INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLINICAL LEGAL EDUCATION / CLINICAL LEGAL EDUCATION ORGANISATION 2008 CONFERENCE ABSTRACTS

Abstracts are listed in alphabetical order of the first named speaker in the following categories:

IJCLE Keynote speech abstracts Page 2

IJCLE Parallel paper abstracts Page 4

CLEO paper abstractsPage 40

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IJCLE Keynote speeches

Keynote 1

Reflecting on Approaches, Purposes, Successes and Difficulties in Giving FeedbackBeryl Blaustone, CUNY, New York, USA

The feedback process is an essential part of legal clinical supervision. Feedback is a form of reflective practice. Feedback difficulties increase when the supervisor and student differ vastly in approach, background, values and perceptions. This presentation is designed as a highly interactive discussion involving multiple approaches to examining our differing frameworks for the use of feedback in supervision. The session will start with a discussion of a video portraying a feedback session in clinical legal supervision. Each attendee will then be asked to reflect on their individual experiences in giving feedback. We will then examine the feedback experience from the perspective of the recipient law student. Finally, we will brainstorm suggestions for establishing effective, efficient reflection habits about our feedback practice in future clinical supervision.

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Keynote 2

Identifying Educational Outcomes in Clinical Legal Education programs in South AfricaShaheda Mahomed, Director, Witz Law Clinic, Johannesburg, South Africa

Clinical legal education programs are developing at a rapid pace at several leading universities in South Africa. Clinicians are now more then ever focusing on the educational value that their programs define. Identifying teaching methods, developing educational outcomes and reflecting on appropriate assessments methods is being considered fundamental for the development of an influential clinical program. The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the educational outcomes that clinical legal education programs in South Africa have identified for teaching purposes.

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IJCLE Parallel Papers

An Interdisciplinary Approach to Elder Law in a Law School Clinical SettingBy Marguerite Angelari, Goedert Elder Law Professor & Director, Elder Law Initiative, Loyola University Chicago, USA

Since 2004, social work students and law students have worked side by side on adult guardianship cases in the Elder Law Clinic at Loyola University Chicago. This paper will present various models for incorporating non-legal professionals into law school clinics and discuss why a completely interdisciplinary (versus a multi-disciplinary) model was adopted at Loyola Chicago. The paper will present the doctrine of therapeutic jurisprudence as it applies to elder law and discuss the extent to which this doctrine is advanced but also, surprisingly, hindered by the incorporation of social work students into the Elder Law Clinic. Ethical and practice-based conflicts that have arisen in real cases will be analyzed.

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Deconstruction and Reconstruction of a Russian LawyerOleg Anishchik, Center of Clinical Legal Education and Human Rights Protection (Legal Clinic), Clinical Legal Education Foundation, Samara State University, Russia

Our experience of deconstruction of the Russian legal professionals’ thought lets us to set up a few key points regarding the understanding of the Law by lawyers:

The Law is taken as a system of statutes and other standard acts produced by the state solely;

Notwithstanding the high degree of abstraction of these norms, they are perceived as those ready for regulating any particular situation of different complicity without any necessity of an active interpretation made by a lawyer; the role of a lawyer is just a passive one and can be defined as realizing the “exact” meaning of the norms;

As a result, the understanding of individual problems is stereotyped and not regarded as unique and requiring the going beyond the reality of the abstract norms; the consequence is taking a particular problem out of the complex social context of balancing interests of individuals, groups and society as a whole and leaving it unsolved, moreover, lawyers tend to oversimplify and distort the problem and even make the situation worse while “resolving” the problem in the way the lawyers see it.

There is a supposition that the new generation of Russian lawyers has to: Realize their active role in dealing with the Law: from the

(re)creation of it for any particular situation to the influence through professional work on the (re)formation of the norms; and

Changing their comprehension of the Law and “switching on the vision” of a complex social context including an individual and its problems and develop an effective communication using an appropriate language with other “non-legal” professionals to understand the problem and its causes as well as searching the way to solve it.

It requires the construction of a new understanding of the lawyers’ competence which should include (but not to be limited by):

The knowledge and perception of the developments of the 20th century culture and science (philosophy, sociology, economics, linguistics, literary criticism, semiotics, psychology, and even quantum mechanics) and corresponding skills based on it to be effective in the new role; as yet the access to all these material is virtually “blocked” by the Russian jurisprudence as it is a complex and comprehensive system utilizing the philosophy of the late 19th century as its basis not having any inconsistencies inside itself and not letting any contrary and “dangerous” ideas into the system; and

Appropriate personal system of values.

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The Role and Significance of Clinical Education in the legal education system of the Republic of ArmeniaGrigor Bekmezyan, Assistant Professor, Yerevan State University, Armenia

Modern public developments present new requirements to the legal education, and lawyers. Legal and judicial reforms being implemented in Armenia precondition restructuring of legal education system. Outmoded educational system inherited from the Soviet Union, giving the students theoretical knowledge, does not guarantee teaching of practical skills, thus it could not have long survival in the new challenges. It is common that except for the legal knowledge for the lawyer there is a strong need to ensure practical skills of legal work and personal qualifications, moral and mental values of the lawyer. This is more urgent nowadays in Armenia, as the country has started its second stage of judicial and legal reforms. New demands in legal practice and legal culture can not be taught only by theoretical lectures.

Knowledge, practical skills, personal qualifications are equal components of the description of a lawyer. The over- or underestimation of one of the components always results in distortion of the professional description. Knowledge gained during the years in university has no value, if the student does not have skills to put them into practice, does not know their implementation ways indifferent fields.

The organization and development of the clinical education in Armenia are also aimed at the settlement of this issue relating to the legal education, the content and methods of which should be integrated into traditional educational process in a harmonized way. Teaching of practical skills which constitutes the main content of the clinical education curriculum is to supplement the gaps of our traditional educational process and contribute to the formation of a professional lawyer.

The Legal Clinic at YSU was founded in 1999 with the support of the Open Society Institute-Armenia and the Constitutional and Legal Policy Institute (currently the OSI Justice Initiative). It was the first clinical initiative in the country which for these years proved to be successful not only in promoting the idea of clinical legal education and enriching the curriculum of legal education but also in raising a new generation of lawyers instilled with social values.

During these years, the Clinic succeeded in developing clinical teaching methodology and in elaborating teaching modules and materials for the teachers and law students. Being placed in-house, it has had significant contribution to the overall development of a clinical legal network by providing its knowledge and expertise through training programs for clinics across the country and the teaching staff.

One of main goals of the clinic is the fact, that the role of the clinic increases among students and there is a big wish among latters to participate in the projects and lessons of the clinic.

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Today the Legal Clinic at YSU is taking new steps to develop strategies for sustainability of the clinical program to make it a part of the overall curriculum of the university and independent from external funding sources. To this end, YSU Law Faculty administration and the clinical staff have put maximum efforts to develop the model of integration that will consider the realities and reflect the needs.

At the same time, the clinic being the place where innovative ideas and critical thinking is encouraged, it also strives to play an active role in raising societal issues and participating in the policy making processes underway.

