Transactional Clinical Support for Mutual Aid Groups : Toward a Theory of Transactional Movement Lawyering

In response to the global spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring and summer of 2020, thousands of grassroots, participatory, and often social movement-connected community efforts to help feed and care for one another through the crisis were launched, many of which identified their projects as 'mutual aid'. This article tells the story of how the Hofstra Law School Community Economic Development ("CED") Clinic has provided legal support and information to hundreds of these COVID-19 mutual aid groups. The article briefly reviews Professor Dean Spade's 2020 book Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next), contrasting it with a legal guide for mutual aid groups written by the author. It concludes by describing the mutual aid work of the CED Clinic in the context of recent scholarship on 'movement lawyering', arguing that CED lawyers could deepen their impact through a meaningful engagement with movement lawyering principles