Linden Thomas & Nick Johnson, The Clinical Legal Education Handbook

This handbook is a practical guide for clinicians written by a group of clinicians, clinic professors, and lawyers in the United Kingdom. The handbook consists of seven parts: information regarding legal clinics, regulatory frameworks, assessments, and research on clinical legal education, including the emotional well-beingof clinic members, skill development, and other topics, including supervision. The handbook notes that supervision differs significantly across legal clinics. Considerations for supervision include the number of students in relation to supervisors and approaches to supervision (i.e., hands-on vs. hands-off). Other considerations include whether supervision will be done in groups or in pairs, whether students and supervisors meet face to face or through written feedback, the number of clients students take on, community engagement, student well-being, and student recruitment.

The handbook also addresses disability in legal clinics. Universities are bound by provisions that bar discrimination in providing education or accessing their services. Clinics must ensure that their services do not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. Clinics must also be diligent in considering disability for staff, supervisors, and students. Supervising staff must be familiar with disability accommodation. This can be done through physical adjustments, provisions of materials in different forms, etc. Supervisors must also ensure that clinic recruitment processes do not discriminate in the selection of students. Supervisors should also ensure that there are sufficient student training measures for dealing with interactions with disabled clients.

The handbook also addresses the mental well-being of clinical supervisors. The emotional well-being of clinic staff is affected if they do not enjoy the same compensation, status, or job security as other law school or academic colleagues. Clinic work can be labour-intensive and expensive, depending on the model employed. Clinical legal education requires a small number of students per supervisor for quality supervision of student work and competent representation of the client. Low student-to-faculty ratios allow students to receive more individualized attention from their supervisors and promote staff well-being. Despite the impact that more supervisor access for students may have, supervisors must be diligent in implementing policies pertaining to clinic students and supervisors’ emotional well-being and mental health.

Linden Thomas & Nick Johnson, The Clinical Legal Education Handbook (London: Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London Press, 2020).