Rebecca Sharpless has written on what Rebellious Lawyering means.

“In Rebellious Lawyering: One Chicano’s Vision of Progressive Law Practice, López propounds a vision of lawyers as collaborators with nonlawyers in grassroots organizations to bring about social change.”

“López’s powerful vision of small scale, grassroots movements for change in which lawyers work in egalitarian collaboration with community groups has resonated with many progressive scholars and lawyers over the last two decades.”

“López’s larger project is to propose a theory of how social change occurs. His rebellious practice vision reflects his view that working at the grassroots level with non-lawyers is more effective than advocating within the legal system.”

Read the article in its entirety, here: Rebecca Sharpless, MORE THAN ONE LANE WIDE: AGAINST HIERARCHIES OF HELPING IN PROGRESSIVE LEGAL ADVOCACY, 19 Clinical L. Rev. 347 (2012).

Rebecca Sharpless is a Clinical Professor, Director of the Immigration Clinic, and Roger Schindler Fellow at the University of Miami School of Law.  She researches and writes in the areas of progressive lawyering, feminist theory, and the intersection of immigration and criminal law.

Professor Sharpless speaks widely on immigration law, including at events such as the annual conference of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. She is a board member of the South Florida Chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association as well as a longstanding board member of the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild. Immediately before joining the School of Law’s faculty, she was a Visiting Clinical Professor of Law at Florida International University’s College of Law, where she taught in-house clinics in the areas of immigration and human rights and a doctrinal course on immigration law. From 1996 to 2007, Professor Sharpless was a supervising attorney at Americans for Immigrant Justice (formerly Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center), where she engaged in extensive litigation on behalf of low-income immigrants as lead counsel in cases before the United States Courts of Appeals and United States District Courts as well as in immigration court and before the Board of Immigration Appeals. She has received awards and recognition for her work.

J.D. 1994, Harvard Law School
M.Phil. 1991, University of Cambridge
B.A.1990, Swarthmore College