Author: Meris Bray
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Peter Toll Hoffman, “The Stages of the Clinical Supervisory Relationship”
This paper examines the role of the supervisor in legal clinic contexts. Throughout the student-supervisor relationship, teaching occurs in many ways: dialectic teaching, didactic teaching, evaluation, demonstration, or a combination of some or all of these teaching methods. The relationship between student and supervisor is constantly changing. There are several stages students pass through while…
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Kathleen A Sullivan, “Self-Disclosure, Separation, and Students: Intimacy in the Clinical Relationship”
This article describes the author’s discomfort in sharing personal details about her life with clinic students. The author describes how relationships between supervisors and clinical students can be intimate and the extent to which intimacy is generally a feature of clinical teaching relationships. This relationship is one of the greatest challenges in clinical legal education.…
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Susannah Sage-Jacobson & Tania Leiman, “Identifying Teaching and Learning Opportunities within Professional Relationships between Clinic Supervisors”
This paper examines the Flinders Legal Advice Clinic through an appreciative inquiry research approach, allowing for reflection on past experiences, insights into positive events, identification of peak performance and the exploration of possibilities for future successful practice. “Appreciative inquiry” is a strengths-based approach that affirms individuals and brings greater focus on positives and strengths to…
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Neil Hamilton & Lisa Montpetit Brabbit, “Fostering Professionalism through Mentoring”
This article mentor relationships as fostering professionalism. Notably, literature often defines the two as distinct principles. The authors note that “a mentor in the legal profession is a person who helps a lawyer (or law student) develop professionally both in internalizing the principles of professionalism and in achieving the protege’s personal professional goals” (106). The…
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Neil Hamilton, “Mentor/Coach: The Most Effective Curriculum to Foster Each Student’s Professional Development and Formation”
This article sets out principles of effective mentoring/ coaching, a model that includes the functions of both mentor and coach. Although this paper is directed toward mandated mentoring/ coaching of 1L students, there is value in considering these principles in the legal clinic context. Mentors must have proven legal skills and ownership over continuous professional…
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Neil Gold, “Clinic Is the Basis for a Complete Legal Education: Quality Assurance, Learning Outcomes and the Clinical Method”
Neil Gold describes the role of the clinical supervisor as: “The supervisor, as guide and role model, should seek to be: thoughtful; insightful; measured-to-person, need and context; learned; holistic; and above all, constructively helpful. The importance of the role of the clinic supervisor in explicating and supporting student learning cannot be understated. This interpretive and…
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Michael Meltsner, James V Rowan & Daniel J Givelber, “The Bike Tour Leader’s Dilemma: Talking about Supervision”
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in Annotated Bibliography, Assessment, Evaluation, Feedback, Field of Supervision – Legal, Format – Article, Mentorship – Formal, Mentorship – Informal, Mentorship – Versus Supervision, Professional Development, Reflective Practice, Supervision – Empirical Research, Supervision – Quality of Supervision – Good, Supervision – Quality of Supervision -Effective, Supervision – Stages, Supervisor – RolesThis article examines supervision in private firms through a survey of both supervisors and supervisees. In private practice, supervision is defined as: (1) overseeing the production of discrete work products, and (2) the instruction that necessarily accompanies task completion. Effective supervision was defined as good human relations and clear communication. Both formal and informal mentoring…
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Jennifer A Gundlach, “This is a Courtroom, Not a Classroom: So What is the Role of the Clinical Supervisor?”
This article contains helpful advice on supporting clinic law students in courtroom settings. It includes several suggestions for exercises and supervisory discussions with the student to enrich the experience, most of which occur at the post-court appearance stage. The author argues that supervisors should facilitate the development of students’ professional autonomy through theory development, collaborative…