Having two-fold objectives, the Legal Clinic has undertaken the following activities:

(a) Educational:To fulfill its educational mission, the Legal Clinic worked on the program, developed the curriculum and obtained the approval by the Faculty of Law, the departments of Civil law, Civil Procedure and Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure. Legal clinic implements its activities in the directions of Civil Law and Civil Procedure, Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure, Human Rights, Family Law, Labor Law etc.

Taking into account the low level of awareness of the society on environmental issues, it is necessary to organize full involvement of law students in the field of environmental protection. This is a big role for the clinic, it’s challenging and demanding as it is small, with minimal resources and capacity. But giving big importance to environmental legal education clinic is straight forward to achieve this goal also.

In addition, the clinical program introduced and promoted interactive teaching environment and encouraged application of the clinical teaching methods in the traditional classroom. As a result, the clinic published its first textbook in Armenian titled “Basics for Teaching Professional Skills to Lawyers” which was a result of collective effort of all clinical teaching staff. At the same time, clinic produced other methodological materials, i.e. manuals and video films for the clinical teachers.

(b) Charitable:To fulfill its charitable function, the Legal Clinic has provided legal assistance to the vulnerable groups of our society thereby playing a social role in the period of reforms undergoing in Armenia. As statistics shows the number of people seeking for legal assistance at the clinic has been increased speaking of the reputation and trust that clinic built during all these years.

These and other activities of the clinic being of primary importance for the overall success of the clinical legal program still need to be supported and sustained. To strengthen the educational component of the program and thereby contribute to the attainment of the goals foreseen by it, the Legal Clinic continues working on the methodology.

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But it is also fact that we do not need to be satisfied with what we have. Today we can declare that there is need for modification of educational processes, methods and materials. In order to reach international accepted standards of legal education, Law Faculty implements new methods of teaching, including interactive teaching, practical skills learning etc.

Faculty also gives big importance to self-education and training for its staff. For this objective together with international organizations trainings and lectures in foreign countries are being organised.

It is important to mention that Legal Clinic of Yerevan State University Law Faculty is the only clinic in the Republic of Armenia, and the Faculty understands that being a pioneer in this field brings more challenges for it, but also big opportunities to help the formation of the new legal educational system of Armenia. Understanding this fact we are willing to do the best for achieving all undertaken objectives.

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Deconstructing Innocence: Reflections from a Public Defender: Can student attorneys accept the paradigm of guilt and continue zealous representation?Geneva Brown, Assistant Professor of Law, Valparaiso University School of Law, Valparaiso, IN, USA

I am a true believer. I was a Public Defender for nine years and represented thousands of guilty defendants without guilt or emotional angst. My credo was to give zealous representation without consideration for the innocence or guilt of the client. As a clinical instructor I must impart ethical and diligent representation to my students. I found however when discussing cases during our weekly case rounds the paradigm of innocence would inevitably become a question for the student attorney. The students imputed truth and innocence to be one. I noticed a more zealous discussion and representation of the student attorney determined the client was innocent.

Imparting the ethical component of criminal defense—to be competent in having legal knowledge, skill and thoroughness of preparation—to the students was a job I was thoroughly prepared to teach. I, however, found that beyond ethical considerations of representing clients, I needed to deconstruct innocence. I wanted to present to students a new paradigm that guilt or innocence is secondary to servicing the needs of the client and protecting the clients rights through the maze of a convoluted and dispassionate court system. Creating a dialogue where loaded terms such as guilt, truth or innocence were secondary to the needs of the client became my goal.

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A Mental Health Clinic: the Intersection of Pedagogy, Service and ReformMichael J. Churgin, University of Texas Law School, Texas, USA

I have been involved with a mental health clinic at the University of Texas for the past 30 years. In Texas, as in most of the United States, the decision to commit an individual is a judicial one. An attorney automatically is appointed once an application for court ordered mental health services if filed. Under an arrangement with the court, I am appointed for a certain number of cases each week. Texas has a student practice rule, and the certified law students appear in court under my supervision. Potentially, there are 2 hearings for each case: a probable cause hearing, held within 72 hours, to determine if the person should be detained pending the commitment hearing, and the final commitment hearing, scheduled for within 14 days of the application filing date, but which must be held within 30 days.

The mental health code is a comprehensive, self-contained, statutory scheme that can be mastered by law students within a relatively short period of time. The first few weeks of the semester are devoted to the code, exercises preparing cross-examination and handling evidentiary matters, and some diagnostic material. Cases are not assigned until the 4th week, and each student will have 8-10 clients during the course of the semester.

The clients are all confined at a mental health facility located within a 10 minute drive of the law school. Access to the locked wards is obtained by showing the student practice card and the order of appointment from the court. Staff have a variety of responses to the students ranging from animosity to appreciation. The presence of the students interrupts a routine, since there is a public defender-like system in operation with repeat players among the attorneys representing the state and the proposed patient, the masters handling the probable cause hearings and the judges conducting the commitment hearings, as well as other court personnel. Hearings are held at the mental health facility.

Students make up in legwork and time commitment for what they do not initially know about the process. They raise more objections, ask more questions of staff, and spend more time per client than the regular attorneys. In court, the student handles the case, although I intervene occasionally – eg making an evidentiary objection before the damaging evidence can come in.

The paper will further explore the clinic’s operation and how the existence of the clinic affects the operation of the commitment process.

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"Made Not Born: Dwindling Trials, The Impact on Attorney Competency and Ethics, and Research on Expert Performance."James A. Cohen, Associate Professor of Law, Director - Trial Advocacy Program & External Affairs Fordham University School of Law, New York, USA

"This paper analyses how lawyers can become expert performers oflawyering skills, specifically the skills of question asking, andargument.  In the US, the way lawyers used to learn something aboutthese skills was to engage in them, but there are very few opportunitiesto do so because very, very few cases go to trial.  More important, formost lawyers (even if there were more trials) conducting trials is quitean imperfect way to learn these skills.   I draw on very significant scholarship about expertperformance across many domains, including decision-making, sports,music, games, etc.  The thesis simply put is that practice, feedback(critique), more practice and critique, and goal setting, are moreimportant to expert performance than natural ability.  Application of the principles of expert performance scholarship to Lawyering Skills has the promise of making lawyers' execution far superior to those who learned the "old fashioned" way."

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Irish Clinical Legal Education Ab Initio: Challenges and OpportunitiesLawrence Donnelly, Lecturer & Director of Clinical Legal Education, Faculty of Law, National University of Ireland, Galway, Republic of Ireland

This paper details the incipient efforts of one Irish university (NUI Galway) in the field of Clinical Legal Education. First, it briefly outlines the history and traditions of law training in Ireland, with an emphasis on the clearly demarcated roles of universities and professional law schools. The paper argues that this demarcation was – and, to the extent it persists, remains – arbitrary, false and disadvantageous to students, universities, the professions and, ultimately, all those lawyers serve. As such, the paper details the consequential efforts of the Faculty of Law at NUI Galway to remedy the situation. These efforts commenced with a more intensive practical skills module for all law students. This module initially spurred greater participation in moot court competitions and tremendous advances in student scholarship. Moreover, now equipped with practical skills, some final year students have the opportunity to work on part-tine clinical placements for academic credit with government bodies, non-governmental organisations, practitioners and academics. Consistent with the best ambitions of Clinical Legal Education and the orientation of our Faculty, most placements demonstrate for students how law can be used in the public interest.

