Kylie Fletcher, “Law Clinics Educating for Complexity Through Integrative Learning”

This paper argues that the legal education system is complex; clinical legal education allows for integrative learning experiences from a law-and-society perspective. Levy describes a complex system as:

“[O]ne whose component parts interact with sufficient intricacy that they cannot be predicted by standard linear equations; so many variables are at work in the system that its overall behaviour can only be understood as an emergent consequence of the holistic sum of all the myriad behaviours embedded within”.  

In Australia, legal clinics are offered as a for-credit subject or as a volunteer opportunity. Legal clinic students participate in client intakes, client interviewing, file management, legal research, providing legal advice, writing letters, etc. This paper argues that within the legal clinic context, students should be encouraged to understand the broader complex systems that surround the work they are engaging in; the one in which the actions of agents, even minor ones, can have unexpected impact on effects and outcomes for clients and the broader system.

Within the context of nursing, clinical educators are:

“the centre of a complex and dynamic system spanning four domains and multiple levels. The four domains are: personal (encompassing personal/professional needs and expectations); health services (health agencies and their consumers); educational (education institutions and their health students); and societal (local community/region and government)” (11).

Clinical educators incorporating methods involved in the complex systems theory benefit the students’ understanding. It offers students first-hand experience in understanding the ways that the legal system functions and fails. Legal clinics provide students with insights into the human and non-human interrelations outside legal education and, more broadly, within the law. It exposes students to various individuals (i.e., lawyers, clients and other students) and the law-and-society system by engaging and responding to legal problems.

Kylie Fletcher, “Law Clinics Educating for Complexity Through Integrative Learning” (2019) 5:1 Australian J Clinic Ed 1.