Sunday, May 4, 2008

10:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon
New Clinicians Program

Kim Diana Connolly, University of South Carolina 

Carolyn Kaas, Quinnipiac University 

Laura E. McNally, Case Western Reserve University

Michael Pinard, University of Maryland

This session is designed to provide newer clinicians (including individuals who've been on board for a few years as well as those starting teaching next fall) a brief orientation to the clinical legal education arena. The session will provide an introduction to the history of the clinical movement and its current status, as well as some interactive discourse about pedagogical matters, supervision issues, finding your niche and other subjects important to our newer colleagues.  Helpful background and practical materials will be provided.    

1:45 – 1:55 p.m.

Tribal Blessing
Justice Raymond D. Austin, Retired Justice of the Navajo Nation Supreme Court, Distinguished Jurist in Residence, University of Arizona

1:55 - 2:10 p.m.

Welcome

Carl C. Monk, AALS Executive Director

Introduction

Carol M. Suzuki, University of New Mexico and Chair, Planning Committee for 2008 AALS Conference on Clinical Legal Education

2:10 - 3:30 p.m.

Reflecting on Pedagogy

Charles R. Calleros, Arizona State University

Christine N. Cimini, University of Denver

Patricia H. Murrell, Director, Center for the Study of Higher Education and the Leadership Institute in Judicial Education, The University of Memphis College of Education, Memphis, Tennessee 

We will begin the conference with speakers from both outside and inside the legal academy to expand our understanding of ways to reflect upon the risks, the mistakes and the consequences of pedagogical choices. The panel will explore how we can creatively understand and approach mistakes we make in teaching so that we continue to take risks and explore opportunities.

3:30 - 3:45 p.m.

Refreshment Break

3:45 - 5:15 p.m.

Working Groups: Reflection

(See the handout in your conference materials folder for your Working Group assignment and its location)

5:30 – 7:30 p.m.

AALS Reception with Posters

Assessment – A Call to Clinicians to Share What We Do and Learn and Do More

Kandis Scott, Santa Clara University

Human Rights & the Environment: Interdisciplinary Practice and Its Risks and Opportunities

Bonnie Docherty, Harvard Law School

Tyler R. Giannini, Harvard Law School

Risks of Accepting Court-Requested Representation: Slam Dunk or Dog?
Mary K. Hanna, Temple University

Seattle University International Human Rights Clinic-Hate Free Zone Detention Center Conditions Project

Gwynne Skinner, Visiting Clinical Professor, Seattle University

Florida International University Educational Advocacy Clinic: An Opportunity to Open the Door to Education Through Advocacy

Phyllis Williams Kotey, Florida International University

The Clinical Divide: Reflections on Barriers to Collaboration Between Clinics and Legal Writing Departments

Sarah Schrup, Northwestern University

Lessons on Strategy Development: Moving From Lawyering to Teaching

Christina A. Zawisza, The University of Memphis

.

Monday, May 5, 2008

7:30 – 9:00 a.m.

AALS Section on Clinical Legal Education Committees

(See message board in the Foyer for listing of committees and their meeting room locations)

9:00 - 10:15 a.m.

Our Collective Identities:  Approaching Cross-Cultural Issues in the Classroom

Isabelle R. Gunning, Southwestern Law School

Danielle Jones, Stanford Law School

Ragini N. Shah, Suffolk University

Jane M. Spinak, Columbia University

Clinical seminars raise cross-cultural issues in unique ways because of the impact and influence these issues have on students’ interactions with their clients, their instructors, other students, and colleagues.  How are cross-cultural issues raised in the classroom?  How do we raise cross-cultural issues through cases, client interactions, and larger policy frameworks? How does the instructor’s identity affect the way we handle these issues and the way our facilitation is perceived by students?  How do our students’ identities fit into this equation?  And how do all of these complex themes (and the subtexts/threads they suggest) intersect in our daily work, and in the classroom setting in particular?

10:15 - 10:30 a.m.

Refreshment Break

10:30 a.m. - 12:00 noon

Working Groups: Classroom Teaching

12:00 noon - 1:45 p.m.

AALS Luncheon: AALS Section on Clinical Legal Education Awards

2:00 - 3:30 p.m.

Concurrent Sessions

The Role of "New" in Risks, Mistakes, and Opportunities

Deborah Cantrell, University of Colorado

Dale S. Margolin, St. John's University

Erik S. Pitchal, Suffolk University

Marcella Beth Silverman, Fordham University

In clinical education, we aim to create a supportive environment for our students so that they can recognize their mistakes or opportunities and learn from them. How can we be good about doing that for ourselves as clinicians?  This session will explore how trying something new in clinical legal education presents its own set of risks, mistakes, and opportunities.  The session will be led by four clinicians from four different law schools, each of whom undertook something very new in 2007-08.  As clinicians in new roles this year, we certainly made our share of mistakes and had our share of opportunities. We will share all of these in an interactive forum, using critical incidents featuring opportunities and mistakes that arose due to our “newness.”  As a group, we hope to consider whether we recognized our risks, opportunities, and mistakes, and whether (or how) we (and our students) learned from them.  

Deborah Cantrell, an experienced clinician, became the new clinic director at University of Colorado this year.  She moved to a new school to take on a new role and also began teaching in an area (family law) that was new to her. Dale Margolin stepped into a new role as interim director of the child advocacy clinic at St. John’s University, having been a clinical fellow the year before. Erik Pitchal is a new clinician, having joined the faculty at Suffolk University this year, where he founded a new clinical program in child advocacy. Marcella Silverman, an experienced clinician at Fordham Law School, started teaching in a new subject area (consumer protection) outside her expertise (housing and government benefits).  This is the second time in six years that she made a switch. The first time, she moved from Community Lawyering/Welfare Rights to Securities Arbitration.

Taking Risks and the Specter of Loss
-view handout-

Dan R. Smulian, Brooklyn Law School

Lauris P. Wren, Hofstra University

In order for clinical teachers to stay interested and for students to be challenged, a clinic must take risks.  The cases with the biggest risks bring the biggest rewards.  Loss, however, is a necessary part of taking risks.  We wish to gauge how loss and the risk of loss affect various aspects of clinical programs.  How do they affect clinicians’ selection of cases? What are the effects on the professor and the clinic when a case is lost?  Do clinical professors prepare students for the possibility of losing cases, and, if so, how?  What pedagogical benefit is sought from this upsetting, but common facet of legal practice? How does loss affect students’ concepts of themselves as advocates, immediately after the loss, and going forward as attorneys?   We have designed a survey to gauge the effect of risk and loss on clinical programs and have sent it to a number of immigration law clinics around the United States to try it out.  In the responses to this initial survey, clinical teachers overwhelmingly said that they believe that losing cases did affect the students’ commitments or beliefs regarding the type of law practiced or their professional goals.  Nevertheless, the responses did not reveal a particularly defined approach to addressing students’ reactions to loss.  In our reflective concurrent session we intend to discuss the further results of that initial survey and to launch a larger study.   We plan to engage the attendees in a discussion of the impact of loss on the students, the professor, and the clinic.  The survey is posted on the conference website for review prior to the concurrent session.  It is also available online at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=rqi508hN2NC4WOofSfQszw_3d_3d. We ask all participants of our concurrent session to complete the online survey and come prepared to give us feedback regarding its design. 

The Joy of Evaluation: Creative Methods to Improve Clinical Program Evaluation

Lisa Radtke Bliss, Georgia State University

Sylvia Caley, Georgia State University

William J. Fleener, Jr., Thomas M. Cooley Law School

Kimberly E. O’Leary, Thomas M. Cooley Law School

The focus of this presentation is on the methods and tools used to conduct program evaluation.  Evaluation tools are useful in assessing the quality of Clinic students’ learning and experience as well as the quality and the utility of the legal services provided.  The facilitators will present two examples of formal program evaluation, including the use of an independent evaluator and an approved IRB protocol as well as community dialogue groups.  The community dialogue model will be utilized to conduct the presentation requiring the active participation of the audience.  The facilitators will outline the strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities associated with their models.  Participants will offer their ideas and experiences while experiencing the use of one model in action.  The result should be a thoughtful discussion on the best approaches to obtaining feedback on the success of clinical programs. The evaluation process, by its nature, prompts and facilitates reflection.