The paper goes on to discuss the triumphs and frustrations experienced by academics, students and placement supervisors to date. The paper examines what’s worked and what hasn’t and suggests means to accentuate successes and minimise failings in the short term. Looking to the longer term, the paper proposes a number of realistic goals to expand the clinical experience for Irish law students. The paper’s primary goal, however, is to engender constructive feedback from colleagues in jurisdictions with far more advanced Clinical Legal Education programmes.

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Unpacking the Skill of ListeningDouglas N. Frenkel, University of Pennsylvania Law School, USA

Effective listening may be the most universally-taught lawyering skill, crucial to effectiveness in almost any kind of legal (or other “helping’) practice. The clinical literature contains a wealth of training material in the art and techniques of this complex competency.

But effective listening, especially in settings laden with emotion or conflict, may turn in the first instance on the listener’s own self-awareness—of the many levels on which this skill takes place, of the multiple goals that may be involved, and the possible interference posed by his or her own personal reactions. Using a DVD excerpt from a new video-integrated clinical text, this presentation will attempt to bring this home experientially.

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“On teaching students to ‘act like a lawyer’: What sort of lawyer?”Ross Hyams, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

This presentation investigates the intersection of clinical teaching and professional responsibility under the conference theme of ‘clinic and life long learning’.

It investigates the issue of teaching students to “act like a lawyer” and asks the fundamental question: “What sort of lawyer do we want students to act like?” It examines our notions of professionalism and our ability (and responsibility) to include such notions in our clinical pedagogy.

Further, taking any account that so many of our graduates end up in non-legal practicing, but related professions, it discuses the need to develop an approach to clinical teaching which incorporates engendering skills of professional responsibility, autonomy, independence and self-learning. Finally, a set of proposals is suggested regarding how to expand and improve our clinical teaching in the future to ensure our graduates attain skills and attitudes relating to professionalism and professional responsibility.

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Street Law Clinic in Georgia – Challenges and PerspectivesKetevan Iremashvili, Street Law Clinic Coordinator at Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, Law Faculty, Tbilisi, Georgia

In the first part of the paper it is designed to show the reader a general picture of clinical legal education in Georgia on the example of TSU Law Faculty. There will be examined a question of need of clinics in law curriculum. Paper will show that one of the obstacles for cle development is the lack of education in this field.

Second part of the paper aims to describe existing Street Law clinic and it’s operation. Paper examines specifics of Street Law clinic which reflects the specifics of evaluation system and methodology used by supervisors.

Third part of paper focuses on advantages of Street Law program in context of public interests and brings some of the alternative models how Street Law can my modified in order to better fulfill the needs of society. The issue of funding will be viewed as one of the determining factors for clinic sustainability. The problem of sustainability will be considered interconnected with the future development of Street Law in Georgia.

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Using Clinic to Teach Students the Role of Law in SocietyKara Irwin, Director of Pro Bono Centre and Jennifer McIntosh, Manager of the Legal Advice Clinic, BPP Law School, London, UK

Why teach law through clinical education? It has become conventional thinking that clinic is the best way of teaching how law works in practice, it brings theory learned in the classroom alive and puts it in context, and it teaches students how to be lawyers. But many clinic teachers overlook an additional angle on teaching clinic – ensuring that law students understand the role of law in society. Clinic provides a context for students to think about the practical aspects of the provision of legal services to those who cannot pay for them and the more philosophical aspects of what role the legal profession has in ensuring that all members of society have access to justice.

On the practical side, in addition to focusing on the nuts and bolts of how to deliver legal services, clinic teachers should also use clinic to address such questions as where and how else clients can access free legal advice. For example, law student clinics should not be taking on clients that are eligible for legal aid funding or whose interests could be better served by specialist qualified pro bono legal advisers. Understanding this is important for minimising duplication of effort in free legal service provision and for ensuring that clients get the best possible service available to them.

On the philosophical side, whether students believe that citizens have a right to free legal advice or not, whether the responsibility of ensuring that the public’s legal needs are met and the burden of providing such advice should fall to the government or to the legal profession is a matter for debate. There are no right or wrong answers to such questions; what is important is for all law students to be able to give considered responses to them. This emphasises to law students that they are not just learning a trade; they are joining a profession, which has broader implications beyond their individual careers.

In this session, we’ll be arguing that law schools ought to be teaching students the role of law in society, and we’ll discuss ways to achieve this through clinical legal education. We’ll conduct an “Introduction to the BPP Legal Advice Clinic”, with participants acting as brand new law students just joining BLAC. We’ll demonstrate how we set the context for our students’ work in BLAC and follow through on this in our clinic practice.

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Happiness in Law: Mental Health, Satisfaction at Work and Emotional Intelligence among Graduate Lawyers. Dr Colin James, University of Newcastle, Australia

At the 3rd IJCLE Conference in 2005 in Melbourne researchers from the University of Newcastle Australia proposed a study of the mental health and satisfaction of law graduates at work. The project sought inter alia to compare the well-being of lawyers who as students had participated in a two-year clinical legal education program integrated with their academic law studies prior to admission, and lawyers who completed a conventional law degree followed by a practical legal education course. Since then other national research has confirmed that depression in the legal profession in Australia is a serious problem, striking lawyers more than any other profession, similar to research findings over several decades for lawyers in the United States and Canada.

This paper discusses results of the Newcastle study, which used questionnaires, mental health instruments and semi-structured interviews. Participants were invited to discuss their satisfaction at work, the reasons for their satisfaction levels, and the relevance of their legal education and practical legal training to their experience of legal practice. Comparing the demographic variables, the results found relevant differences in the two groups, clinical and non-clinical law graduates which confirm the benefits of an integrated program of clinical legal education. Also significantly, the results suggest the reasons for lawyers’ dissatisfaction at work are related more to management failures and workplace issues in private law firms than to the nature of legal work itself. Other results show the significance of neuroticism among lawyers, confirm the relevance of emotional intelligence and suggest that styles of legal education and training affect the subsequent satisfaction levels of graduate lawyers at work, and may have a role in the incidence of depression. Finally the paper discusses preliminary results of current research that measures changes in mental health and levels of emotional intelligence across years 1 to 5 at the University of Newcastle Australia, School of Law.

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Clinic for All!Kevin Kerrigan, Director of Student Law Office and Jonny Hall Programme Leader LLB Exempting Law Degree, Northumbria University School of Law, UK

“How then can we best combine the elements of legal professionalism – conceptual knowledge, skill, and moral discernment – into the capacity for judgment guided by a sense of professional responsibility? We are convinced that this is a propitious moment for uniting, in a single educational framework, the two sides of legal knowledge: (1) formal knowledge and (2) the experience of practice. We therefore attempt in this report to imagine a more capacious, yet more integrated, legal education.” Carnegie Report, 2007, page 12.1

The Carnegie Report from the United States, like the ACLEC report in the United Kingdom 10 years earlier, strives to convince the legal academy of the value of integrating the learning of legal rules with the learning of legal realities. With rare exceptions, teaching institutions have largely resisted this exhortation. Where legal practice is addressed it tends to be in isolation from the core business of teaching students the substantive legal knowledge.

