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Client: Lift Our Voices, https://www.liftourvoices.org/. In recent years, a large fraction of U.S. employers--including many leading law firms -- have required their employees to sign contracts containing mandatory arbitration clauses and "non-disclosure agreements" (NDAs). Available research suggests that more than 60 million American workers are bound by these arbitration clauses, which require employees who have any type of legal claim arising out of their work or workplace to waive their right to trial and resolve their claims, on an individual basis, in private arbitration. Traditionally, arbitration takes place behind closed doors, and the details of the employee's claim (and employer's response), any evidence presented to the arbitrators, the proceedings themselves and the ultimate outcome are confidential. Moreover, employees who are offered monetary settlements to resolve their arbitration claims -- or lawsuits, for those who were not compelled to arbitrate under a contractual provision -- are typically required to sign NDAs as a condition of receiving compensation. As a result of arbitration and NDAs, information about wrong-doing in the workplace -- even egregious wrong-doing -- never becomes public, arguably diminishing the ability of the legal system to deter harmful behavior. Moreover, with claims resolved individually, in private, and settlements protected by NDAs, it is impossible to detect a pattern of wrongful behavior and to hold wrongdoers to account in the public square. These consequences seem particularly problematic in claims arising from gender discrimination, particularly sexual harassment. Secrecy also prevents us from discovering whether women of color or low-income women of all colors are particularly disadvantaged by mandatory arbitration and NDAs. The expanding use of mandatory arbitration and NDAs in employment claims has evoked considerable controversy and legislation has been introduced at both the national and state level to prohibit the inclusion of these clauses in employment contracts. However, the legislation has yet to move forward on the national level and whether state statutes will withstand challenge is currently unclear. Moreover, there is little systematic evidence of the consequences of mandatory arbitration and NDAs, leaving both supporters and opponents to rely on anecdotes. There is little hard information on the numbers of employees covered by arbitration contracts or how this varies by industry sector and employee gender, race, ethnicity or socio-economic characteristics. Importantly we do not know how the existence of these contracts affects men and women's willingness to bring their claims to their employers' attention or how claiming varies by race, ethnicity or employee status. Nor do we know how pursuing claims for gender discrimination, including sexual harassment, affects claimants' future career trajectories. The Client for this policy lab, Lift Our Voices, was co-founded by women's rights advocates and broadcast journalists Gretchen Carlson and Julie Roginsky. Ms. Carlson's sexual harassment suit against powerful former Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes helped pave the way for the #metoo movement. Roginsky left Fox after settling a lawsuit for sexual harassment and discrimination against Fox News, its former co-president Bill Shine and Ailes. To learn more about Lift Our Voices, go to https://www.liftourvoices.org/ The goal of this practicum is to produce objective empirical evidence -- both quantitative and qualitative -- that can be used in Life Our Voices and others' advocacy activities regarding mandatory arbitration and NDAs, including advocacy -- if the data support this -- that argues in favor of restricting or precluding mandatory arbitration and NDAs in some or all circumstances. In Spring 2021 students in this practicum met with Gretchen Carlson and Julie Roginsky to identify the questions for which empirical evidence would be most useful for policy reform advocacy. Based on these discussions and their review of relevant commentary, the students decided to break up into two teams, each of which would design a research project. Project 1 will interview plaintiff and defense lawyers to develop a better understanding of the incentives for victims of sexual harassment and sexual assault to sign non-disclosure agreements. Project 2 will interview corporate legal counsel in corporations (and potentially law firms) that have abandoned mandatory pre-dispute arbitration contract clauses to develop a better understanding of why these companies and firms abandoned arbitration and what have been the outcomes for the organizations to date. At the end of the spring quarter, each team prepared a memorandum outlining the issues that their team focused on and reviewing the relevant case law and recent statutory reforms. In addition, each team prepared a data collection protocol including draft questionnaires and lists of potential interviewees. The data collection protocols were informed by informal discussions with SLS faculty who are knowledgeable about these issues as well as a few outside advisers. The goals of the fall quarter are to implement these research designs, collect and analyze data and prepare white papers to share with the clients. Early in the quarter, students will meet with Mss. Carlson and Roginski to discuss policy developments since the spring and may revise the spring quarter students' research designs in response. The Canvas page for the fall practicum includes the memoranda and other materials the students produced in the spring quarter. Students interested in registering for the fall practicum should review these materials, keeping in mind that they are free to elaborate on them if they wish and if new policy developments suggest this would is appropriate. If a sufficient number of students register for the practicum one or more related projects may be added to our agenda. Elements used in grading: Attendance, Performance, Class Participation, Written Assignments. CONSENT APPLICATION: To apply for this course, students must complete and submit a Consent Application Form available on the SLS website (Click Courses at the bottom of the homepage and then click Consent of Instructor Forms). See Consent Application Form for instructions and submission deadline.