Mindfulness, Meditation, and Reflection in Clinical Teaching
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Charles R. Halpern, Chairman of the Board, The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, Berkeley, California

Tamara Kuennen, University of Denver

This workshop will introduce participants to the practice of meditation and its use in clinical teaching. In recent years Halpern, a pioneer in clinical legal education, has led meditation retreats and workshops for lawyers, students, professors and judges, exploring the "meditative perspective," the cluster of relevant skills that are developed through meditation practice. Kuennen, who is relatively new to both clinical teaching and to the practice of meditation, will discuss the ways that meditation has directly impacted her ability to deal with the stress and time pressures of academia. In particular, she will discuss how it has enhanced her effectiveness as a clinical teacher and supervisor by helping her to become a more sensitive listener, more fully present in the moment, more flexible in thinking and feeling, more open to divergent and changing points of view, and most significantly, more self-reflective rather than self-critical.

We will practice meditation together, with instruction that is suitable for experienced mediators and for novices. We will discuss the meditative perspective and offer interactive exercises and simulations that will permit participants to experience and assess the benefits of meditation practice in their lives as clinical teachers, as a technique for use in clinical supervision situations, and to make students more effective in their clinical work and in their representation of clients.

Reflecting on Improvisation:  Jumping, Soaring, Contemplating the Crash

Deborah A. Maranville, University of Washington

Mary Helen McNeal, Syracuse University

Calvin Pang, University of Hawaii

In both law teaching and lawyering, success rises from a rich mixture of hard work, structure, improvisation and letting go.  Many law teachers attain their positions through focused hard work, and a linear, step-by-step approach to problems.  Most of us are planners who prefer structure, order, and preparation.  Indeed, our professional culture strongly disapproves of the lack of preparation while rewarding those who can find order and logic amid conflict. But in law teaching, as in lawyering, there is a ledge at which complete control disappears, and one must jump.  Most of us hope to soar, though sometimes we simply must crash.  Can we take flight after the crash, and if so, how? This session will provide a time to reflect on letting go and the use of improvisation in our work and lives.  How well do we tolerate letting go?  Do we give it too little attention?  Can we learn to improvise other than when we have to, as a last resort?  Could improvisation and letting go be good for us?    The co-presenters for this session view themselves as facilitators, not experts.  They will share their own struggles around letting go and improvisation, provide examples from other disciplines, and elicit additional stories and reflections from the group using a variety of interactive teaching strategies.  We hope to help participants articulate the wisdom they already have, make discoveries, receive affirmation, and be challenged with new questions.

Politics and Pedagogy: Clinical Work in Politically Charged Areas of Law

Sioban Albiol, DePaul University

Andrea D. Lyon, DePaul University

Cynthia W. Roseberry, DePaul University

In this session we would discuss how one goes about teaching the politics of the case, helping the clinical student to absorb those lessons and discern where they belong (and don’t belong) in the representation of a client, and explore where taking on issues of political magnitude have resulted in pedagogical mistakes. This concurrent session will explore how we can creatively respond to concerns raised by volatile issues while providing good representation and good pedagogy. We intend to address the risks, opportunities and mistakes that these volatile cases present to us as teachers and lawyers, and to use short examples of these risks and opportunities to engage the participants in this session in a discussion of these issues. We will each put together a case study/critical incident piece; we are trying to develop an adjective game which might be engaging - we envision a discussion about unearthing assumptions/biases etc. through the use of descriptions. We are also contemplating writing the same case study differently to see if we get different results. It is our hope that by sharing some of our experiences that we will encourage the participants to reflect on similar (or different) experiences they have had, issues they are contemplating may occur if they take on certain kinds of work, and to examine our own assumptions.

Risks Worth Taking: Working with Students with Disabilities in a Clinical Setting

Alexis Anderson, Boston College

Lynn Barenberg, Boston College

Maritza Karmely, Boston College

Norah Wylie, Boston College

This session seeks to offer insights into how clinical experience can be used to assist students with non-visible disabilities, such as mental health issues, cognitive, and learning disabilities, to prepare most effectively for practice. Law schools have become more adept at providing accommodations in academic classes to qualified students with documented disabilities. In a groundbreaking 1999 article, Sande Buhai alerted the academy to the role which clinics can play in the legal education of students with disabilities. This concurrent session would build upon these insights.    It is a given that the ADA applies to law school clinics.  It is also true that lawyers with disabilities face many harsh realities when they enter practice. To help

clinicians and accommodations officers develop best practices, we plan to engage the audience in an analysis of our clinical teaching experiences with law students with mental health and learning impairments.  We hope to encourage participants to wrestle with some core issues such as:

• methods clinics can use to help these students seek assistance and develop tools and strategies for dealing with their disabilities;

• the duty to preserve ethical and academic standards while accommodating students with disabilities; and

• the importance of including law school administrators (including student services and career placement) in close conversation with clinical supervisors and students who face these challenges.

Uniting Substantive Courses with Clinical Methodology: A Risky Business, Does It Work?

Marilyn Joan Berger, Seattle University

John B. Mitchell, Seattle University

“Whoever controls the media, the images captures the culture” Allen Ginsburg, Poet Reflection and Assessment

Our program is a story about telling stories. It is a story about a journey we took together trying to use clinical material to bring the context of client narratives into teaching traditional, large, substantive courses.  That story is one of reflection upon our efforts at framing and responding to setbacks, successes, the spectrum of risks involved in the effort, and how we perceived the risks we were taking.  The story traverses substantive classroom teaching incorporating clinical skills, DVD’s, an on-going soap opera which provided the fact pattern in a criminal law course, and what we encountered adapting pretrial and trial advocacy simulation skills exercises for use in Film and Gender seminars, Civil Procedure, and Evidence.  The program is patterned after a “clinical” methodology – the “Story Circle”

Audience Participation:  The “Story Circle” It would be nice if we could build a large fire and all sit in a circle under the stars, but that environment will have to be left to the imagination of the participants.  Instead, we will sit in a circle, and we will share our stories about using client and lawyer narrative frameworks and how those frameworks can be used in large, traditional classes.  As presenters, we will start with one of our stories about using client narratives in teaching traditional classes.  We will quickly invite others who will tell their stories.  After each story, we will briefly discuss:

(1)      What was the story really about—Pride?  Politics?  Pedagogy?  Principles?

(2)      What can we learn from the story?

(3)      Could the story ending be changed?   Would changing the ending be desirable?

How would the storyteller’s goal, if achieved, have led to demystifying the substantive law?  Procedures?  Policy?

Reflecting on Who We Are: How Can Adjunct/Practicing Lawyers be Included in the Clinical Community? How Can We Learn from Each Other and Improve Both Teaching and Practice?
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Claudia Angelos, New York University

Harriet N. Katz, Rutgers University-Camden

David Patton, University of Alabama

Dennis P. Talty, Esquire, Moorestown, New Jersey

Practicing lawyers often play an important role in the skills curriculum of a law school. They may instruct in multi-section skills simulation courses, supervise students in externship placements, co-supervise in-house clinics, teach practice-context courses in which students concentrate on an integrated understanding of the doctrine and lawyering judgment in a specialized practice area, as well as teach selected doctrinal courses.  Other than in co-taught clinics, these instructors may not be connected to the clinical education community. This panel discussion will explore goals and barriers, questions and dilemmas, to helping them as teachers and learning from them as lawyers.  Discussion at the session will focus on the views of those attending about whether and how to work with adjuncts to share pedagogy, and the opportunities for and barriers to achieving this goal.  The conference presenters are a co-teacher of an in-house clinic, an externship director, and a practicing attorney who teaches a business transaction course. We are providing a brief survey about this topic which will be posted on the conference website and distributed on lawclinic and at the session, to stimulate discussion and gather information.

Professor Katz directs an Externship Program, in which numerous practicing attorneys supervise students. Professor Angelos co-teaches a civil rights clinic with an ACLU attorney.  Dennis P. Talty, Esq., teaches Small Business Legal Counseling at Rutgers.

Clinical Engagement at Multiple Levels: Exploring the Relationship Between Direct Representation and Policy Reform Work

Kenneth J. King, Suffolk University

Jennifer Lee Koh, Stanford Law School

Christopher Northrop, University of Maine

Jayashri Srikantiah, Stanford Law School

This interactive session will reflect on the opportunities and risks facing clinics that combine policy reform work with individual client representation.  In particular, the session will focus on how decisions made during case selection can affect the opportunities and risks that arise during teaching and supervision.  