Even in those institutions with significant clinical courses often clinical legal education is seen as something separate from the regular law curriculum. Undervalued ghetto or luxury niche, clinics have distinct identity, purpose and values so that a psychological (and sometimes physical) barrier is erected between regular learning and clinical learning. In many institutions clinic is seen as an optional course or extra-curricular activity rather than a core vehicle for delivering knowledge and skills.

This paper argues that separateness leads to disadvantages for students, for the clinic and for the wider law school. It suggests that integration of clinical methodology into the regular curriculum has the potential to make the student learning experience more engaging, more challenging and ultimately more valuable.

The creation of an integrated clinical law degree presents numerous challenges, not least accommodating concerns of traditional law teachers, expanding clinical experience to a wider audience and managing demands on resources. The paper will use the recent reform of the undergraduate programmes at Northumbria University as a case study for examining some issues of principle and practice inherent in developing clinical experience for all students.

1 Educating Lawyers – Preparation for the Profession of Law, William M. Sullivan et al, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Jossey-Bass, 2007.

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Legal Education and Clinical Legal Education in Poland.Dr Izabela Kraśnicka, Faculty of Law, University of Białystok, Board of the Legal Clinics Foundation, Poland

The aim of this paper is to present the existing legal education system and development of clinical legal education in Poland.

The first part shortly introduces general Polish higher education system including the implications of the Bologna Process and other challenges for the law faculties as higher education institutions. It then focuses on the five different apprenticeships necessary to obtain license to practice law in Poland.

The second part deals with the study program and teaching methods used at Polish law faculties. It argues that the present system does meet the requirements of the contemporary legal job market as students are not, as a rule, exposed to practical aspects of legal problems and leave law school without necessary skills being trained.

The third and most extensive part is dedicated to the legal clinics operating in Poland. Some statistical data presents legal clinics “in numbers” (i.e. numbers of students, teachers, cases etc.). This part also discusses basic clinical methodology instruments used in Polish clinics. Finally it describes the establishment of the Polish Legal Clinics Foundation, its goals, tasks, challenges and achievements.

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Beyond Polemics: the Need for Empirical Research of Clinical Legal EducationStefan H. Krieger, Professor of Law and Director of Hofstra Clinical Programs, Hofstra Law School, Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY, USA.

For the past five years, my scholarship has focused on the need for empirical research of legal education, especially clinical education. In 2003, I coauthored a piece urging the use of empirical methods for analyzing and assessing clinical education and the practice of law. Empirical Inquiry Twenty-Five Years After The Lawyering Process, 10 Clinical L. Rev. 349 (2003) (with Professor Richard K. Neumann, Jr.). I followed this essay with an article examining cognitive science research on the development of professional expertise, especially in the area of medical education, and proposed an empirical research agenda for studying the development of expertise in law school and in practice. Domain Knowledge and the Teaching of Creative Legal Problem Solving 11 Clinical L. Rev. 149 (2004). In an attempt to implement this agenda, I began to collaborate on empirical studies with Vimla Patel, a prominent educational psychologist who for the past two decades has been studying medical education and the practice of medicine, at McGill University, Columbia University’s Department of Bioinformatics, and presently at Arizona State University. The first of those studies – an examination of the development of legal reasoning skills throughout the three years of law school – was recently published. The Development of Legal Reasoning Skills in Law Students: An Empirical Study, 56 J. Legal Educ. 332 (2006). I have just completed a second study on the effects of clinical legal education on legal reasoning, using law students at the University of Chicago Law School as subjects.

Currently I have embarked on an empirical project on the development of expertise in practice, examining the legal reasoning skills of attorneys with different years of experience at a law firm. I am also planning a study on Human-Computer Interaction examining the effect of computer research on law student reasoning.

At this conference, I propose to review the literature on the effects of clinical legal education, including the Carnegie Foundation’s report, Educating Lawyers and the Clinical Legal Education Association’s Best Practices for Legal Education, and to argue for the use of empirical methods for assessing the benefits touted for this pedagogy. While much of the extensive literature on clinical legal education identifies lofty goals for the pedagogy, very few empirical studies have been conducted on the actual effects of such training on students’ abilities to solve actual problems and learn from experience. For the most part, this literature relies on anecdotal evidence and general theories of the educational process. Empirical research provides an opportunity to assess our fields using more rigorous methodology than mere reliance on the personal experience or views of individual instructors in the field.

In this paper, I will discuss the methods developed for empirical research of medical education and describe how I have adapted them for my studies of legal education. I will then review the findings of my studies

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on legal education, especially my recently-completed study of the effects of clinical pedagogy. Finally, I will discuss my present study of expertise of practicing attorneys and propose an empirical research agenda for other scholars in the areas of clinical legal education and the profession.

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Transformed Into Fire: How Law Clinics Can Ignite Their Students with a Passion for Social JusticeProf. Nekima Levy-Pounds, Esq. Director, Community Justice Project, University of St. Thomas School of Law, USA

“Everybody can be great... because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Traditionally, the goal of clinical legal education has been to offer law students the opportunity to practice law in a real world setting, while providing much needed legal services for indigent clients. While enrolled in legal clinics, law students are often exposed to a variety of issues that impact the poor such as housing, employment, and socio-economic disparities. Exposure to such issues is typically seen as a by-product of handling cases on behalf of the poor and may not be an explicit goal of a legal clinical course. Given the widening divide between the haves and the have-nots, as well as the array of social issues that seem to be growing worse within society, one has to wonder whether law clinics are doing enough to remedy some of the long-standing challenges faced by the poor. In other words, is it enough to simply expose law students to issues affecting the poor or is there a duty to be more explicit in encouraging students to pursue social justice on behalf of marginalized populations in a more meaningful way? Further, if there is a duty to do more, what would that duty entail? This paper will seek to answer these questions in an effort to encourage clinical law faculty to be more deliberate in encouraging law students to use their legal education and their gifts and talents to effect change and enrich the lives of others.

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Learning from Collaboration with the Medical School: Assessment in the Context of the Using a Standardized Patient/ Standardized ClientAntoinette Sedillo Lopez, Dr. Cameron Crandall, Gabriel Campos, Dr. Diane Rimple, Mary Neidhart, Teresita McCarty, Lou Clark, Steve McLaughlin, University of New Mexico School of Law and University of New Mexico Medical School, USA

Assessment is a very hot topic in law school education. Two recent and influential books, Educating Lawyers published by the Carnegie Foundation and Best Practices in Legal Education, published by the Clinical Legal Education Association have both suggested dramatic reform in legal education in the United States. A major suggestion is that law schools move to “outcome-based” assessment, i.e. evaluating the student’s performance based on learning goals and specific criteria to demonstrate proficiency. The ABA has formed a committee to study law school assessment. At the law school we have been working on curricular reform based on the Carnegie Report and Best Practices.

Medical education made that move decades ago. And, the Medical School at the University of New Mexico is well known for its excellence in assessment of skills. In summer, 2007 Dr. Cameron Crandall approached the Law School about collaborating on a joint training program for domestic violence. Since Professor Sedillo Lopez teaches family law, she was very interested in new approaches to addressing the issue of Domestic Violence. Professors and staff from the medical school and a legal aid attorney who specializes in domestic violence collaborated with Professor Sedillo Lopez and her teaching assistant to design four problems using actors posing as individuals with health issues and legal concerns related to domestic violence. These problems involved standardized patients and clients with various types of domestic violence issues. We used the problems in a pre-test and a post-test for our training sessions.

