Category: Clinical Legal Education
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Patrick C Brayer, “A Law Clinic Systems Theory and the Pedagogy of Interaction: Creating a Legal Learning System”
This article explores several techniques to maximize student experience based on professional interactions in the law school clinic. It further sets out a pedagogical approach to clinic design and teaching by advancing a clinical systems theory, explaining how law students develop and grow by interacting with their learning system environment, including teaching students how to…
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Minna J Kotkin, “Reconsidering Role Assumption in Clinical Education”
This article examines the proposition that clinical methodology, which emphasizes individualized instruction, requires adherence to the role assumption norm. Role assumption by students involves taking on the role of a legal professional while assisting clients, the general experiential framework of clinical legal education. Positive norm assumers will be successful in replicating the norms of the…
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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…
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Kenneth R Kreiling, “Clinical Education and Lawyer Competency: The Process of Learning to Learn from Experience Through Properly Structured Clinical Supervision”
This paper argues that clinical education should teach students a method which includes: how to develop theories of problem-solving by utilizing established lawyering theory and experience, how to apply these theories in practice, and how to analyze oneself to improve performance. The paper examines the nuance associated with the aforementioned teaching method, such as awareness…
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Justine A Dunlap & Peter A Joy, “Reflection-in-Action: Designing New Clinical Teacher Training by Using Lessons Learned from New Clinicians”
This article examines training programs for new clinical faculty based on data collected and lessons learned through the authors experiences working with new clinical faculty. It provides a series of recommendation for clinical faculty in-house training programs. Clinical faculty should join professional organizations for clinical faculty, attend clinical conferences, and sign up for clinic listservs…
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Jeff Giddings, Reciprocal Professional Development: Enhancing Law Student Supervision in Practice-based Contexts
This report examines the Effective Law Student Supervision (ELSS) Project which is concerned with issues related to professionalism and legal education with focus on enhancing the experiences of law students and supervisors involved in clinical programs in law schools as well as externship arrangements. Central to the project is effective supervision, focused on achieving articulated…
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Jeff Giddings & Michael McNamara, “Preparing Future Generations of Lawyers for Legal Practice: What’s Supervision Got to Do with It?”
This article considers the important role of supervision in legal practice in Australia and argues for a more structured approach to supervision. This article sets out the historical roots of clinical legal education and examines supervision in the legal context as a means of developing knowledge and abilities. Without adequate training, supervisors are ill-equipped to…
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Elizabeth Curran, “Social Justice – Making It Come Alive and a Reality for Student and Enabling Them to become Engaged Future Ethical Practitioners”
This article discusses the benefit of exposing law students to access to justice in the context of clinical legal education, better situates them for the uncertainties and realities of legal practice, within the Australian context. This paper further discusses the drawbacks of teaching students merely through the case method in individual legal silos, an impediment…
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Beryl Blaustone, “Teaching Law Students to Self-Critique and to Develop Critical Clinical Self Awareness in Performance”
This article presents a feedback process that will avert relationship damage before the learning process is irremediably disrupted. The feedback model consists of six stages driven by learning theory. Learning theory suggests that the feedback process should be structured as a source of learning, self-generated observations deepen and expand learning, self-assessment thrives in the face…