Clients: California Native American Tribes, prescribed burn associations, federal legislative and executive branch decision makers. Wildfire has emerged as one of the most pressing biodiversity, air pollution and public health threats in the Western United States. Advancing land stewardship at sufficient scale to substantially improve the resilience of western forests to fire is critical to reducing wildfire risks and air pollution exposure for the tens of millions that live downwind. Communities are under threat as never before from catastrophic wildfire. Electric utilities face enormous challenges even as they strive to decarbonize their systems. In short, solving for wildfire resilience is an enormous technical and regulatory challenge. In this course, students will learn the basics of the wildfire policy debate in the west with a focus on California. Lectures will focus on both scientific and legal aspects of the challenge. In addition, students will work in groups on legal and regulatory analysis aimed at supporting better decision making on wildfire at the state and federal level. Students will work in partnership with postdocs and legal fellows on their group projects and may have the opportunity to present the results of their work to both clients and policymakers. The course is intended for students interested in multi-disciplinary approaches to public policy problems. No background in either the Clean Air Act, federal land management or wildfire policy is required. Students will engage in weekly lectures and discussions of wildfire science and policy, including student presentations and guest lectures by scientists, practitioners and policymakers. Students will also meet each week with Professors Sivas and Wara, and other members of the teaching team, in working sessions to discuss progress on team projects. Students may present the results of their research to California legislative and executive branch staff engaged in developing new approaches to wildfire policy. Elements used in grading: Attendance, Performance, Class Participation, Written Assignments, Final Paper. Students enrolled in Section 02 (with instructor consent) will be required to meet the Law School's R paper requirements. CONSENT APPLICATION: To apply for this course, students must complete and submit a Consent Application Form. In answering the application questions, "what skills do you bring to this class" and "what skills do you want to develop," students should also answer the following questions: What is your program of study at Stanford? What experiences and interests do you have relating to smoke or wildfire (including those that might relate to public health, community resilience, insurance, and tribal approaches to wildfire management)? Have you taken other wildfire related coursework? What interests you about policy in this field? What topics relating to smoke and wildfire would you like to learn (more) about? What type of work would you like to be involved in (e.g., drafting white papers/policy briefs, technical or scientific reports, etc.)? Do you have any specific technical skills (Machine learning based methods, GIS, legal research) that may be applicable to project based work? The Consent Application Form can be found at: SLS Registrar https://registrar.law.stanford.edu/. See Consent Application Form for additional instructions and submission deadline. We will be accepting applicants past the registrar's deadline. All interested applicants can register on the course offerings webpage or e-mail the course instructors if the deadline has passed. This course is cross-listed with the Doerr School of Sustainability ( SUSTAIN 329).

Client: Stanford University Office of the Provost, https://provost.stanford.edu. From the increasingly tense dynamics of the classroom and workplace to those of social media, our values and relationships are constantly being challenged. The array of conflict resolution policies, practices, and systems on Stanford's campus support our community in reestablishing guiding principles and addressing instances of harm and intolerance. Such processes are an act of community caretaking as we build healthier environments for our students, staff, and faculty. While these processes are critical to the wellbeing of Stanford, the structure and decentralization of the University often makes it difficult for conflict resolution practitioners to effectively communicate across campus, guide community members to the appropriate process, identify where services are being replicated or missing, compare data, and share best practices. On the other hand, this type of decentralization and subsequent independence provides practitioners an opportunity to creatively design meaningful processes for those they serve. This policy lab seeks to evaluate the benefits and possibilities of increased partnership between Stanford's conflict resolution practitioners/processes. It takes into consideration the multiple policies, practices, and systems across Stanford's campus and explores the study and application of dispute system design, mediation, and community-based restorative justice and peacemaking. Over the course of the quarter, students will analyze related policy and theory as well as conduct interviews, focus groups, and surveys of relevant parties at Stanford and peer institutions. Students will be challenged to think critically about innovative pathways for conflict resolution in a complex environment with multiple groups of stakeholders whose day-to-day lives, education, and careers are influenced by these conflict resolution processes. Specifically, students will be separated into teams and asked to generate reports which answer the following questions: 1. Would greater unification across Stanford's conflict resolution policies, practices, and systems be useful in building more consistent and effective processes? How do these benefits weigh against those derived from our current, independent conflict resolution processes? 2. Should data on conflict resolution at Stanford be collected in a more uniform way across the university? If so, what information must be collected and how should relevant parties then share this data across campus? 3. How do the structure and data collection mechanisms of Stanford's conflict resolution processes compare to peer institutions? What lessons can we learn from these peer institutions and what would be useful to implement at Stanford? Stanford's Office of the Provost serves as the client for this policy lab. Students will frequently engage with conflict resolution practitioners across the University and at peer institutions to develop their final reports. These recommendations will be presented by students to the client at the end of the quarter and then considered by the Office of the Provost for future implementation at the University. This policy lab seeks law students and graduate and well-qualified undergraduate students in programs such as sociology, CSRE, political science, psychology, philosophy, and others. The lab seeks graduate students from the law, education, and business schools, and from Sociology and other fields that emphasize peace studies and/or conflict resolution. After the term begins, students accepted into the course can transfer, with consent of the instructor, from section (01) into section (02), which meets the R requirement Students enrolled in Section 01 will be graded H/P/R/F in Autumn Quater and MP/R/F in Spring Quarter. Students approved to take the course for R-credit will be graded H/P/R/F. Elements used in grading: Attendance, Performance, Class Participation, Written Assignments, Final Paper. CONSENT APPLICATION: To apply for this course, students must complete and submit a Consent Application Form available on the SLS website (Click Courses at the bottom of the homepage and then click Consent of Instructor Forms). See Consent Application Form for instructions and submission deadline.