While Professsor Sedillo Lopez agreed to participate in this unique collaboration because of her interest in domestic violence, she received a totally unexpected benefit from the collaboration: She learned a great deal about assessment. Even though she had participated in the Best Practices Project, had read the Carnegie Report, and had a strong intellectual interest in outcome-based assessment, this experience was extremely enlightening.

This paper will address the value of a pre-test before training and a post-test after training. This helps to assess the effectiveness of training as well as to measure improvement in performance. In addition, giving a pre-test as a formative evaluation gives the student useful feedback to use to improve skills. The paper will next discuss the development and use of rubrics, check-lists and global rating scales. The paper will contrast normative referenced evaluation with criteria referenced assessment. The paper will discuss the process of “standard setting” in the context of outcome-based assessment.

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Finally, the paper will discuss the impact of using standardized clients on the students’ interest level and engagement. The law students were unfamiliar with the concept of a formative pre-test and did not trust that the pretest was really formative (not graded). They did not like feeling “un-prepared” for the pre-test. However, their level of interest in the material and their engagement of the material after the pre-test was very high. Their performance on a standard law school exam after participating in the skills based exercise was also very high.

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10 Lessons for new CliniciansPaul McKeown and Angela Macfarlane, Supervising Solicitors, Student Law Office, School of Law, Northumbria University, UK

The paper will focus on the experiences and expectations of two new clinicians in their first year in legal clinic. They will draw on their own training experiences compared to the training the students receive in clinic. The paper will take the format of 10 (or maybe more!) lessons for new clinicians. A sneak preview of some of the lessons includes “How to deal with a hopeless student – its not private practice so you cannot sack them so what can you do?” and “Patience!– don’t forget that they are not trainee solicitors with full time exposure to cases like with training contracts”.

The paper is intended to be light hearted yet thought provoking view of clinical practice. We hope that from this paper you will be able to reflect on your own practice as they have reflected upon their own experiences as some of the themes drawn from the paper will be common within the discipline. New clinicians will be able to learn from their experiences and also their mistakes.

This paper is presented by 2 solicitors with very different experiences who moved into education in September 2007 direct from private practice. Angela Macfarlane’s qualification as solicitor was by BA honours degree, post graduate diploma in law (common professional examination -CPE), post graduate diploma in legal practice (LPC) and finally a law society training contract in private practice. For the 2 years prior to joining Northumbria University as a Senior Lecturer she was engaged in commercial and employment work, primarily acting for business clients. Prior to this her experience was with police work and crime, either representing police officers accused of criminal offences, or suing the police for civil “crimes”.

Paul McKeown’s qualification was by LLB Honours (Dunhelm), post graduate diploma in legal practice (LPC) and finally a Law Society training contract. Prior to joining Northumbria University he was engaged exclusively in publicly funded work, primarily in the areas of Housing and Employment law. Paul is now employed as a Solicitor/Tutor in Northumbria’s Student Law Office.

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Learning Aboriginal Law: Lessons for Clinical Legal MethodologyThomas McMorrow, DCL Candidate, McGill University, Montreal, Canada

Through supervised legal work with clients or simulated exercises within or outside of the law school classroom environment, a clinical approach to legal education aims at teaching professional skills, instilling professional values and charging students with the responsibility to address malfunctions in the legal system.2 In other words, students learn about law by learning first-hand what it means to be a lawyer. This practical component to legal education is now a fixture in American law schools and enjoys greater or lesser prominence in a number of jurisdictions throughout the world. The problem, though, is that mainstream clinical legal methodology rests on a set of assumptions about law, legal education and legal practice that currently circumscribe its pedagogical potential. The dominant approach presupposes an institutional legal positivist perspective towards law, promotes an instrumentalist conception of legal education and reinforces extant hierarchies between legal professionals and legal subjects. In this paper, I propose a different way of imagining clinical legal methodology, one steeped in a legal pluralist perspective of law that both acknowledges the multi-faceted learning opportunities of the clinical experience and underscores the role of clients as producers and not just seekers of legal knowledge.

In order to explain what moving from an institutional legal positivist to a legal pluralist perspective entails (including its consequences for how we imagine clinical legal methodology) I consider aboriginal law in Canada. I discuss the experiences of legal professionals working in remote indigenous communities as well as my own experience as a student taking a university aboriginal law course taught primarily by elders in a northern region of Quebec. Moreover, I discuss the extent to which aboriginals who have moved to urban centres like Montreal, avail of legal clinic services.

The purpose of the discussion is to illustrate that there exist a plurality of legal orders operating both within and outside of the official state legal regime. Moreover, I offer an invitation to see law differently, and in doing so, to re-evaluate what legal education, and in particular clinical legal education ought to entail. Not only does knowledge of marginalized normative communities have instrumental benefits in terms of developing better legal counseling and advocacy skills, it provides a bigger picture of what implication in legal education and legal practice involves. Finally, having pressed the need to re-imagine clinical legal education, I make some suggestions about how existing clinical practices could further attend to a pluralistic legal education project.

The underlying justification for clinical legal education methodology is that lawyers use their education in the “real world”. Consequently, law students have much to gain from stepping beyond the walls of the 2 See Wisner, “The Law School Clinic: Legal Education in the Interests of Justice” (2002) 70 Ford. L. Rev. 1929. Indeed, this commentator hails clinical legal education as the most significant development in legal education since Langdell’s introduction of the case method over a hundred years ago. Ibid. at 1934.

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classroom and into legal practice. One powerful lesson of this approach for students is that learning law is a lifelong process that is by no means coterminous with the interior walls of a classroom. However, it can also serve to reproduce extant hierarchies between legal professionals and legal subjects, while reinforcing instrumentalist conceptions of legal education among law students.

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Towards a working model of an integrated clinical curriculumProf. Sheila I Vélez Martínez, Immigration Clinic, Eugenio Maria de Hostos Law School, Puerto Rico

Clinical Education is a fundamental component of legal education in Law Schools. Clinical education in a Law School is not sufficiently fulfilled by a program supervised by means of which the students take some cases before the court or public agencies in their last year of studies. That traditional vision places limits on the educational possibilities of the clinical education . The educational practice should be a process directed to the students integrating his theoretical knowledge with professional practice and the resulting experience, simultaneously, as part of his academic formation, and not through a subsequent exercise that limits his critical judgment of other fundamental aspects of the legal practice and its relationship with legal norms. For this reason, the clinical legal education should be an integral part of the student academic program during their entire program of studies. For the last 10 years our law school has adopted an Integrated Practical Program that integrates clinical learning since the first year of studies. Each year the student has a different practical workshop that is part of the required curriculum.

It includes observation, community lawyering, mediation and legal representation. The Program has harvested plenty but also is ready to be looked at closely to reflect individually and collectively on our work and mistakes. The purpose of the paper and presentation is to engage in this discussion fellow clinical professors attending in IJCLE conference to influence the choices we make in the future in the effort of achieving a successful way to integrate clinical teaching and learning in the curriculum.

