This article considers how clinical legal education provides the best opportunities to engage with students at a level that will impact their inner well-being. It examines sets out an understanding of emotional intelligence and its relevance in clinical legal education. Emotional intelligence is defined as a partnership between our rational brain and the limbic brain; it enables us to manage ourselves and our relationships with others to truly live our intentions. The author argues that supervisors should discuss the concept of emotional capacities and introduce students to emotional intelligence.
Encouraging law students to improve their emotional intelligence will help them both to be better lawyers and to enjoy their practice. In the clinic context, there are many opportunities to talk with students about their feelings or the feelings they notice in clients. Clinical supervisors can incorporate emotional intelligence into clinical legal education by providing students the opportunity for reflection, engaging in negotiation role-plays, journaling, interviewing, mentoring, and encouraging mindfulness by helping students develop their intentions for how they practice law.
Developing emotional intelligence involves improving self- and other-awareness. Supervisors in mentorship roles should motivate students by serving as models of best practices and demonstrating empathy. Helping future lawyers enhance their emotional intelligence will impact the quality of their work and overall well-being; happy lawyers are professional lawyers.
Colin James, “Seeing Things as We Are. Emotional Intelligence and Clinical Legal Education” (2005) 8 Int’l J Clinical Leg Educ 123.
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