Client: DrawCongress.org. The 2021-22 redistricting cycle will determine for the subsequent decade whether congressional and legislative elections will be free and fair or whether they will be inherently biased in favor of one party. With remaining ambiguity over federal partisan gerrymandering claims removed with the Supreme Court's decision in Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), parties in control of the redistricting process will seek now, as previously, to use their power to craft district lines to their advantage. Lawyers will continue to litigate claims based on race discrimination, malapportionment, and state constitutional grounds, and courts may be placed in the position of drawing districts themselves when parties cannot agree on a plan. However, we know from previous cycles that the most important time to affect the redistricting process is in the frenzied year when lines are being drawn. Groups dedicated to redistricting in the public interest must be mobilized now to ensure that congressional and legislative boundaries reflect concerns other than those held by the incumbents drawing the lines. The Stanford Public Interest Redistricting Project (or DrawCongress.Org) will perform a unique role in the 2021-2022 redistricting process. It will both influence the redistricting process in various states and serve as a benchmark against which incumbent-drawn plans can be judged by courts, the media, and the public at large. By creating and displaying a series of nonpartisan, legally defensible plans for all 435 U.S. House districts, the project will illustrate how communities can be represented and, unlike with incumbent-drawn plans, will justify decisions made among the various tradeoffs that inevitably confront line drawers. As with the 2011-2012 redistricting cycle when this project was housed at Columbia Law School, DrawCongress.Org will serve an educational and advocacy mission. This policy lab trains law students as the next generation of redistricting experts who will then draw a series of plans to be placed on a website. Each plan will be accompanied by a report, modeled on Professor Persily's reports when he serves as a Special Master for redistricting disputes, which will explain the considerations in drawing the particular plan, justify the decisions that are made, and explain why the plan complies with applicable law. Accompanying each plan will be a block equivalency file, which will allow courts, legislators, journalists, or any other interested party to recreate the plan should they wish to deploy it in "the real world." In addition, for the first time, the website will also welcome submissions from outside of Stanford if they comply with the requirements for each plan that is included. The experience with this project ten years ago demonstrated how much attention a well-planned, nonpartisan outside redistricting effort can attract. Plans drawn as part of this project were submitted to legislatures, mentioned by courts, and depicted in numerous publications. (See Adam Liptak's 2011 profile on the project at https://tinyurl.com/y8yon5u5) In drawing a nonpartisan map for all of Congress, this new effort will command attention from decision makers engaged in the 2021 redistricting process. Attendance, Performance, Class Participation, Written Assignments, Final Paper. CONSENT APPLICATION: To apply for this course, students must complete and submit a Consent Application Form available at https://law.stanford.edu/education/courses/consent-of-instructor-forms/. See Consent Application Form for instructions and submission deadline.

