed that I understood their experience because I have heard about the stigma associated with marrying out of one’s race and the stigma of divorce. Instead, I was able to sit in the discomfort of being unaware of the challenges they were facing and was open to hearing their experiences fully. This humility and openness allowed for personal growth and promoted an appreciation and value of another culture. While not a perfect example of cultural humility, this conversation with the client serves as an example of a mutual learning experience and is an experience that I will never forget.
At the College of Law, our training on topics such as cultural differences or implicit bias are either optional or non-existent. If students do not come in having ever interacted with people from different cultures, it will be hard to achieve the mission of making leaders who pursue justice. The lack of emphasis on the ways in which culture and bias influence our communication with clients is saddening and can easily create situations where students ostracize clients before we have the opportunity to even serve them. As law schools prepare to send students into the professional world, we must realize that effective cross-cultural communication requires an understanding of cultural humility and a deeper dive into concepts such as implicit bias.20 By not doing so, we are providing lip-service to clients and truly failing our student population.
Notes:
1. Judith G. Greenberg, Erasing Race from Legal Education, 28 Univ. of Michigan Journal of Law Reform 51, 56-57 (1994).
2. Id. at 58.
3. https://careercenter.umich.edu/article/defining-public-interest-law
4. Id. at 67.
5. University of Cincinnati College of Law, About, UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI, (2022) https://law.uc.edu/about.html.
6. Julia Currie, Imran Hossain, Emma Morgenstern, Cultural Competence and Humility in Pro Bono Practice, VOLUNTEERS OF LEGAL SERVICE, (April 2021), https://volsprobono.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/VOLS-Cultural-Competence-CLE-4.21.21-Slide-Deck.pdf.
7. Center for Advanced Research o Language Acquisition, What is Culture?, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA, (Apr. 9, 2019), https://carla.umn.edu/culture/definitions.html.
8. Id.
9. Id.
10. Debra Chopp, Addressing Cutural Bias in the Legal Profession, 41 N.Y.U. Review of Law & Social Change 367, 373 (2017).
11. Maria Rosario T. de Guzman, Cultural Competence: An Important Skill Set for the 21st Century, (February 2016), https://extensionpublications.unl.edu/assets/html/g1375/build/g1375.htm.
12. Id.
13. Chopp, supra note 9, at 368.
14. Id. at 375.
15. Currie, supra note 6, at 19.
16 Chopp, supra note 9, at 375.
17. Id.
18. Id.
19. Id.
20 Id. at 377.