This Australian handbook sets out guidelines for the supervisory relationship in clinical legal education. This handbook was created through consultations with various clinic staff and identifies nine main issues that clinicians and clinic staff may face when supervising students. Included with each main issue are (1) a brief overview of the topic; (2) comments from experienced supervisors; (3) an example of a real-life supervisor-student interaction; (4) self-development exercises; and (5) suggested references and further readings. In addition, some of the topics include video resources showing how experienced clinicians would approach the exercises provided (Intro).
This handbook includes information about effective supervision skills, stages of growth, serving clients and students, dealing with different values and personalities, and managing time and information. It concludes each section by setting out a series of suggested readings and resources.
The supervisor takes on a variety of roles in their interactions with students, which the handbook describes as including coach, professional mentor, and quality controller. This role differs from standard student-teacher relationships for many reasons. In a clinic, supervisors and students share the common goal of serving clients. In addition, supervisors interact with relatively few students at once, and supervisors spend more one-on-one time with individual students. This results in a relationship that is less hierarchical than a traditional classroom setting.
Supervisors also play an important role in helping students realize their inadequate and/or biased beliefs and can help change them through learning by utilizing three different types of teaching acts. These include (1) intellectual acts of teaching (i.e., explaining, demonstrating, defining); (2) strategic acts of teaching (i.e., planning, guiding, counseling); and (3) moral acts of teaching (i.e., modelling behaviour and concerns for ethics).
The handbook notes a number of teaching skills that clinicians may employ, including:
- Active listening (e.g., monitor student understanding, needs, etc.);
- Interpersonal skills (e.g., encouragement, support);
- Communication techniques (e.g., feedback); and
- Questioning skills (e.g., encouraging reflection, insight, etc.)
Supervisors often have to weigh their duty to a student against their duty to a client, a challenging situation for many supervisors. The supervisor’s professional duty to their client must outweigh their educational duty to their students when there is a conflict between them that could result in harm to the client. Five considerations a supervisor should have in mind when determining whether or not to intervene in a student’s handling of a case are:
1) Respect for the client’s professional relationship with the student and expectations flowing from that relationship;
2) Respect for the client’s right to make an informed decision about student representation and its advantages or disadvantages;
3) Concern for the client reflected by the clinical teacher’s ability to adequately diagnose and predict student competencies;
4) Concern for the client reflected by the clinical teacher’s personal readiness and competence to assume client representation responsibilities; and
5) Concern for adverse collateral consequences to the client and others which might be avoided through intervention (Critchlow, 437 at 25).
Additionally, supervisors must acknowledge the various personalities at play and understand the limitations of their own expertise, all the while supporting and encouraging student growth.
Archie Zariski & Irene Styles, Supervising Students in Clinical Legal Education Handbook with Exercises (Perth, AUS: Murdoch University, 2001).