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 to stay up to date with what is happening in clinical teaching.

There is a common desire for supervisors to be non-directive in their supervisory style. Non-directive supervision allows students greater autonomy and provides students the opportunity to take on the role as the primary lawyer representing the client. Lawyer role assumption is generally viewed as one of the core goals of a clinic program. However, supervisors may shift from directive to non-directive approaches depending on the presence of particular court deadlines or the tasks which the student is presented with. Notably, the process of non-directive supervision produces rewards for both students and faculty. The ability for students to approach faculty with possible solutions creates opportunity for strategic discussions involving theory of cases and student’s own lawyering style. Moreover, non-directive approaches allow the relationship between clinical student and faculty to evolve into a more collegial or peer-like relationship with faculty members, resulting a mentor-coach role rather, than supervisor.

Supervisors have multiple duties: the ethical duty to the client, the ethical duty to adequately supervise the student to ensure competent and diligent representation of the client, and the educational duty to maximize the learning of the clinic student. In light of these duties, the issue of intervention is often debated. Necessary intervention during client, representation, requires discussion of the intervention during student post-performance feedback sessions. However, most supervisors seek to keep intervention to a minimum rather, chose to focus on preparation.

Unmotivated students often pose a challenge to supervisors. In order to mitigate these challenges, regular case reviews between the student and faculty/supervisors are required. During these reviews/ meetings, supervisors should be aware of motivational causes and challenges impacting students in their clinical role. Understanding student’s motivation for participating in clinical courses also allows supervisors to adjust work allocation to best fit the needs and desires of students in order to mitigate any motivational challenges that may be present. Moreover, supervisors should be aware of fear, student over-commitment  as a common causes of what appears to be a lack of motivation.

Justine A Dunlap & Peter A Joy, “Reflection-in-Action: Designing New Clinical Teacher Training by Using Lessons Learned from New Clinicians” (2004) 11:1 Clinical L Rev 49.