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Clinical Legal Education in India and its role in sensitizing budding lawyers and curbing human rights violation - Critical AnalysisDr. Mahesh Mathur Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, Jai Narayan Vyas University Jodhpur, India

"Clinical legal education" means education with practical experience. Clinical legal education supplements the classroom teaching with practical knowledge in social perspectives. Clinical legal education enable the law student to understand that legal education is not merely a means for earning livelihood, but also an instrument of social engineering.

The Bar Council of India for the first time in 1966 incorporated one–year apprenticeship scheme (practical training) under a senior lawyer. Again in 1987 Bar Council of India in consultation with State Bar Councils and Universities teaching law, a detailed scheme on practical training was drawn up consisting of moot court, pre-trial procedures, participation at trials, interviewing and counseling of clients, drafting, pleading and conveyancing, professional ethics, accountability for lawyers, legal aid, Para legal services and public interest lawyering practices etc. At the same time the Bar Council of India also recommended the establishment of Legal Aid Clinic in every law college to implement legal aid schemes.

Though the clinical legal education has been made a part of law curriculum since 1987 but the problem is that no one is interested in adopting these practical aspects in true senses. This can be attributed to non- availability of resources or funds, lack of good professional training, apathy of expert lawyers who consider clinical training injurious to legal profession, lack of proper method for making a good assessment of the learning of students, and lack of mechanisms to ensure equal participation of students, lack of infrastructure and inadequate teacher taught ratio.

Therefore for the successful venture of clinical legal education in India in addition to others following measures are required to be under taken: provision for funds and financial aid from government and other public sources be made so that clinics can render public services. The pulpit (law teaching), bar and bench should constitute one service unit and one legal community. A law teacher should have the experience of advocacy as well as that of judiciary to ensure perfect inter- action and harmony between theory, practical and adjudication for better handling of clinical cases.

Ultimately the success of the clinical legal education ultimately depends upon the law students, law institutions, Judges, NGO's and Bar Council of India who has been entrusted with the task of promoting legal education and laying down the standards of such education.

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Clinical Legal Education in the Faculty of Law, UCC Gerard Murphy, Clinical Education Coordinator, Faculty of Law, UCC

The Faculty of Law UCC has been the pioneer in the use of clinical legal education in Ireland since 1995 when a clinical programme examining the Irish criminal process was introduced on the LL.M. programme. This was the first clinical type programme in an Irish law school. Twelve years later, the LL.M. in Criminal Justice is one of our most successful programmes with 33 students enrolled on the programme in 2007/08 and over 60 students applying for the programme each year. The clinical programme is a core component of the LL.M. in Criminal Justice. Its aim is to bridge the gap between theory and practice and to introduce students to the realities of the Irish criminal justice system. Students are required to attend a number of criminal courts and prisons during the year and also meet various participants in the criminal justice system to understand the different perspectives on current issues affecting the criminal justice system.

In 2004 the Faculty of Law introduced a new undergraduate programme, the BCL (Clinical). This programme allows students to take an extra year onto their degree to complete a work placement with a legal organisation such as a firm of solicitors, a government department or agency, or an NGO or voluntary group. This programme is the first of its kind in Ireland and its aim is to integrate the theory and practice of law. The work placements allow students to apply their legal knowledge and skills in the workplace under the supervision of the Clinical Education Coordinator in the Faculty of Law.

This paper will discuss the nature of these two clinical programmes and how they work in practice. The paper will also examine how these programmes fit within the definitions of clinical methodology used in clinical legal education scholarship internationally.

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Assessment and the Role of Clinic: How Best to Assess to Fulfil Clinic’s ObjectivesVictoria Murray and Tamsin Nelson, Senior Lecturers, Northumbria University School of Law, UK

This paper considers the aims of clinic and their alignment with assessment. Can we successfully assess what clinic aims to achieve? What issues are there in assessing students? Should students be assessed at all?

Previously students at the Student Law Office clinic at Northumbria University were assessed by reference to a list of specific criteria. However, this academic year has seen the adoption of grade descriptors for assessment purposes. Therefore, particular focus will be given to the use of these diverse assessment methods. The paper will draw on research which has been undertaken to determine what issues this change in assessment regime has raised for both students and staff.

It is hoped this paper will prompt interactive discussion amongst delegates on this controversial topic.

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Are the Continued Restrictions on the Functioning and Operation of the Legal Aid Board’s Justice Centres and the University Law Clinics Still Justifiable?David Neke, BA LLB LLM, Senior Tutor, School of Law, University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Attorney of the High Court of South Africa, Supervising Attorney, Wits Law Clinic, Johannesburg, South Africa

The Legal Aid Board of the Republic of South Africa through its Justice Centres, on the one hand, and the University Law Clinics on the other, are amongst the main pivotal cogs in the facilitation of access to justice to the indigent citizens and communities of South Africa. However, both have to abide by and conform to certain laws, rules, regulations, exclusionary clauses and guidelines in their rendering of legal aid and services to the poor. As pertains the Legal Aid Board’s Justice Centres most of these are contained in the applicable Legal Aid Guide. As concerns the Law Clinics the respective provincial Law Societies promulgate relevant conduct rules, as authorised by the Attorneys Act 53 of 1979. Some of these rules conditions, guiding principles and so forth tend to be restrictive, and in the process potentially stifle and limit the scope and areas of the law in respect of and over which legal aid can be rendered and administered. It is not too late for both the legislature and other capable stakeholders to intervene and usher in amendments and implement measures towards the improvement and broadening of the nature of legal services available in this regard.

The main thrust of this paper is to critically examine and analyse the restrictive provisions and exclusionary clauses pertaining to the rendering of legal aid in South Africa through the Legal Aid Board and its Justice Centres on the one hand, and the South African University Law Clinics on the other, particularly those clinics operating under the ambit of the Law Society of the Northern Provinces. It would be argued that at this stage there appears to be certain shortcomings and/or limitations in the facilitation of access to justice through the Legal Aid Board and the Law Clinics, which factor could be remedied legislatively or otherwise.

In the process, the laws, guidelines and principles establishing and/or governing the Legal Aid Board (LAB) and its Justice Centres will be discussed. The Constitutional provisions dealing with access to justice and legal aid will also be critically analysed.

Thereafter, the focus will shift to the University Law Clinics and their role in the facilitation and enhancement of access to justice. The pertinent rules, standards and principles concerned with the practical functioning, conduct and operation thereof. The role and involvement of the Provincial Law Societies in the accreditation of such Clinics and the provisions of certain rules by which the Clinics should abide in the rendering of legal services would also be scrutinised. For the purposes of this article, only the rules of the Law Society of the Northern Provinces will be discussed.

This would be followed by a critique of the current and practical operation and/or functioning of the Legal Aid Board and its Justice

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Centres as well as the Law Clinics, highlighting the need to improve and/or broaden the scope and areas of the law and the types of legal services rendered to indigent people.

In conclusion, it would be argued that there is indeed room for improvement and intervention in the rendering and implementation of legal aid services by both the LAB’s Justice Centres and Law Clinics, legislatively and otherwise. Constructive suggestions will be outlined. The remarks and views articulated and advanced herein should be considered objectively as an endeavour aimed, amongst others, at enhancing the provision of legal aid and legal services at a broader level and, in the process, effectively promoting and widening access to justice.