As the Carnegie Report noted, the current model of legal education focuses on the vigorous representation of clients.  This emphasis may overshadow other demands of legal professionalism, such as the importance of fostering the social and ethical aspects of a student’s professional identity.  Consistent with the Carnegie Report’s recommendations, a number of clinics choose to incorporate policy reform work with individual client representation, in part due to enhanced teaching opportunities related to the following issues: 

• situating individual casework within a larger community;
• exposure to different solutions to a social problem and different skill sets needed to achieve those solutions;
• reflecting upon students’ identities as lawyers within a professional community;
• exploring the tensions between zealous advocacy on behalf of an individual client and commitment to a larger social cause;
• richness and depth during case rounds; and
• exploring issues related to community accountability.

Decisions made during case selection may affect the nature of the opportunities, tensions and risks that arise during clinical supervision.  Such decisions may focus on the type of policy reform work and the diversity in legal subject matter between policy reform and individual case projects.  The session will explore questions such as the following: 

• What are the benefits and drawbacks of assigning students to both individual cases as well as a policy advocacy project over the course of the same term?   
• What teaching opportunities are gained (or foregone) when policy advocacy work arises directly out of individual client work? 
• How might case and advocacy project selection decisions affect the clinic’s ability to develop students’ social-ethical values? 

• What kinds of institutional constraints might clinicians face when taking a position on issues of public controversy? 

Social Justice Lawyering and Community Needs: Opportunities and Barriers in the Clinical Setting

Wendy A. Bach, City University of New York

Debra Bechtel, Brooklyn Law School

Juliet M. Brodie, Stanford Law School

David Jerome Reiss, Brooklyn Law School

Lisa Smith, Brooklyn Law School

This concurrent session is designed for clinicians whose clinic designs, teaching goals, and/or scholarly agendas expressly involve thinking about social justice outcomes, “movement lawyering,” and/or the imperative to respond to some degree to community legal and political needs.  Law school clinics are in some ways uniquely well situated to advance social justice lawyering:  our location at the intersection where the academy and the real world meet creates the opportunity for innovation and also the mission to think critically about our work and to disseminate – through scholarly articles or other means – the fruits of our labor.  We are also free from federal or other funding restraints on our practice and work closely with students who are free of the assumptions of entrenched practitioners.  Conversely, law school clinics sometimes face unique barriers to community-responsive or movement lawyering:  pedagogical goals, institutional commitments or restraints, time and credit limits, and the commitment to student autonomy and non-directive supervision can all operate to prevent clinics from playing an important role in local movements for justice.  This highly interactive workshop will begin with a brief introduction to frame the questions and them move quickly into break out groups.  Participants will be invited to move beyond traditional dichotomies and will have the opportunity to rethink their relationship to the social justice agenda of their community and to reevaluate how they might more effectively meet the multiple demands of pedagogy, institution and community.

Risks and Opportunities in Self-Disclosure: What Should Teachers and Students Reveal to Each Other in Managing their Personal Life Crises and Why?

Spencer Rand, Temple University

Dveera Segal, Villanova University

As professionals, we constantly face the need to balance our many competing professional and personal responsibilities.  While always a challenge, this balance can become exceedingly difficult when a crisis arises in one’s personal life.  As our students are becoming professionals, they have the opportunity and the need to learn how to achieve this delicate balance.  Thus, when our students experience such a crisis, what do they do and how do they handle the inherent conflicts?  What can we teach them about how to conduct themselves “professionally”?  When we, as teachers, experience such a crisis, what should we reveal to our students?  How do we maximize the benefits of these teachable moments? 

In this session, we will look at what models we offer students in deciding how to handle personal crises while practicing law.  Among the questions we will consider are what are the types of crises that are likely to impinge on one’s responsibilities to one’s clients? What is the level and type of difficulty that should be addressed?  What obligation does the student have to disclose the personal crisis?  To whom should they make this disclosure?  When should the student make the disclosure?  What accommodations are appropriate to request?  How should the student weigh the impact on clients, colleagues and others? 

We will look at how and when we raise these issues in our clinics, including whether we teach about this generally or wait for a crisis to occur.  When we know, or suspect, that they are experiencing crises in their lives, do we approach the student and raise the issue?  If so, how much do we demand that students reveal to us and why?  Do we act differently toward our clinical students than their supervisors will in a law office?  And when such crises happen to us, as teachers and supervisors, how do we model the proper way to deal with a crisis?  Is it appropriate or effective for us to reveal these crises to our students?  With the session participants, we hope to explore these issues and develop a model for teaching students to cope with difficult life situations while honoring their professional responsibilities. 

Mediation Advocacy in a Clinical Setting

Harold I. Abramson, Touro College

Jonathan M. Hyman, Rutgers University-Newark

This program will focus on how to supervise students in a civil clinic when the matter is in mediation, either by court referral or by the parties’ choice.   Clinical professors have considerable expertise and experience supervising students who are representing clients in court.  But how should a professor skilled in the courtroom supervise a student who is representing a client in the mediation room?  As developed in Professor Abramson’s widely-used NITA book, Mediation Representation-Advocating in a Problem-Solving Process and elsewhere in the mediation literature, the lawyer in the mediation room needs a different skill set than the lawyer in the courtroom. Using critical incidents and role plays, this session will identify the skills and values particularly important for representing clients in mediation, and for cultivating the appropriate skills and values in law students.

The Worst-Case Scenario: Malpractice and Serious Ethical Breaches by Students

John J. Francis, Washburn University

Gerard Francis Glynn, Barry University

Robert L. Jones, Jr., Notre Dame Law School

Poor performance by student interns occasionally reaches the level of malpractice or a serious breach of professional ethics.  Such occurrences can have devastating consequences for the client, for the supervising attorney, for the clinic, and also for the student intern, whose conduct may ultimately be reported to bar examiners or other officials.   This session will explore, through video vignettes and group discussion, three aspects of such incidents:  (1) Whether clinics should attempt to prevent serious misconduct by screening clinic applicants for criminal, substance abuse, mental health, or past disciplinary problems; (2) How clinical supervisors can identify and respond to neglect or misbehavior before it reaches crisis proportions; and (3) How clinics should respond to serious misbehavior, both therapeutically and pedagogically, consistent with their duties to the bar and the law school.

The Clinic Retreat and Collective Reflection: Taking Risks and Learning from Mistakes

Liz Ryan Cole, Vermont Law School

Thomas F. Guernsey, Albany Law School

Nancy M. Maurer, Albany Law School

The clinic retreat is one way of moving us toward collective reflection as we juggle practice, teaching, and administration -- so that the lessons learned from our combined experiences can be applied to new opportunities. This session will explore the value of the clinic retreat as a vehicle for clinic-wide reflection in all areas:  pedagogy, classroom teaching and goals, supervision, and system-wide accomplishments and future success. 

We will draw on some of the lessons learned from the Albany Law Clinic & Justice Center’s facilitated retreats and the retreat experiences of other law schools. Using video and role play of various aspects of our retreats as examples, presenters will demonstrate and engage participants in addressing the following: 

1. Why clinic-wide reflection is important and how collective reflection may benefit the institution as a whole as well as the clinic and individual clinic faculty.

2. Planning a clinic retreat: Obtaining support from law school administration,Getting busy clinical faculty on board,Setting goals.

3. Building clinic community at the retreat in order to build ideas

4. The role of a facilitator

5. Reflecting on retreat successes and mistakes

6. Follow up implementing and measuring goals

Works-in-Progress

1.     Prosecuting the Jena Six

2.     Crime, Punishment and the Racial Contract

3.      Bumps in the Road: When Antidiscrimination Laws Encounter Process Defects

3:30 – 3:45 p.m.

Refreshment Break

3:45 - 5:30 p.m.

Concurrent Sessions

Reflections on Whether and to What Extent We Should Teach Trial Advocacy Skills as Part of the Classroom Component in Live-Client Based Clinical Programs

Zelda B. Harris, University of Arizona

John C. Lore III, Rutgers University-Camden

In planning of the classroom component of a clinical course, we must analyze and anticipate the possible consequences of our pedagogical choices for our students and their clients.  These consequences are particularly difficult in the context of teaching trial advocacy skills.  However, trial advocacy skills generally require a full semester or an intensive short program for students to achieve a basic understanding of and be able to implement these learned skills. In this concurrent session, participants will engage in a thoughtful discussion of teaching trial advocacy skills in a live client clinic class. Participants will engage in a free-write exercise, evaluate models presented on video and reflect on possible best practices. Questions for interrogation include:  Should clinicians devote classroom time to teaching trial advocacy skills as opposed to working with students one-on-one on skills? What trial advocacy skills are necessary for students participating in transaction based clinical programs? What do students who will primarily interview, research, advise and refer clients need to learn about trial advocacy skills? How can we prepare students for trial advocacy in systems that are less formal and may not strictly adhere to traditional rules of evidence and practice (i.e. municipal court, misdemeanor bench trials, and family court and juvenile court proceedings)? What can be achieved by dedicating just a few classes to teaching direct and cross-examination, opening statements, and closing arguments? Is it more productive to teach some skills in the large classroom setting and reserve others for one-on-one supervision time? What is the best method for teaching these skills in this limited setting?  What type of learning materials would best fit into the clinical seminar model?  What type of teaching materials would be most helpful for clinicians teaching this skill set in the clinical setting? How should student performance be evaluated?

