In August of 2023, a group of Vanderbilt Law students launched the Vanderbilt Social Justice Reporter, a reimagined version of the Race and Relations Law Reporter (RRLR) that was pioneered at Vanderbilt Law in 1956. Two years later, the Social Justice Reporter will feature articles that have been coauthored by Vanderbilt Law students and women incarcerated at the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center, work that stems from Professor Lauren Sudeall’s course “Access to Justice: Legal Education and Empowerment.”
Making and Modification
Professor Sudeall, David Daniels Allen Distinguished Chair of Law and Director of the Vanderbilt Access to Justice (AtJ) Initiative, has taught an Access to Justice course for several years. The class embodies her career-long commitment to performing hands-on work that concerns real people and addresses significant issues.
“A broader idea behind the project, which includes this class in all its various iterations, is to find opportunities for people who are most impacted by these laws to have a voice in what the laws should be or how they operate—that doesn’t happen very often,” Professor Sudeall said.
A few years ago, she was approached with the idea of teaching a class to students from a correctional facility in the greater Nashville area alongside her students at Vanderbilt Law. She updated her Access to Justice course to include two groups of students, one at Vanderbilt Law and the other at the Rehabilitation Center.
“The idea was to have these two groups of students interact with each other around substantive legal issues,” Professor Sudeall said. “The premise was not that the law students would provide one-way instruction, but instead that both groups of students have inherent expertise and relevant experience, and that they could teach and learn in both directions.”
Professor Sudeall was pleased with the new format, and the students seemed to enjoy the new course – but some of the incarcerated students expressed a desire for their voices and opinions to be heard by a larger audience, beyond the classroom.
“I took that feedback to heart and spent some time thinking about what would be possible—it was through that process that I came up with the idea to have the students co-author published articles,” Professor Sudeall explained.
Offered in Fall 2025, the newest iteration of her Access to Justice class had Vanderbilt and Rehabilitation Center students working together in small groups to engage in the same sort of bi-directional learning experience—this time with an external audience in mind. Over the course of the semester, each group produced articles that centered on a topic of their choice — all of which ended up with a focus on criminal justice.
The Professor Perspective
Professor Sudeall hopes that her class demonstrates, for all students, the depth of legal expertise that can be held by people without formal legal training.
“When you come to law school, it is important to learn the law and gain the expertise that people expect you to have once you leave,” she said. “On the other hand, it’s also important to acknowledge that as a lawyer you have one type of expertise, and other people – including your clients – will have experience and insight that is just as relevant.”
Her primary goal was to move students beyond the classroom and into an on-the-ground experience that could help them understand how the law functions in reality, outside of the classroom. She emphasized the significance of the students seeing themselves as learning alongside peers instead of functioning as legal experts.
“When law students interact with someone who’s outside of the legal world, it’s usually in a lawyer-client relationship. In a clinic, for example, the student is in the role of the lawyer, and the other person is in the role of client. As a result, there’s an inherent power dynamic and expertise imbalance,” Professor Sudeall explained. “It’s very rare that you’re operating in the legal space without that imbalance.”
“I loved seeing all of the students interact in the way that I had hoped, as equals—discussing hard issues and acknowledging that everybody is bringing something important and valuable to the table.”
She also believed that her class offered the Rehabilitation Center students a sense of ownership and agency they did not receive from the justice system.
“Seeing the students walk away from the class not just with an experience, but with a tangible product that others will read and that may even spark change was incredibly valuable,” Professor Sudeall said.
The Student Perspective
Oluwafunmilayo Oguns ’26 sought the real-world experience and connection with the larger Nashville community.
“[In law school] it is so easy to get caught up in all of the fundamental facts. I really just wanted something that would allow me to communicate and contribute to the broader Nashville community and see how the law actually affects real people,” she explained.
Ashia Davis ‘26, who has family members who have been incarcerated, was looking for ways to connect with the human aspect of law.
“When I was looking through my courses, this was one that stuck out to me, because of those family members who I’ve had a close relationship with over the years,” said Davis. “That is the reason I wanted to go to law school in the first place.”
While the different groups debated wording and what to include in their articles, the students were satisfied with how it all came together.
“I think everyone was able to bring their ideas together in a way that was really coherent and well, despite us being from different backgrounds,” said Oguns.
Oguns’ group focused on criminal responsibility – specifically in the context of felony murder – while Davis’s group focused on the parole process.
Oguns, Davis, and Professor Sudeall all noted that the Rehabilitation Center students expressed how the class, especially the publishing and writing of papers, gave them a sense of agency.
“For the inside students, I think the course was valuable in two ways,” Professor Sudeall said. “First, the women we worked with often felt like they were silenced, whether it was by their own attorneys, by the court, by the prison system, or within our larger society. Through this class, they felt someone was really listening and that they were able to have their voices heard. Second, as part of this project, their voices were not only taken seriously, but will be amplified through articles made available to a much broader audience.”
Whether the students want to pursue a career in public interest or not, they felt that the class made them better people and, in turn, more empathetic lawyers.
“[The class] made me rethink what really counts as expertise,” Oguns said. “We saw that the most important legal insights were coming from people who actually went through the legal system. Hearing it directly from someone who actually went through it really changes your perception.”
“Something my group talks about a lot is realizing that, at the end of the day, we’re all people and we’ve all made mistakes, but their mistakes just happened to land them in a facility,” Davis said. “I think that it is super important as lawyers to really be able to empathize and humanize our clients.”
The articles produced from this class will be published on May 5, 2026, in the Vanderbilt Social Justice Reporter.