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Viewing Clinical Legal Education through Therapeutic Lens: Concept, Lessons and Visions ’Dejo Olowu, Nelson Mandela School of Law, University of Fort Hare, East London South Africa

Beyond the training of lawyers conventionally based on ‘the Socratic Method’, law schools around the world are increasingly incorporating the experiential learning technique in their pedagogy through the establishment of law clinics. However, the dominant paradigm in clinical legal education delivery has for long been the litigation approach. For numerous legal practitioners and law teachers, therefore, the best lawyer is one well versed in the intricacies and skills of litigation, which often revolves around adversarialism. The purpose of this paper is to present therapeutic jurisprudence as an approach that has enormous potential of enriching clinical legal education in diverse contexts and across various jurisdictions. Far from being an esoteric or abstract idea lacking in substance, the therapeutic jurisprudence approach revolves on dynamic normative frameworks which reflect definite precepts. While not calling for an obliteration of the litigation paradigm, the underpinning argument in this paper is that when integrated into the curriculum and pedagogy of clinical legal education, therapeutic jurisprudence fortifies the making of the complete lawyer, who is able to serve not only the ends of law, but also the broader goals of social harmony, reconciliation and humanism. In demonstrating the practical connotations of this approach, this paper draws on the cognitive clinical teaching experience of its author in cross-cultural perspective.

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The Virtual Law PlacementMelinda Shirley, Assistant Dean, Teaching and Learning, Iyla Davies, Assistant Dean, International and Community and Tina Cockburn, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law, Queensland University of Technology, Australia

This paper introduces an innovative model for work-integrated learning using a virtual paradigm – The Virtual Law Placement unit at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). It builds upon the conceptual model previously explored and explains how the implementation of the project is also working to strengthen partnerships with the wider community, simultaneously serving the community engagement agenda of the University and enabling students to engage meaningfully with local, national and international community partners.

The theory and literature of the fields of work integrated learning and community engagement will be explored through the context of the pilot offering of this model which has been designed to meet the rapidly changing nature of the modern workplace, the learning preferences of twenty-first century law students and with a view to balancing student learning objectives with community needs through co-operative education.

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Closing the Gap Between the Needs of Students and the Community they ServeM. A. du Plessis, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

Students enter clinical legal education with certain expectations, a main one being the need to experience the knowledge of the substantive law they acquired, in practice. In their final year, when they are exposed to clinical legal education, they have a better idea of the field of law they wish to specialise in during their careers. In order to meet student expectations, clinical cases need to be of a standard which will enable clinical supervisors to provide the required training to the students.

Clients’ (members of the community served by the law clinic) needs vary and matters emanating therefrom may not necessarily be appropriate to meet those of the students. In order to close the gap between these needs, clients’ needs are to be researched (for example through media studies and processing of statistical data). Student training models must be devised to ensure proper practical training to students, whilst assisting clients.

Where student models comprise the teaching of clinical legal education in specialised units, care should be taken to ensure a proper diversity of cases within such units and the maintaining of equal academic standards, supervision and assessment procedures in all such units.

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Innocent Ireland? A Feasibility Study on Examining the Possibility of introducing an Innocence Project in the University of Limerick, IrelandJennifer Schweppe, Lecturer in Law, University of Limerick, Ireland

Combining teaching and research is an increasing requirement for academics. This paper will address the question of introducing an Innocence Project in Ireland. Innocence Projects, which involve students in appeals against alleged wrongful convictions, emerged in the United States in the early 1990s as a response to growing concerns over both the legitimacy of criminal convictions and the nature of legal education. We at the University of Limerick are examining the feasibility of introducing an Innocence Project in Ireland in a way which will ensure an innovative, practical legal education for students, as well as producing high quality research.

By involving students in this process, they students not only learn about the operation of the criminal justice system, interpreting the law and making applications, but they also learn about the potential problems in the system. Transferable skills of time management, critical analysis, teamwork and respecting confidence are also learned.

From a research perspective, there have been a number of high profile wrongful convictions in Ireland (Nora Wall, Peter Pringle, Nicky Kelly) though research has not been conducted to establish the extent of the problem. It has been established internationally that the main causes of wrongful convictions are inaccurate eyewitness identification, false confessions, incorrect interpretation of DNA evidence, unreliable or limited science, prosecution misconduct, unreliable witnesses and bad lawyering. This project will assess the response of the Criminal Justice System in Ireland to allegations of wrongful convictions, and the extent of wrongful convictions in Ireland.

On conclusion of the Feasibility Study, we will have clearly established the need for an Innocence Project in Ireland, and identified how best to learn from international experience. The results will be holistic, involving both quantitative and qualitative data, focusing both on the existence of doubts as to the legitimacy of some convictions, and the ability of the Irish criminal justice system in general, and an Innocence Project in particular to address this. We will also have identified the need for enhanced clinical education of undergraduate law students in Ireland.

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Relation of Discrete Legal Skills Course, Clinical subjects and „Ordinary“ Legal EducationMaxim Tomoszek, Palacký University in Olomouc, School of Law

1) Thesis: Legal skills should be taught in a discrete course (basics and general skills), in legal clinics (practice-oriented skills in detail, acquiring a routine) and also in “ordinary” compulsory subjects (skills specific for that particular subjects).2) What are reasons for this approach? What are its general implications?

a. Areas of skills (transferable x legal skills; general x subject specific skills – e.g. analysis, argumentation).

b. Purposes of different teaching units/courses.c. (Possible) outcomes of different teaching units/courses.

3) What should be structure of a LSC and how should legal skills be implemented within CLE and substantive subjects?4) What does this mean for teachers and for students? What are the implications for administration and organization?

a. Teachers specializing in skills (maybe even dpt. focused on skills) x development of skills education of clinical teachers and „ordinary“ teachers

b. Students – with a discrete LSC might perceive skills as something separate from law => CLE and introduction of skills within substantive subjects.

c. Teaching effectiveness – knowledge + skills = practice by doing = extremely high retention rate!5) Experience of Palacký University in Olomouc, School of Law

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Lessons from a failed Criminal Defence ClinicStephen Tuson, Adjunct Professor and practicing attorney, University of Witwatersrand “Wits Law Clinic”, Johannesburg, South Africa

The University of the Witwatersrand Law Clinic operates 6 specialist clinics from it’s campus premises in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The Clinic also provides the services of a Public Defenders office for a small branch Magistrate’s Court in the central city area of Jeppe, Johannesburg. This area is part urban slum, and part industrial warehousing or light industry premises, with many illegal aliens and homeless trying to find shelter there.

The Wits Law Clinic has tried with limited success to run a Criminal Defense Clinic at the Jeppe Magistrate’s Court. The court deals with matters from minor shop theft and common assault to more serious matters such as attempted murder and unlawful possession of unlicensed firearms. The clinic has attempted to integrate the work of the two legal professionals who do all the appearances in the 2 district magistrate’s courts with the work of students allocated to the clinic.

This paper reviews how the Criminal Clinic was initially set up, the changes made over the years, and notes the difficulties encountered with giving students assigned criminal cases a meaningful experience within the constraints of a full final year curriculum of competing courses, and the demands of a failing criminal justice system.