Reflecting on the New Lawyering Courses: Curricular Synthesis

Beverly Balos, University of Minnesota

Bill Ong Hing, University of California, Davis

Robert F. Seibel, Visiting Professor of Law, California Western School of Law

Nina W. Tarr, University of Illinois

This panel will present core curricular reform proposals that incorporate ethics and lawyering skills while integrating a critical analysis for the exploration of privilege and difference. Examples from the University of Minnesota and California Western will be presented. The interactive discussion will address the potential benefits and risks of initiating curricular change, the possible opportunities to maximize clinical teaching goals by embedding them in the overall fabric of legal education, and strategic choices and methods for generating support for moving law schools toward a more integrated curriculum. The presentation also will examine institutional biases and resistance to change, strategies for overcoming resistance, and methods to actualize potential coalitions to accomplish educational goals consistent with clinical education.

Creating Seminars that Sizzle: Enhancing Clinical Learning Through Group Interaction and Reflection

Michele Estrin Gilman, University of Baltimore

Leigh Goodmark, University of Baltimore

Margaret E. Johnson, University of Baltimore

What to do during seminar?  This is a question all clinicians face as we seek to create a safe space for the entire class to come together for reflection and learning.  Students thrive on their casework and can be less engaged in the classroom portion of the course.  After all, they took a clinic to get out of the classroom!  At this concurrent session, we will discuss and compare two different approaches to classroom teaching, both of which have been successful in not only keeping our students awake, but also in enhancing the other components of the clinical experience.  The first approach uses an integrated simulation throughout the semester to teach lawyering skills and theory.  The second approach uses the clinic’s active cases as jumping off points for teaching the same material and generally eschews using hypothetical cases.  Neither clinic focuses on teaching substantive law encountered in our cases.  Both clinics share the same pedagogical goals, which include lawyering and trial skills, humanity of lawyering, client centeredness, case theory driven advocacy, professionalism, collaboration, self-reflection, and critical thinking.  We will use these contrasting models as well as several interactive exercises to spur discussion among participants about seminar teaching goals and methods for achieving those goals.  At the end of the session, we hope that all participants will have new ideas for returning to their students with fresh seminars. 

Rethinking Cross-Cultural Training

Judith L. Fox, Notre Dame Law School

Janet Thompson Jackson, Washburn University

What exactly is cultural competence and how do we teach it?  For years, the clinical community has struggled with how and when to teach cross-cultural counseling.  Broad consensus exists in the clinical community regarding the importance of such training; however, considering everything else we are attempting to accomplish, where can we fit it in?  In this session we will explore the concept and application of cultural competence by first facilitating an exercise that moves participants through the stages of multicultural competencies.  The exercise will challenge participants to identify their own cultural identities and biases.  We will then examine how to move toward a broader definition of cultural competency and illustrate methods of incorporating the practice of cultural competency into the clinical curriculum through skills training and through an ongoing dialogue.

Cross-Clinic Collaborations: Looking Forward and Reflecting Back

Lily Arbab Camet, American University

Sara Faherty, State University of New York at Buffalo

George M. Hezel, State University of New York at Buffalo

Adrienne Lockie, American University

Meetali Jain, American University

Victoria F. Phillips, American University

Jayesh Rathod, American University

Jane K. Stoever, American University

LaShanda Taylor, American University

Suzanne E. Tomkins, State University of New York at Buffalo

Our session seeks to answer: why engage in cross-clinic collaboration, what choices exist for increasing collaboration, and what are the benefits and risks in cross-clinic collaboration within law school institutions.  Reflecting on our prior teaching experiences, we realized the wealth of risks, mistakes, and opportunities that occurred in cross-clinic collaborations.  Recognizing the many models of collaboration and the diversity of clinical programs, we wish to explore the values of cross-clinic collaboration for clients, students, pedagogy, and for our law school institutions. 

Through multi-media presentations, we will introduce you to innovative projects at the University of Buffalo School of Law and several ongoing projects at the Washington College of Law.  Our examples include joint endeavors across clinics within institutions, co-teaching in joint seminars, grand rounds, joint supervision, representing clients across clinics, and the development of new classes.  We will share what inspired us to undertake cross-clinic collaboration, and the origins of these projects. 

Through interactive small group exercises, we will explore the continuum of cross-clinic collaboration.  What are the different models of cross-clinic collaboration?  What are the challenges of cross-clinic collaboration?  What factors should we consider in undertaking cross-clinic collaboration?  How does it serve student needs, client needs, and institutional needs?  As a group, we will brainstorm and evaluate the different and overlapping considerations for developing methodology for cross-clinic collaboration at various institutions. 

Clinic Administrators: Unspoken Opportunities to Teach Students in a Clinical Environment

Margie Caranci, Roger Williams University

Laura Garcia, University of Baltimore

Mary Lynch, Albany Law School

Irene Scharf, Southern New England School of Law

Susan Terwilliger, Albany Law School

Linda Williams, Administrative Assistant, Legal Clinic, Vanderbilt University

This session will identify the most common issues that clinical administrators encounter with client conflicts procedures.  Using the diverse experience and expertise of the panel members (both faculty and administrators), this interactive session will work towards potential solutions to numerous hypothetical conflicts scenarios.  Within small groups, we will analyze the scenarios and use our combined experience to propose common policy for conflicts issues that arise in the clinic environment.  We will explore the risks we take when establishing client conflict systems, the mistakes we’ve made in doing so, and the opportunities we encounter for helping teach students how to approach conflicts thoroughly and professionally throughout their legal career.

“Can I Have a New Clinic Partner?”: How Institutional Culture Affects the Risks We Take and the Mistakes We Make in Dealing with Students, Deans, Colleagues and the Community

Wendi Jill Adelson, Florida State University

Marisa Silenzi Cianciarulo, Chapman University

Michael Scott Vastine, St. Thomas University

This concurrent session seeks to engage clinicians from various types of clinics in a discussion about how institutional culture influences how we define and approach mistakes, and how we define and assess risks.  Each of the presenters runs an immigration-related clinical program, but in very different contexts.  Professor Vastine runs a clinic that has existed since 1992; Professor Cianciarulo has just established a new clinic; and Professor Adelson runs a pro bono legal center affiliated with a law school but not designated as a clinic.  Each of these situations presents unique challenges that affect how we perceive risks and mistakes, how we identify “teaching moments,” and how we recognize opportunities for growing as teachers.  Our goal for this session is to bring these questions to the attention of our participants through role-play exercises that we hope will encourage us all to explore these questions more openly in our work.

The Perceived Civil-Criminal Divide in Clinical Teaching

Jane H. Aiken, Georgetown University

Jeffrey Jude Pokorak, Suffolk University

Ilene B. Seidman, Suffolk University

Abbe Smith, Georgetown University

This session will focus on the common themes that run through all of our clinics, no matter the subject matter or area of law.  As clinical education has matured, we have begun to place more emphasis on teaching students how to think about themselves as lawyers and the role they play in the legal system. Too often, those of us who work in criminal and civil clinics have assumed that since we are engaged in such specialized teaching, we have little to learn from one another. This binary thinking suggests that different clinics by necessity have different goals for students and require different curricula and methods. Are we undermining our own purposes and teaching efforts by treating these clinics as somehow separate, distinct and in the business of doing very different things?  This panel will explore the challenges and opportunities that cut across this supposed divide.  Our hope is that this session will serve to expand our sense of common mission, pave the way for perfecting our pedagogical choices and happily increase the number of our clinical playmates.

Social Justice and Externships: Accident, Oxymoron or the Right Stuff?

