Workshop B

Clinical Education as the Touchstone of the Law School Experience: Lessons from New Clinical Teachers

Clinics are uniquely situated to figure prominently in the formation of law student’s professional identities and in the formation of student’s short term and long term professional goals.

While clinic will not be the centerpiece of every student’s law school experience, it can be central to how students understand what it means to be an advocate. The best clinical experience will imbue law students with a sense of social responsibility that they will carry with them throughout their careers.

This session will be led by recent graduates for whom clinic was the touchstone of their law school experience and who are now clinicians themselves. These new clinical teachers will discuss what made clinic so special for them, how they seek to replicate and build on that experience for their own students, and how they understood clinic as students versus how they now understand clinic as instructors.

By leveraging the unique position of recent students turned clinicians to foster a discussion of how students experience clinic relative to how faculty envision the clinical experience, this session seeks to help clinicians maximize the positive lasting impact that clinic has on their students.

Expect a wide-ranging discussion that may touch on the following topics:

• Understanding the narrative that exists about your clinic among your school’s students
• Transitioning from student to supervisor
• Student understanding of the role of clinical faculty
• Understanding and managing student expectations
• Communicating the limits of clinical work to students
• Clinic as a space for student and faculty experimentation
• Student understanding of clinic resource constraints
• Seeking advice from students about your clinic

 

Presenters:

• Stephanie Campos-Bui (Berkeley)
• Ahmed Lavalais (Berkeley)

Download:

• Lessons from New Clinical Teachers PPT