The U.S. legal system is in the grips of an access to justice (A2J) crisis. In roughly three-quarters of filed civil cases, one side lacks a lawyer and so must navigate the legal system alone, as a self-represented litigant. Unnecessary complexity and lack of access to tools that aid efficiency also reduce the effectiveness and availability of legal aid lawyers. The resulting access crisis is most pronounced in eviction cases, consumer debt cases, and family law and domestic violence cases, where self-represented litigants often square off against opponents with lawyers, from landlords to credit card and debt collection companies to better-resourced spouses and partners. The COVID-19 pandemic has both drawn attention to this calamity in our legal system and generated real momentum among major institutions and stakeholders in thinking about how to solve it. This policy lab will continue the work performed during the fall version of the practicum in designing and launching an ambitious, multi-jurisdictional effort to help self-represented litigants through technology. The project seeks to simplify and standardize electronic filing systems by creating scalable technology tools in areas such as evictions, collections, and domestic violence. Students in the fall practicum interviewed state supreme court justices, court technology specialists, and key A2J voices in numerous jurisdictions to understand the A2J landscape in each. The winter quarter lab will deepen these relationships and move forward with the design and launch of the pilot, culminating in a kick-off convening at Stanford that brings together stakeholders from each of the participating jurisdictions. As with the fall version, the practicum will be led by former Cisco General Counsel Mark Chandler, Professor David Freeman Engstrom, Co-Director of the Center on the Legal Profession, and Margaret Hagan, Director of the Stanford Legal Design Lab. Prior participation in the fall practicum is not a prerequisite. Technical expertise is welcome but not needed, and we hope to draw students from a variety of disciplines, including undergraduates. Law students wishing to undertake R credit will perform additional research or take on additional tasks analyzing the issues and results of the collective research. R credit is possible only by consent of the instructor. After the term begins, and with the consent of the instructor, students accepted into the course may transfer from section (01) into section (02), which meets the R requirement. Elements used in grading: Attendance, Performance, Class Participation, Written Assignments. CONSENT APPLICATION: To apply for this course, students must complete and submit a Consent Application Form available at https://registrar.law.stanford.edu/. See Consent Application Form for instructions and submission deadline.

This course combines intensive field research into the psychological and neurological effects of prolonged solitary confinement (including data collection from mental health questionnaires and structural magnetic resonance imaging scans) with doctrinal research into constitutional, statutory, and regulatory standards for solitary confinement to support client(s) involved in prison conditions litigation under 1983 (including the constraints imposed by the Prison Litigation Reform Act). Elements used in grading: Attendance, Performance, Class Participation, and Written Assignments.

Consumers face insurance contracts and living with their fine print throughout their daily lives. Whether it's with healthcare, housing, or their cars, there are choices to be made about what insurance contract fits a person best, and how to actually make use of it when problems arise. Technology is bringing new opportunities to how consumers will interact with contracts, and this class will explore what is possible, what consumers might need and want, and what actually works in practice. In this jointly hosted project between CodeX and the Legal Design Lab, students will work on teams to interview consumers about their experiences with contracts, to test new interactive and computable contract models with them, and to propose best practices about how technology might improve consumer's ability to understand, use, and benefit from insurance contracts. The policy lab will contribute to regulators' understanding of what the near-future of consumer contracts might be, and how to take a human-centered, data-driven approach to consumer empowerment. Students will contribute new insights to good practices and products that better protect consumers by assessing, developing, and testing the advantages and limitations of legal technology. The project is open to graduate students and qualified undergraduates in law, business, computer science, product design, and communications. Elements used in grading: Attendance, Performance, Class Participation and Written Assignments. CONSENT APPLICATION: To apply for this course, students must complete and submit a Consent Application Form available at https://law.stanford.edu/education/courses/consent-of-instructor-forms/. See Consent Application Form for instructions and submission deadline.