Timothy W. Floyd, Mercer University

Sarah L. Gerwig-Moore, Mercer University

Alexander Scherr, University of Georgia

Can externship programs serve as effective vehicles to teach social justice? Is an externship an appropriate course in which to explore these ideas? This presentation seeks to reflect on existing practice and to assess both the opportunities and risks for using externship pedagogy as a primary way to teach social justice.  (By teaching social justice, we mean explicitly addressing: issues of race, class, poverty, equality, violence, conflict, etc.; the role of the legal system and lawyers themselves in perpetuating injustice and inequality; and the possibilities and opportunities for lawyers and legal institutions to advance social justice.)  In this interactive presentation, we will focus primarily on four questions. What is the current state of practice concerning social justice in placement selection? What pedagogical advantages do social justice externship placements offer (and what risks do they pose)? What approaches to teaching social justice are available in the externship classroom? How might a conscious focus on social justice affect the relationship between extern clinician and student?

Using Film in Our Clinical Teaching to Achieve Educational Goals: Acknowledging the Risks, Considering Our Mistakes, and Reflecting on the Opportunities

David F. Chavkin, American University

Brian G. Gilmore, Howard University

Angela McCaffrey, Hamline University

As technology has become increasingly available throughout the law school environment, many clinical teachers have made increasing use of film clips to achieve educational goals with their students.  Starting in the early days with reel-to-reel black-and-white systems, moving to U-matic cassettes, trading up to VHS camcorders and players, and ultimately graduating to DVD formats and streaming video, the issues in the use of film have continued to be the same – How much film is too much?  What can film allow us to do better?  How can we minimize the downsides of film?

Film clips provide opportunities to reach students who are used to taking in knowledge through their eyes and ears.  They can provide a context for the discussion of complex lawyering skills and values topics.  They can be fun for students and faculty.  They can connect with students who might not be reached through other forms of teaching.

However, using film is not risk-free.  A little bit of film goes a very long way.  Many film clips carry extensive baggage, such as sexism and racism, that may alienate students.  Film can be a very passive activity for students since they are watching and not doing.  Technology can break down and may destroy the best-laid plans.

In this interactive session, the three presenters will demonstrate both the benefits and costs of using film.  Together with the session attendees we will think systematically about the use of film in the future and we will evaluate past uses.  We will also discuss the freedom provided by the “fair use” doctrine and the best ways to maximize benefits and minimize costs. 

Exploring How To Handle and Learn from Mistakes in the Clinic

William Berman, Suffolk University

Esme Caramello, Clinical Instructor and Staff Attorney, Harvard Law School

Have you or your students made mistakes in your clinical practice?  How did you handle the mistakes, and what did your students learn from that response?  Most specialists who study human error agree that while errors should be avoided, the most productive strategy for dealing with them when they occur is to control their consequences.  Popular culture is full of examples of people who have compounded the negative consequences of errors by trying to hide them, or otherwise handling them poorly.  The goal of our session is to encourage clinicians to consider this human instinct to conceal error and to discuss how to incorporate in their curriculum methods for learning from mistakes in the clinic setting.  Because errors are inevitable, clinicians should adopt an approach that minimizes their negative consequences, while maximizing the learning from them.  In so doing, we can send our students a message that we expect them to be professional, not infallible.  In our session we will discuss mistakes that students or clinicians have made and how they handled them.  From this discussion we will extract a protocol for handling mistakes that clinicians can impart to their students as part of the curriculum. 

Finding Relevance in Seminars For Students in Diverse Field Placements

Laurie A. Barron, Roger Williams University

Eden E. Harrington, University of Texas

Lynn McDowell, Florida Coastal School of Law

Avis L. Sanders, American University

This workshop focuses on overcoming the challenge of teaching a seminar to students in diverse externship field placements or in-house clinics.   The students in these seminars may be working in a wide range of placements – public interest organizations, government agencies, courts, for-profit law firms or other clinical practice areas. Generally, these seminars focus on teaching students to become reflective practitioners and self-directed learners rather than teaching doctrine or skills.   As a result, faculty often find it difficult to generate class themes that are relevant to all or even most of the participating students.  This session will be interactive and will focus on examples of class topics that can work for students across a wide spectrum of placements and practice areas, and allow participants to consider ways in which to improve and revitalize their own current or planned seminar offerings.

To facilitate discussion, the panelists will demonstrate some seminar ideas that can be relevant to students in a range of placements and clinics. We will encourage all participants to discuss examples of successful class topics (with associated exercises, assignments, readings, etc.) and, if willing, to demonstrate how they are actually taught.  Participants will also be encouraged to discuss teaching approaches that have not worked so we learn from each other’s mistakes.  Participants can also bring ideas of classes that they want to improve, so the group can brainstorm new approaches to the teaching goals.

Note:  all participants will be asked to share ideas for seminar classes and topics, including readings, exercises, assignments, simulations, etc.  Examples will be collected and distributed to participants after the session.

Bellow Scholar Presentations

This year's Bellow Scholars will present their projects.  They are:

Brenda Bratton Blom, University of Maryland

"The Community Justice Initiative, Community Prosecution Project"

Alan M. Lerner, University of Pennsylvania

"Identifying the Red Flags of Child Neglect to Facilitate Evidence-Based Focused Responses"

Joseph B. Tulman, University of the District of Columbia

"Using Disability Rights to Diminish Incarceration"

Works-in-Progress

Session 1:

1.    Avoiding the “Secret Sentence”: A Model for Ensuring New Jersey Criminal Defendants Are Advised About Immigration Consequences Before Entering Guilty Pleas

2.    Throwing the Baby Out with the Bath Water

3.  The Myth of Collateral Consequences of Criminal Convictions: Involuntary Commitment of “Sexually Violent Predators”
-view paper-

Session 2:

1.     Beyond Freedom: The Story of the Black Lawyer in South Carolina from 1868 to 1968

2.     A New Clinician’s Ways of (Un)Knowing: Forgetting to Remember, Remembering to Forget and (Re)Constructing Identity

3.  Civil Rights Movement and Immigrant Rights Movement:  Exploring the Legal and Historical Implications of Jim Crow and State and Local Anti-Immigration Laws

5:30 – 7:00 p.m.

Reception Sponsored by University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law, Arizona State University Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law and Phoenix School of Law

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

7:30 - 9:00 a.m.

AALS Section on Clinical Legal Education Committee Meetings

9:00 – 10:15 a.m.

Reflection on Supervision: Developing Sites for Insights

Alicia Alvarez, The University of Michigan

Donna H. Lee, City University of New York

Elliott S. Milstein, American University

The private and intimate character of supervision as well as the time demands posed by working closely with students in the process of representing clients often leave little opportunity for sustained reflection about this core pedagogy of clinical teaching. Participants will watch several supervisory scenarios and work together to develop contexts and methods to rethink our goals, reassess our methods, and learn from our mistakes as clinical supervisors.

10:15 - 10:30 a.m.

Refreshment Break

10:30 a.m. – 12:00 noon

Working Groups: Supervision

(See the handout in your conference materials folder for your Working Group assignment and its location)

12:00 noon – 1:45 p.m.

AALS Luncheon – AALS Section on Clinical Legal Education Town Hall

FREE AFTERNOON

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

9:00 – 10:15 a.m.

Reflecting on Mistakes and Accomplishments of the Clinical Movement to Plan for a Successful Future

J. Michael Norwood, University of New Mexico

Aliza Gail Organick, Washburn University

Frank H. Wu, Wayne State University

The panelists reflect on where we have erred in identifying and progressing toward objectives in clinical teaching and in the Academy and provide a prescription for reaching our collective goals in the future.

10:15 - 10:30 a.m.

Refreshment Break

10:30 a.m. -12:15 p.m.

Concurrent Sessions

Supervising in Your Pajamas: Clinical Pedagogy for the Internet Generation
-view handout- -view handout 2-

Cheryl Buchert, Loyola University, New Orleans

R. Judson Mitchell, Loyola University, New Orleans

The internet generation has arrived at law clinics.  Our students expect communication to be instantaneous and everywhere.  With the advent of internet-based case management, many clinicians see boundless opportunities in constant communication with students and detailed data-based analysis of their work with no time, place, or manner boundaries in supervision and reflective feedback.  Others feel that something is lost on a pedagogical level when we interpose a computer between ourselves and our students. Moreover, many experienced clinicians are reluctant to adapt to new methodologies, fearing it will place more burdens on them than it relieves. All agree that clinical teaching is ideally a deliberative, reflective process.  What risks, opportunities, and mistakes do we encounter by adopting this fast-paced technology in our work and how can we do it most effectively? The presenters will share their experiences in developing a web-based clinical teaching tool, ClinicCases.com. They plan to engage participants about their expectations for internet-based teaching through interactive polling of their opinions and experiences.  The participants will be asked to share in discussion on topics such as:  What could the internet help you do better?  In what ways do you currently use the web in your clinic? What is lost by bringing your teaching online?  What do you fear most about new technology?  Incorporating the audience's ideas and concerns, the presenters will then give a case study of how they addressed these issues and identify what are the best (and worst) practices in online clinical teaching.  They will discuss the various pedagogical challenges this methodology creates, with real-world examples culled from student experiences. At the conclusion, participants will be invited to create individualized action plans for making the internet a creative complement to their own clinical teaching.

