Susan L Brooks, “Using Therapeutic Jurisprudence to Build Effective Relationships with Students, Clients and Communities”

This article suggests that clinicians should adopt a therapeutic jurisprudence approach. There are several key principles integral to therapeutic jurisprudence that clinicians in legal clinics should utilize. These principles include: modelling (i.e., how communication impacts students and how supervisors’ interactions may lead students to mirror what they observed); boundaries and limit-setting; transference and counter-transference, the irrational attribution of characteristics to another person and responses in relation to those attributes, and the reverse, respectively; and the planned change relationship.

The planned change relationship consists of four phases: engagement, assessment, intervention, and evaluation. Engagement involves a broad set of skills, including reflective listening, empathy, and diagnostic skills. Engagement involves spatialization, a tool for assisting individuals to focus on one small thing at a time and to try to accomplish something with respect to that small thing.

Susan L Brooks, “Using Therapeutic Jurisprudence to Build Effective Relationships with Students, Clients and Communities” (2006) 13:1 Clinical L Rev 213.