New York Law School. Photo: Rick Kopstein/ALM

New York Law School wants to help students and lawyers better represent religious clients by giving them a foundation in religious literacy that will help them navigate the attorney and client relationship.

The Manhattan law school has partnered with the Interfaith Center of New York for a year-long series of programming aimed at teaching law students and attorneys about religion and how it may surface within the legal context, as well as legal outreach efforts to local religious organizations. Organizers hope the program will continue beyond the initial year.

It's the first such religious diversity program at a law school, according to Henry Goldschmidt, director of programs at the Interfaith Center. Some law schools offer religious liberty clinics, which represent clients in litigation over religious freedoms. And a few law schools, including Fordham University School of Law, offer programming on religious lawyering, which seeks to help law students integrate their personal faith and their professional life. But the new religious diversity initiative has a different focus, which is for attorneys to better understand and represent their clients through a basic familiarity with their religion.

"We are, frankly, more interested in the religious and spiritual background of the clients attorneys are serving," Goldschmidt said. "Our work is to help attorneys of any background, whether they are religious or secular, to help them work more effectively with religiously diverse clients. As far as I know, there is nothing else like that in New York or elsewhere."

The religious diversity initiative has three components. The first component is having each first-year student at New York Law School attend sessions on religious diversity as part of their professional development training, with the first such session starting next week. Those sessions will include conversations with local faith leaders and discussions among students about religion.

Goldschmidt said students will read case studies in which an understanding of religion was integral to an attorney effectively representing their client. For example, they will learn about a divorce case in which an Hasidic man sought full custody of his children because his ex-wife had come out as a lesbian and left the Orthodox Jewish faith, despite a clause in their divorce agreement that the children would be raised Orthodox.

"Regardless of what you think of the merits of his case, or the tension between his religious identity and her sexuality, if you're going to serve him as a client, you need to understand, 'What does it mean to a Hasidic Jew that their children be raised according to certain standards?'" Goldschmidt said.

Similarly, law students will learn about a case in which a Sikh Metropolitan Transit Authority worker successfully fought a policy that he wear an MTA logo on his turban. It's important to understand why a Sikh client would not want to wear a pin on their turban, which is considered a religious garment, Goldschmidt added.

A second component of the program involves training third-year law students to provide legal outreach to religious communities. After receiving religious diversity instruction, the upper-class students will offer "know your rights" sessions to congregations affiliated with the Interfaith Center of New York. The topics may include immigration, domestic violence, nonprofit and small business law, investor protection, and housing rights.

Lastly, the school plans to host a religious diversity and legal practice symposium in March 2020 where attorneys may earn CLE credit to fulfill the diversity, inclusion, and elimination of bias CLE requirement. Attendees will hear remarks from Chief Judge Robert Katzmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, as well as religious leaders, faith-based activists, and attorneys who work with a broad array of religious clients.

Organizers hope the new initiative will fill a gap in the diversity instruction lawyers and law students receive.

"I think it's not something that we speak about," said Swati Parikh, the law school's executive director of public service and pro bono initiatives. "Students aren't taking classes where they are being taught cultural competency in relation to religion. We certainly discuss implicit bias and cultural competency, but it's more in the context of race, ethnicity, and gender. Not so much religion."