(Mis)communicating with Our Students: Reflecting on Ambiguity in Supervision Sessions
-view handout-

Keith Blair, University of Baltimore

John B. Snyder, University of Baltimore

As clinical teachers, one of our primary roles is to provide suggestions to students in planning and a different perspective in reflection.  Often, we carefully tailor our statements to students to avoid dictating the exact actions a student should take.  Thus, part of the student’s task is to interpret the feedback we have provided.  However, we can never be sure how students will interpret our guidance.  If it is too ambiguous or relies on experience students do not have, students can misinterpret it spectacularly, leading to errors in counseling and case development.  This concurrent session will examine influences on students’ interpretations of our guidance, the extent to which we can counter or otherwise affect those influences, and ways in which we can encourage students to reflect on their own thought processes after they have misinterpreted our guidance.

Reflecting on Approaches, Purposes, Successes and Difficulties in Giving Feedback
-view agenda- -view handout-

Maria Arias, City University of New York

Margaret Martin Barry, Catholic University of America

Beryl S. Blaustone, City University of New York -view

Sheila I. Velez Martinez, Eugenio Maria De Hostos School of Law, Mayaguez, Puerto Rico

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 concurrent session is designed as a highly interactive workshop 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.

Locating (and Moving) Boundaries: The Risks and Opportunities that Arise from Questioning the Boundaries of Client Representation in Law School Clinics

Victoria L. Chase, Rutgers University-Camden

James Parry Eyster, Ave Maria School of Law

From the first day of clinical supervision, the boundaries of representation are generally addressed.  The limitations of representation are balanced with the duty for zealous advocacy.  Using ethical rules, best practices, and inter-disciplinary standards, students are encouraged to set up boundaries, both professional and personal in their interactions with clients.  However, the limits that students observe may, in fact, harm not only the quality of their representation, but also the quality of the learning that takes in the clinic.   

Wrestling with boundaries teaches students who they are as human beings and who they will be as attorneys.  The clinical setting provides students with live clients who will often force students to analyze the appropriate scope of their representation.  It also provides a reflective, non-critical environment in which students can be encouraged to articulate their beliefs, their fears, and their expectations of themselves, their clients, and their profession.

At this session, using tapes of actual case team meetings, role plays, and simulations, we will lead participants in discussing how we identify boundaries in representation; what is good and bad about having boundaries; and the supervisor’s role in helping students work through decisions about boundaries in representation.

Reflecting on Supervision Methodology Along the (Non)Directive Continuum

Vanessa Merton, Pace University

Joseph A. Rosenberg, City University of New York

To reflect on supervision, we need a solid grasp of its framework and methodology.  We need tools to critique and assess the quality of our performance of supervisory tasks.  To engage in constructive, organized, and practical reflection on clinical supervision, deep understanding of “the (non)directive continuum” is indispensable.  Nondirectiveness is intrinsically tied to, perhaps the essence of, clinical supervision.  Many newer clinicians, steeped in practice, undertake their supervisory responsibilities without fully appreciating nondirective theory or mastery of nondirective techniques.  A variety of supervision models can be educationally sound: from strict “orthodox” nondirectiveness, to student-teacher collaboration, to collective representation in which the supervisor takes the lead and students observe and then emulate.  

The (non)directive continuum of supervision is multi-dimensional.  It incorporates and responds to a variety of factors, including (but certainly not limited to): nature of the case or lawyering task; learning styles and skill levels of the students; supervisory experience, skills, and philosophy of the clinical teacher; client expectations and needs; caseload and resource constraints; and cross-cultural issues inherent in the supervisory and lawyering enterprise. 

In this interactive workshop participants will observe, explore, share, and experience practical approaches to reflection about supervision, informed and framed by discussion of the (non)directive continuum.  Our goals are to:  1) deepen awareness that nondirectiveness forms the core, but also only a part, of a broader array of supervisory skills and tools; 2) develop a practical framework for reflecting on supervision that recognizes, identifies, and names when and why supervision is working, as well as when and why it isn’t; and 3) provide a tangible tool that participants and the clinical community can use, adapt, and continue to develop as a means to improve our supervision.

Reflecting on Cross-Cultural Supervision Technique in Light of Social Science Research

Kristin Henning, Georgetown University

Louise Anne Howells, University of the District of Columbia

Samuel Jefferson, University of the District of Columbia

Jennifer P. Lyman, The George Washington University

Do students hear what we think we’re saying?  Social psychologists, educational psychologists and social anthropologists have studied effectiveness in feedback, as well as interpretational issues in cross-cultural communication.  Clinical teachers can mobilize some of this research to design supervision and feedback techniques that will better serve their students’ learning.  We can improve our own skills in applying such techniques by practicing them in simulations, and giving each other feedback on our feedback.

The facilitators will introduce specific findings about the impact of different kinds of feedback, delivered across varying race, gender or culture lines (summarized in a hand-out). The session will generate ideas for practical applications in supervision. 

Participants will brainstorm ideas for applying the findings presented.  Time and attendance permitting, small groups will have the chance to practice suggested techniques in simulated supervision scenarios.

Are We Crazy? Supervising Students in High-Risk Situations

Maureen N. Armour, Southern Methodist University

Bryan Lonegan, Visiting Associate Professor, Seton Hall University

Karen Musalo, University of California, Hastings

Lori A. Nessel, Seton Hall University

Mary Spector, Southern Methodist University

This concurrent session will focus on the decisions that clinic supervisors and their students must make when engaging in certain “high risk” situations connected to client representation.  The presenters have all supervised students in what they consider to be high-risk situations -- unpopular clients in immigration and federal civil rights proceedings or because of use of the media.  In doing so, they have also operated on an assumption that the students, and not the supervisors, should take the primary role in the representation.   However, they have found that this approach may test the limits of the assumptions they make -- as well as their sanity.  Their goal in the session will be to engage the audience in beginning to generate a protocol for supervising students in these types of situations.  After identifying some factors that make certain situations “high risk” for them, the presenters will engage the audience/attendees in defining what is a “high risk”situation.  Then, they will explore how supervisors and students make decisions in these cases by focusing on 3 to 5 areas that present special problems in supervision and identifying factors that they may share.  Once they have identified these factors, the presenters will work with the audience/attendees to begin to identify special supervision challenges that may arise in these circumstances and a method or methods for how to address them.

Remote Control? Contingencies, Risks, and Rewards in Supervising Students Representing "Long Distance" Clients

Susan D. Bennett, American University

James L. Cavallaro, Harvard Law School

Troy Elder, Florida International University

Joshua D. Sarnoff, American University

Brenda V. Smith, American University

Our goals in this session are to explore in some depth the risks, potential mistakes, and opportunities that accompany student representation of remote clients.   We anticipate addressing at least two aspects of this dynamic: the remoteness of long-distance clients from students and the additional remoteness of the supervisor from the clients and possibly from student-client interactions.   Many of the issues relate to client-student interaction; others implicate the supervisor-client-student triangle.  Some of the issues we intend to raise include: particular ethical concerns representing clients at a distance; pedagogical challenges; communication between and among client, students, and supervisor; and uses of technology (promise and pitfalls). 

We anticipate that our presentation will model remoteness –and thus showcase some of the foregoing concerns – by using technology commonly employed by certain clinics that represent remote clients.  Using the technology, we will present a either a fictionalized client interview, supervision session, or other interaction that occurs at a distance.  Following the role play, we will each describe our own perspectives on these issues based on our actual clinical experience.  After the panel discussion, we will engage the audience in an interactive discussion on the issues raised in the role play, and, more generally, on the issues raised by remote representation.