The paper looks at the contribution made by a failing criminal justice system, with its endemic delays and corruption, making the running of a criminal defense clinic more challenging. The lack of proper consultation facilities at court; the difficulty in gaining access to clients in prison for admitted attorneys, leaving aside the near impossibility of students gaining admission to prisons to consult.

Finally, the paper looks at lessons learnt from our attempts at running a criminal defense clinic thus far, and proposes solutions to the challenges encountered.

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CLEO PAPER ABSTRACTS

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LawWorks Mediation Clinics Martin Curtis, LawWorks

Mediation Advice Clinics are set up by LawWorks, generally to work in parallel with a legal advice clinic.  Legal advisers refer clients to the MAC if they are involved in a dispute that may benefit from being mediated.  The MAC adviser then explains the mediation process and provides information such that the client can decide whether they would like to invite the other party to the dispute to mediate.

At the same time the MAC adviser can assist the client in making an application to LawWorks for a pro bono mediation or to another mediation provider if they are ineligible.

MACs help direct people towards mediation, who may otherwise have never had access to such a service.  In turn, many of them will then have their dispute resolved using the mediation process and avoid spending further time and money in a court or tribunal process.

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The Innocence Network UK: A Synergy of Research, Education and Policy (Ad)VenturesDr Michael Naughton, University of Bristol, Chair, Innocence Network UK

This Paper argues that the traditional view of a division between teaching and research in Higher Education is bridged by the Innocence Network UK (INUK), the umbrella organisation for member innocence projects in universities in the UK, which encompasses a synergy of research-led teaching, teaching-led research, research-led communications and communications-led research and teaching initiatives. It charts research origins of the INUK in the recognition of the causes of wrongful convictions and the inability of the criminal appeals system (despite the creation of the Criminal Cases Review Commission) to guarantee that all innocent victims of wrongful conviction will be able to overturn their convictions. It shows the educational benefits of student participation in innocence project activities, charting the growth of the INUK from a single member innocence project to almost 20 in just three years. It discusses the research symposia that the Innocence Network UK holds each year. It flags up some of the key policy initiatives that are starting to flow from the innocence projects movement in terms of the on-going engagements with the key agencies of the criminal justice system.

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Innocence Projects: A viable LPC3 Elective?Julie Price, Solicitor, Pro Bono Co-ordinator, Cardiff Law School

This Paper considers the potential of innocence projects as a model for clinical education, focusing on new collaborative opportunities offered by the LPC3 as heralded by the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s Pre Qualification Review (formerly the Law Society’s Training Framework Review).

It emphasises the multi-purpose functions of the innocence project and its potential benefits to:

universities who need to find appropriate models to fulfil their obligations;

staff looking for innovative teaching and learning clinical education and pro bono programmes;

students who want (in their droves!) to participate in the innocence projects initiative and investigate cases of alleged wrongful conviction of the innocent;

practitioners who can enhance their pro bono credentials with a minimal time commitment; and, not least,

alleged innocent victims of wrongful conviction and imprisonment who need assistance to, possibly, overturn their convictions.

It analyses the ingredients that need to be present to foster the right conditions to facilitate the growth of the emerging innocence projects movement within UK universities, and why the conditions may be ideal for the movement to flourish. In particular, it will look at an ever-increasing momentum for both skills and pro bono work within universities and argues that the climate is right for even the more traditional law schools to be open to clinical legal activities.

It concludes by outlining how the Innocence Network UK (INUK), the umbrella organisation for almost 20 member innocence projects, might develop a stand-alone Innocence Projects LPC3 Elective subject in collaboration with an established LPC provider.

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Extending Clinical Legal Education into Legal Practice Colleen Smith, Sheffield Hallam University

Sheffield Hallam University has been involved in Clinical Legal Education for the past 15 years, we run several assessed modules which involve a 'clinical' element. Including the Law Clinic, Law in the Community (street law programme), Mooting and Law in Practice. This workshop will look at the newly formed Law in Practice module which has run for its first year at Sheffield Hallam University.

We have developed the Law in Practice module to extend the 'clinical' experience to more students and also to provide an opportunity for students enhance their 'employability' skills.

Since the Leitch Review in 2006 and the newly formed Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS), there has been a strong focus on collaborative and work based learning, encouragement of engagement on a large scale with employers and a focus that employers should be key stakeholders in the higher education process. Taking this into consideration, a work based module was developed to encompass a three way relationship between the student, academic tutor and employer.

Law in Practice is a level 6 optional module whereby students are placed with an external legal service provider for one day per week during term time. The students have an academic tutor and a legal service provider supervisor, the tutor student and supervisor all work in collaboration.

This workshop will consider how the module operates including: How host organisations are recruited How students are recruited and selected How the module is taught How the module is assessed The type and range of work students undertake on the module How the module is being developed and expanded

This workshop will also discuss ethical issues, employability, the impact of the training framework review on work based learning and the relationship between work based learning and clinical legal education.

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Reflective Student Practitioner - an example integrating clinical experience into the curriculumClaire Sparrow – University of Portsmouth

Our project began in 2004 and involves LLB students training (in year two) and then acting as Citizens Advice Bureau advisers for 120 hours (in year three).

We have been able to incorporate this work into the existing course structure fully in third year (40 credit ‘Reflective Student Practitioner’ unit) and partially in second year (as part of a 10 credit Careers and Research Management unit), so that students undertake a substantial proportion of this work for credit. This has been possible by creating a parallel and alternative route to the existing 40 credit Legal Dissertation. Assessment in third year is by way of a 3000 word legal essay (based on a legal topic raised in client interviews); a 3000 word reflective analysis of their experience, a journal and three letters that they have drafted in their CAB work. This is produced through one-to-one supervision * in much the same way as one would supervise a dissertation.

Our aims in this project were to give students the opportunity to learn skills which would be of benefit in their professional lives, improve their employability and allow them to become more engaged in their local community. Portsmouth CAB was in need of more advisers and was interested in recruiting younger volunteers to establish a broader mix of advisers. The guarantee of 120 hours was a valuable commitment to them.

I would propose to offer an explanation of how we manage our relationship with Portsmouth CAB and how we share responsibilities between us (for example, in training and recruitment). I would also seek to evaluate what has worked well and what has been problematic in working with CAB and tips for setting up similar projects. As part of this I would also discuss feedback from students who have undertaken the units as well as from the CAB itself.

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How a Mediation Clinic Can Inform the CurriculumBy Ben Waters and Dr Leo Raznovich, Canterbury Christ Church University, Kent, UK

There are many different ways in which the curriculum can be developed to provide clinical legal education to students at university level. With the assistance of HEFCE research informed teaching funding and after nearly a year of preparatory research, a Mediation Clinic has been set up at Canterbury Christ Church University as a fundamental element of a more ambitious plan, namely the development of a Qualifying Law Degree.

The clinic at Canterbury Christ Church University is unique, not least for the fact that it is the first such clinic to be based within a UK university and, one which will give students the opportunity to learn experientially in a rather innovative way.

This presentation will consider three aspects of this venture. Firstly, it will focus on the benefits of research informed teaching and provide a view on how such discipline based research can help to integrate experiential learning in the core curriculum. Secondly, it will explore the importance of providing a practical input during the academic stage of legal training. Finally, the presentation will consider other opportunities which the clinic provides and will reflect upon the challenges faced when embarking upon the development of such a project.

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