The Professional School as a Focus for Clinical Education

TLDR: Structural features shared by all clinics give rise to common issues of interpersonal and organizational dynamics, and the experience and structure of legal education is, therefore, a clinical event which is an unexploited resource to professional training.

Abstract: The critical features of a clinic are an individual or group needing help to achieve a desired change, professional helpers with specialized knowledge and skill which may help effect that change, and an organizational context in which professional and client come together in a helping relationship.' By this definition, professional service organizations of all kinds provide services to their clients in clinics. Less obvious, professional schools by this definition are clinics as well. Students need help to change their status from laymen to individuals qualified to become licensed practitioners of law; faculty have special qualifications from training and experience to help the client-student achieve this goal; and courses and other organized activities in the school are the institutional contexts in which faculty and their student-clients meet to work together. Fieldwork courses in which we train students in applied settings are clinics with a dual focus, giving professional help both to student-practitioners and to their clients. Structural features shared by all clinics give rise to common issues of interpersonal and organizational dynamics, and the experience and structure of legal education is, therefore, a clinical event which is an unexploited resource to professional training. An experience with a case which would be used for a variety of lessons in a clinical course will help introduce the subject matter.