Risks, Mistakes and Opportunities When Clinics Engage in Project-Based “Cases”: A Case Study of Project Selection and Management Through Examination of Work with the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Sandra Babcock, Northwestern University

Jenny-Brooke Condon, Seton Hall University

Bassina Farbenblum, Seton Hall University

Sarah Hiles Paoletti, University of Pennsylvania

Clinicians are increasingly exploring opportunities for innovative work involving human rights advocacy and face new challenges in selecting appropriate projects.  This concurrent workshop is designed to explore the opportunities and risks of engaging in project-based work in the clinical setting, particularly as it pertains to collaborative human rights projects.  This workshop will use the presenters' respective experience working with the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission Diaspora Project as a case study.  The session will introduce the project to the workshop participants as it had been introduced by the project partner, Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights, and then examine the project selection decision, as well as the challenges, frustrations and opportunities presented by the project throughout the year.  This workshop intends to explore: (1) whether exposing students to discrete projects in the clinical setting to supplement the knowledge and skills students build through case work is pedagogically desirable, and (2) the challenges of meaningfully involving students in project-based work in the clinical setting.  The session aims to develop clinicians’ skills for assessing and identifying the strengths and challenges of project-based work during project selection, and additional tools for enhancing reflection on clinical methodology and goals throughout the project’s duration.

“Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?” Finding Common Ground Between Domestic Violence and Criminal Defense Clinics

Bradford Colbert, William Mitchell College of Law

John M. Copacino, Georgetown University

Deborah Epstein, Georgetown University

Catherine F. Klein, Catholic University of America

The victim advocacy and defense bars have never really gotten along, but recent domestic violence policy reforms have exacerbated the tension.  Each side tends to view the other as blindly zealous and the legal system as unfairly biased against its clients. Defense counsel, alienated and angered by advocates' support for the now-prevalent mandatory arrest laws, no-drop prosecution policies, and specialized domestic violence courts, are convinced that domestic abuse prosecutions are rigidly punitive and biased against their clients; they see victim advocates as the architects behind, and the primary beneficiaries of, this system. Victim advocates see their efforts as an attempt to correct the long-standing failure of the criminal justice system to protect their clients, and see defense attorneys as overzealous, willing to cross ethical lines to get their clients off by any means, and insufficiently concerned about the destructive impact on the families involved.

In this interactive session, we'll bring these two groups together, with the hope that we can learn from each other. (Failing that, we'll just confirm our worst suspicions about each other). We'll play two video clips in which students from a domestic violence clinic and from a criminal defense clinic role play a domestic violence scenario. The video will end with the students exploring the cross-practice experience. We'll then plan a class session based on these ideas.

We'll also explore more theoretical questions, including: How have our assumptions about each others' priorities, ethics, and judgment limited the effectiveness of our own client representation? How can we learn from each other to help our clients avoid becoming repeat players in the justice system? How might we help our students achieve a broader understanding of this social problem? What common ground might we find and how might an exploration of it lead to better representation and systemic change?

“I Don’t Know Anything About Countertransference, But I think It Just Happened to Me!”—Learning to Cope with Psychodynamic Process in Clinical Work

Evangeline Sarda, Boston College

Robert Tittmann, Psychiatrist, Boston College; Counseling Services, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts

Carwina Weng, Indiana University-Bloomington

Works-in-Progress

Session 1:

1.      Closed Doors and Locked Wards: Quality of Life for Individuals with

      Mental Illness Living in America's Nursing Homes
2.  Obstacles in the U.S. Asylum System and the African Asylum Seeker

3.      Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in the “War on Terror”: The Story of El Masri v. Tenet

Session 2:

1.   Stacking the Deck: Privileging “Employer Free Choice” over Industrial   Democracy in the Card Check Debate

2.  Swimming in a Sea of Uncertainty: Bankruptcy, Relocation an Debtors’    Dilemmas

4.      Government Lawyer as Cause Lawyer: A Study of Three High Profile Government Cases

12:15 - 2:00 p.m.

AALS Luncheon

Looking Back, Moving Forward: The Sanctuary Movement and the Asylum Program of Southern Arizona

Videotape, produced and presented by Lynn Marcus, University of Arizona

Professor Marcus has been the Director of the Immigration Law Clinic since 1997.   She worked at several immigration rights projects before joining the faculty.  Professor Marcus is a founding member of the Asylum Project of Arizona and a legal consultant to No More Deaths.  In 2002 she won the CLEA Creative Writing Award. 

Reflecting on Lessons Learned from the Sanctuary Movement: Border Issues Then and Now

John Fife, Pastor Emeritus, Southside Presbyterian Church, Tucson, Arizona;            co-founder, No More Deaths

John Fife is the Pastor Emeritus of Tucson’s Southside Presbyterian Church where he served as Pastor for 35 years. The church was the first to offer sanctuary to undocumented immigrants from El Salvador in 1981. That launched a movement that eventually provided safe haven to thousands of Central Americans in over 500 churches and synagogues nationwide. In 2002, Rev. Fife helped to form the Samaritan Patrol, now part of No More Deaths.  No More Deaths places volunteers in the treacherous desert lands in Arizona near the Mexican border where many migrants, on foot, attempt the extremely dangerous crossing into the United States.  No More Deaths volunteers provide water, food and emergency help to try and save as many lives as possible.   According to the Arizona Daily Star, in the last four years, nearly 900 bodies have been discovered of men, women and children who have attempted to cross the border.  In 2005, two student volunteers for No More Deaths were charged with “unlawfully assisting illegal entrants in furtherance of their illegal entry” into the United States when the two students attempted to take seriously dehydrated migrants to a local hospital.  The resulting hearings in Federal Court demonstrated the complexity of humanitarian efforts at the border.  The charges were ultimately dismissed by a Federal Judge.

2:00-3:30 p.m.

Concurrent Sessions

Informing Our Current Strategies by Reflecting on Our Movement & Its Methods

Muneer I. Ahmad, American University

Sameer M. Ashar, City University of New York

Susan J. Bryant, City University of New York

Robert D. Dinerstein, American University

Dean Hill Rivkin, University of Tennessee

Donna Miae Ryu, University of California, Hastings

We are at a unique and exciting time in legal education.  With the publication of Best Practices and Carnegie’s Educating Lawyers and reform efforts at many law schools, clinical legal educators are poised to play important roles in shaping legal education nationally and at their individual law schools.  This session focuses on one of clinical education’s goals, promoting social justice, and asks how this goal will shape and be shaped by the current reform efforts.  Together we will explore and name the lessons of the past that resulted in change in legal education and in clinical programs.  We will use these lessons to imagine our work going forward in designing education that teaches about justice and serves disadvantaged communities.  We will identify ways for clinical educators to play meaningful roles in curricular reform and to keep concerns of justice and service in the forefront of reforms.  This session will help us approach the prospects of change with greater clarity of purpose about goals and greater sophistication about how we might meet these goals.

Evening Clinics - Rewards and Challenges

Margaret Maisel, Florida International University

Richard S. Ugelow, American University

This concurrent session will discuss the risks, rewards, and opportunities of live-client evening clinics.  The ABA now requires that part-time as well as full-time students have access to legal clinics.  Clinical programs at most law schools are held during the day and, therefore, are largely available only to full-time students.  In order to address this concern, live-client evening clinics have developed that pose new challenges for traditional clinical pedagogy and operations.

These live-client evening clinics present particular risks, but also create valuable opportunities for schools, students, faculty, and clients.   This session will, through role plays and discussion, address topics such as case selection, seminar, clinical faculty, student interest, and the availability of students, supervisors, clients, adversaries, decision makers, and other parties.  Each of these topics is fundamental to the clinical experience, but they present particular challenges in an evening clinic setting.   Experienced “evening section” clinicians from Florida International and American will reflect on the past (and continuing) evolution of the evening clinic experience.  

The Carnegie Report and Externships: Where the Bridge to Practice Meets the Road to Identity

Cynthia Batt, Temple University

Sande Buhai, Loyola Law School, Los Angeles

Lisa Gabrielle Lerman, Catholic University of America

The Carnegie Foundation’s recent report, Educating Lawyers, identifies three essential professional apprenticeships through which students are prepared to enter the profession. This presentation will explore the Report’s implications for externship pedagogy and design.

As the Report emphasizes, legal education is dominated by the cognitive apprenticeship, represented by the case-dialogue method.  Clearly secondary in focus, the second apprenticeship is that of practice, in which students are educated in the methods and processes of competent practitioners of the profession. The third apprenticeship seeks to inculcate in students a professional identity by transmitting the values, ethics, social roles, and responsibilities that distinguish the profession. The Report advocates much more balance and integration of the three apprenticeships coupled with a revision of assessment to better evaluate the students’ development as professionals.

Externships are particularly well-suited to deliver the educational content of both the second and third apprenticeships. By placing students in actual practice situations, students grapple with the realities of clients, cases, and courts. This presentation will utilize the Report to reflect on externship pedagogy and design as it fulfills those apprenticeships.  In this context, we will examine several current externship models to consider their different contributions to the three apprenticeships. 