Client: American University of Afghanistan (AUAF). The fall of the Afghan government to the Taliban in August 2021 has created an urgent crisis for millions of Afghans. Those at particularly high risk of Taliban attacks and reprisals include women and girls, ethnic and religious minority groups, human rights advocates, journalists, and individuals who worked with or on behalf of the United States during the 20-year war in Afghanistan. The U.S. government was able to evacuate some of these individuals and their families, but hundreds of thousands more remain in Afghanistan, and many are seeking any opportunity for safe passage out of the country. They include thousands of staff members, former students, and other affiliates of the American University of Afghanistan (AUAF), a U.S.-funded institution in Kabul that has provided educational opportunities to thousands of graduates. The U.S. government has pledged to continue to support vulnerable Afghans who want to leave the country, but the situation remains highly uncertain. Afghans are eligible for humanitarian parole, a temporary status that could allow them to come to the United States. However, few Afghans have been granted this status. Other avenues for legal immigration, such as the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) process, have also faced substantial delays. The U.S. government will need to look for new and creative policy solutions to address the ongoing refugee crisis in Afghanistan. Students in this policy lab will advise AUAF in its efforts to pursue legal and policy options to support its students, alumni, staff, and affiliated families who are seeking to evacuate the country. Student researchers will track bottlenecks and other challenges in processing humanitarian parole, visas, asylum, and refugee applications. Research includes understanding the roles of U.S. government agencies, tracking updates to U.S. government policy regarding Afghan refugees, and proposing avenues for additional legal and policy advocacy that could help Afghans seeking to come to the United States. Students will gain experience with laws and policies related to immigration and refugees and leverage their research to improve the U.S. government's overall policy approach to the refugee crisis in Afghanistan. This experience will culminate in a policy brief and presentation for AUAF (Winter) and in a full report for U.S. policymakers (Spring) about potential policy and legal pathways to resettle Afghan refugees in the United States. This policy lab welcomes all students with a strong interest in immigrant and refugee rights. A background in law, public policy, political science, Central Asian studies, or human rights would be useful, but is not necessary. Dari, Pashto, or Farsi language capabilities are a bonus, but are also not necessary. We are also looking for students with experience in design thinking for social innovations. Students from the School of Law, Department of Political Science, Public Policy Program, Program in International Relations, Freeman Spogli Institute, Design School, Middle Eastern Language Program, are encouraged to apply. After the term begins, and with the consent of the instructor, students accepted into the course may transfer from section 01 (2 units) into section 02 (3 units), which meets the R requirement. Elements used in grading: Attendance, Performance, Class Participation and Written Assignments. CONSENT APPLICATION: To apply for this course, students must complete and submit a Consent Application Form available at https://law.stanford.edu/education/courses/consent-of-instructor-forms/. See Consent Application Form for instructions and submission deadline.

Clients: Stanford Dean Kathryn "Kam" Moler and Vice Dean Stephan Graham, respectively transition dean and vice dean of the new School. The mission of Stanford University's new School of Climate and Sustainability is to "create a future where humans and nature thrive in concert and in perpetuity." The School intends to pursue this mission through three pathways: 1. Advancing knowledge critical to sustaining life on Earth and to ensuring the benefits of a healthy planet extend to all people. 2. Preparing students as future sustainability leaders through rigorous, engaged education and research. 3. Engaging with partners to generate and scale local, national, and global solutions to the defining challenge for humanity. This Policy Lab practicum will examine how the School can marshal its resources most effectively to advance knowledge through research, prepare students for leadership roles, and engage with partners to scale these core functions. With respect to the advancement of knowledge, we will seek to understand how research aimed at improving sustainability in several areas (e.g., climate change, agriculture) can be supported and disseminated to educate and influence decisions and behaviors of policy makers, businesses, nonprofit organizations, and citizens, while remaining impartial and balanced throughout the process. Without limiting ourselves to these areas, we will look at examples where research has and has not influenced decision making, with an eye to understanding conducive pathways and barriers. To use a recent example, suppose that a researcher wishes to influence policy makers', builders', or homeowners' decisions to install residential gas stoves because of the climate and health problems caused by their methane emissions: What are the roles of publication in peer-reviewed journals, publication in popular media, public lectures, and legislative testimony on the pathway from research to decision making? In addition to online research, we will interview faculty at Stanford and elsewhere. With respect to education, we will ask what mixture of theoretical knowledge and practical skills will best prepare graduates for positions where they will lead sustainability efforts in government, business, and the nonprofit sector. We have much to learn from Stanford's Sustainability Science and Practice (SUST) program and similar programs at other universities. At the same time as we identify pathways, or "theories of change," for achieving the new School's objectives, we will identify indicators of progress along the way. Referring to the example of methane emissions from residential stoves, if reaching an intended audience requires publicizing the findings in popular media, relevant indicators would be the size and influence of the audience being reached. Given the multitude and fluidity of variables that contribute to outcomes, we will use what's been termed "contribution analysis" rather than statistical evaluation techniques to assess the impact of particular efforts. Based on our proposed frameworks for the School's research and teaching, we will ask how engagement with external partners can contribute to its mission. The Policy Lab's deliverable with respect to research will be a generalized framework that will enable researchers to chart a path from developing and testing hypotheses to disseminating their findings and influencing decision makers to act on them. The framework will also enable researchers to assess their progress along the path. The deliverable with respect to teaching will be the identification of analogies in the preparation and certification of professionals in medicine, law, and other fields, with the aim of assisting the new School in improving its preparation of students as sustainability leaders. The course is limited to 12 students from across the University. While there are no prerequisites, we hope to include students with backgrounds in sustainability and social metrics. Elements used in grading: Attendance, Performance, Class Participation, Written Assignments. CONSENT APPLICATION: To apply for this course, students must complete and submit a Consent Application Form available at https://law.stanford.edu/education/courses/consent-of-instructor-forms/. See Consent Application Form for instructions and submission deadline.