Anna E Carpenter, “The Project Model of Clinical Education: Eight Principles to Maximize Student Learning and Social Justice Impact”

This article argues that intentional and goal-driven planning can lead to project-based learning experiences that meet social justice goals while maximizing student ownership and learning. The project model offers unlimited opportunities in terms of the nature of the work students do, the legal problems they address, and the clients they serve.

The author discusses three different models of supervision: the short-term matter model, the long-term matter model, and the project model. The short-term matter involves student involvement in the work from beginning to end and a high level of student ownership of the work. Short-term matters tend to be predictable for supervisors, substantively and procedurally. The predictability makes it possible for the clinician to predict and plan for the student’s learning experiences and to schedule seminars and training with respect to substantive and procedural matters.

The long-term matter involves students working on discrete pieces of a matter by nature of the long duration required by the case; in these cases, students have a lower level of ownership. This work tends to be lengthy and unpredictable. There is much debate about these sorts of matters involved in clinical contexts because they carry a high pedagogical cost in terms of decreased student ownership and involvement. However, these matters often provide students the opportunity for exposure to high-level litigation.

The project model involves learning through projects. It is characterized by a high level of student ownership where students serve as lead lawyers, see a case from beginning to end, and maintain the primary relationship with the client. Key to this model of clinical education is students solving legal problems through strategies and tactics other than litigation. This model explicitly aims to teach complex problem solving, requires collaboration between student and supervisor, and seeks to make more macro change. The project model requires directive supervision or the supervisor as the “expert”. However, reliance on the supervisor in this model may deprive students of the opportunity to develop valuable lawyering skills such as planning, strategizing, and managing the unexpected.

Supervisors can engage in project design and supervision, thus, maximizing student ownership and role assumption, teach problem-solving and broader lawyering skills, and expose students to lawyer’s roles in social change by applying the following principles:

1. Are intentionally planned to meet learning goals;
2. Are time-limited;
3. Serve a client;
4. Make students the primary lawyers;
5. Require more than traditional research and writing;
6. Explicitly develop collaboration skills;
7. Practice and de-brief lawyering performances; and
8. Include a seminar component.

Anna E Carpenter, “The Project Model of Clinical Education: Eight Principles to Maximize Student Learning and Social Justice Impact” (2013) 20:1 Clinical L Rev 39.