Following short presentations to highlight key aspects of the Report, including a critique and some examples of implementation, participants will grapple with how the goals and recommendations of the Carnegie Report relate to their own program and work.  During this session, we hope to 1) increase the participants’ familiarity with the findings and recommendations of the Carnegie Report and 2) provide each participant an opportunity to think concretely about the implications of the report for the development of externship teaching.  We hope this session will start conversations that participants will continue at their own law schools.

Strategic Planning: Learning from Our Mistakes and Growing from Our Experiences

Annette Appell, University of Nevada Las Vegas

Wendi Warren Hill Binford, Willamette University

Antoinette Sedillo Lopez, University of New Mexico

The planning and reconstruction of clinical law programs and individual clinics require thoughtful, intentional program design.  Areas of practice, case selection, staffing, budget, workspace, and curriculum integration, among others, all should be decided long before students and clients start streaming through our clinics’ doors.  This concurrent session will provide participants an opportunity to begin to envision and plan for the future of their individual clinics and clinical law programs by focusing on strategic planning.  It will include both reflective exercises as well as mini-strategic planning sessions.  Sample strategic plans for clinics and clinical law program will be available for you to take home to your respective schools.   

Striking the Right Balance: Clinic Design and Supervisory Reflection in Complex Litigation and Transactions

Gina M. Calabrese, St. John’s University

Ann Leslie Goldweber, St. John’s University

Carmen V. Huertas, City University of New York

Serge Martinez, Hofstra University

Complex matters present equally complex risks and opportunities for clinicians that may not be present in smaller-scale cases. This session will explore how complex matters relate to the competing demands of pedagogy, reflection, excellent representation and community needs, as well as strategies for taking advantage of the opportunities presented by these cases while managing the inherent risks of limiting opportunities for students and reflective practice. 

There are clear opportunities here: among others, complex cases provide excellent preparation for real-world law practice, and large-scale projects can efficiently address broad community needs. However, the risks are also clear: students may not be capable of taking lead roles, opportunities for non-directive learning can be harder to create, students may be hampered by the strategy and work of a former clinic student and student reflection and decision-making may be hindered by the pressing need to serve the client’s interests in matters that can challenge even experienced lawyers.  The presenters will describe their own experiences and reflections on working with clinic students in complex litigation and transactional matters and participants will view a video of clinic students reflecting on their large case experiences; then all participants will explore challenges that are especially present in complex matters, such as: student mastery of complicated cases, the effect on client relationships, tension between the need for sophistication and experience and the clinic’s pedagogical goals and the degree to which community needs can inform clinic decisions to take on complex cases.

Is Tenure a Good Thing? Reflection on Security of Position Issues as They Impact Specialty Clinics

Kim Diana Connolly, University of South Carolina

Edward Lloyd, Columbia University

James R. May, Widener University

Deborah Sivas, Stanford Law School

Is tenure a good thing? This is a hot and heavy debate in the larger clinical world. One way to reflect on tenure, and what risks, opportunities and mistakes are associated with a tenure system, is to reflect on the experience in a newer type of specialty clinic - environmental law clinics. Though there have been successful environmental clinics at a number of schools for over two decades, such clinics are uniquely designed in many cases, resulting in widely varying models at the over 30 schools with such clinics. Some environmental clinicians are on tenure track and others on contracts. As such, recent debates about security of position and the advantages and disadvantages of tenure can be studied in a focused way in the environmental clinic "ecosystem," exploring such issues as whether scholarship is worthwhile, what the benefits and detriments of tenure obligations are to students and clients, and how outside funders might be made to understand the tenure model, among other issues.  After discussing the issues in the context of these speciality clinics, a large part of the session is designed to allow participants to reflect on the value of tenure through a large group brainstorming session using Mindjet Mindmanager to capture the group discussion and post it to the AALS website after the conference.

Directing? You Must Be Kidding: Leading a Clinic in Academia

Brenda Bratton Blom, University of Maryland

Phyllis Goldfarb, The George Washington University

Binny Miller, American University

Joseph B. Tulman, University of the District of Columbia

In this session, we will explore the rewards and challenges of directing a law school clinical program.   All of the panelists are clinical directors of programs in the DC-Baltimore area. We have gathered as a breakfast group several times a semester for the past four years.  The group includes the listed participants, as well as Deborah Epstein of Georgetown, Catherine Klein of Catholic Law School, and Tamar Meekins of Howard Law School. 

Our group operates as follows:  Over breakfast, we explore the issues involved in directing a clinical program, in a meeting that is part case rounds and part support group for those of us involved in organizational development.  In keeping with the theme of the conference, our gathering allows us to reflect on our work and our vision, and talk about risks that we have taken, mistakes that we have made, and opportunities that we have seized.  

In this concurrent session, we will model our group meetings, staying in role to discuss the topic of structuring clinics for stability and growth.  During the session, we will bring an issue for discussion to the table and assign roles to those who attend so that all who choose to do so can participate.   This session is designed for all clinical teachers, not just those who have served as clinic directors.

Simple v. Complex—From Law Reform to the Basics in Framing a Clinical Experience

Daniel L. Hatcher, University of Baltimore

Bernard P. Perlmutter, University of Miami

Claire A. Smearman, University of Baltimore

Kele Williams, University of Miami

Clinicians regularly struggle with how to choose clinic cases and projects and what should drive these decisions. No matter the focus or specialty of a particular clinic, we all face similar challenges in deciding upon appropriate matters for student work.  Big or small?  Hot topic or client need?  Impact or routine? Law reform or individual client representation? Pedagogy or faculty interest? These are just a few of the tensions involved as we weigh factors such as community needs, pedagogical goals, referral sources, active or passive case searches, the likelihood of a hearing, faculty background and interests, and student preferences.  This session will consider this decision making process and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of our choices in the context of a simulated clinic faculty meeting. The presenters and members of the audience will explore these questions as they participate in a role play of a clinic faculty meeting addressing the direction of a new Immigrant Rights Clinic and the reframing of an existing Children and Youth Law Clinic at a hypothetical law school.

Supervision of Personal Skills

Susan L. Brooks, Drexel University

Marjorie A. Silver, Touro College

Supervision is a formal part of the training in the traditional helping professions in which supervisors explore the interpersonal dynamics that arise in the relationships between supervisees and clients, and also help supervisees understand how their own emotional and psychological make-up may affect those dynamics. Ideally, through exploration with a supportive, empathic, and insightful mentor, enhanced clinical skills result.

In recent years the field of clinical legal education has gained a greater appreciation of the importance of the ‘intrapersonal’ and ‘relational’ dimensions of legal practice, and how these dimensions of the work may either contribute greatly or severely hinder a lawyer’s effectiveness.  As discussed in the morning session, “Learning to Cope with Psychodynamic Processes in Clinical Work”, interpersonal issues such as “transference” and “countertransference” can arise in clinical teaching situations, both between students and clients, and between clinical teachers and students.

Once we embrace the value of understanding these dimensions of our work, we face even greater challenges.  For instance, how do we gain greater competence in this area, despite the fact that most of us lack any professional training in social work or psychology?  Further, given our limited knowledge, how do we inculcate the appropriate knowledge and skills in our students? 

In this session, we will look to the training and supervision that occurs in the traditional helping professions, as well as to professionals from those disciplines that are already in our midst, to help us identify some answers.  We will use examples from the popular media, as well as from the participants’ experiences, to think through different possible approaches.  The goal will be for the participants to come away with several practical ideas for to maximizing their available resources to enrich their own supervision as well as their practice skills.

Works-in-Progress

1.  Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative, Wilmer Hale Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School and Massachusetts Advocates for Children

2.  Practical Responses to Interdisciplinary Collaborations Between Lawyers and Social Workers: Something to Talk About

3. Law of Lawyering and Managing an Internal Law  School Clinic: Essay and  Annotated Bibliography

3:30 - 3:45 p.m.

Refreshment Break

3:45 - 5:00 p.m.

Reflecting on Risks, Mistakes and Opportunities in Multi-Cultural Settings

Linda B. Green, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tuscon, Arizona

Nancy Grey Postero, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of California, San Diego, San Diego,California

Paulette J. Williams, University of Tennessee

5:00 – 5:10 p.m.

Tribal Blessing

Justice Raymond D. Austin, Retired Justice of the Navajo Nation Supreme Court, Distinguished Jurist in Residence, University of Arizona