SISTEMAS DIFUSOS

Every clinical law professor requires students to engage in some type of planning process¹⁰¹.Unlike a classroom teacher whose contact with students consists of written materials, class discussion or lecture, and perhaps e-mail exchanges, the live-client clinical faculty member and the supervisor may interact with students on a daily basis by teaching and advising.

100 Dr. Justice a. S. Anand, inaugural address at the second annual meeting of the state legal services authority, held at Hyderabad (1999),

101 “Evaluating Clinical Law Teaching-Suggestions for Law Professors Who Have Never Used the Clinical Teaching Method “ By Kimberly E. O'Leary

Law professors who use clinical methodologies are sometimes subject to review by other law professors who do not. These reviews occur because many clinical teachers are on unified tenure tracks or clinical tenure tracks that include non-clinicians on the review team. Additionally, clinical teaching methodologies are being incorporated into a variety of courses other than the traditional in-house clinic. Written explanations of clinical teaching are abundant. Clinical law teaching conferences occur often to orally transmit knowledge about clinical teaching ideas, techniques and problems. n4 This article is a short, simple overview of clinical teaching methodologies to assist reviewers not versed in such methodologies.

Clinical classrooms often look and sound very different from traditional law classrooms.

Perhaps more importantly, most clinical teaching takes place outside of a formal classroom setting. A promotion or tenure review committee cannot use the same language, concepts or benchmarks when assessing clinical teaching as it uses in assessing many doctrinal courses. While the overall goal of assisting a law student in becoming a better legal thinker, planner and practitioner is the same, the specific teaching goals of each type of course can be quite different.

What follows is a brief framework for evaluating clinical law teaching. While many of the underlying concepts apply equally to live-client clinics, extern experiences and simulation courses, there are important differences. It will provide an evaluative framework for clinical courses generally, specifying where live-client clinics, external clinics and simulation-based courses might differ when appropriate, but will not go into great detail about the differences because to do so would make brevity unattainable. Because clinical courses vary greatly, the format of this paper will focus on the types of choices available to clinical law professors in teaching a clinical course. Also, it will examine in some detail the assessment of student supervision. There are more than 1300 full-time law professors who currently teach using a clinical methodology.

It should also be noted that oftentimes, professors tend to assume that those under review should have the same teaching goals as the reviewers. This assumption should not go unexamined. Experienced professors should take the time to question and understand the value of new approaches. Unfortunately, there are few good models for evaluating law teaching generally. n8 Many law professors take the attitude that they "know good teaching when they see it." This approach is inherently conservative and limiting to the growth of legal education generally. Such an approach is particularly inappropriate for clinical teaching because clinical teaching often looks quite different from the traditional

classroom. Moreover, new law professors, especially women or minority professors who teach in clinical settings, might adopt techniques that are unfamiliar even to more

experienced clinicians. n10 Reviewers must be sensitive to racial, ethnic and gender issues embedded in all law teaching, including clinical law teaching.

Law professors should not evaluate any teaching without first understanding the particular goals and objectives of the professor under review. It is impossible to cover all important aspects of any field in one course, and clinical teaching is no different in that respect. Each of us makes choices about which areas to emphasize; these choices derive from

professorial judgment about which aspects of the field are most important. Every law professor should think about which concepts, skills or ideas will be the most useful building blocks for students to use as the foundation of their professional lives. The processes discussed in this article should be applied after and only after carefully

understanding the particular teacher's goals and course objectives. In the clinical context, some evaluating professors might have an outdated view of what lawyers do based upon prior practice experience

For a course of this kind to be developed satisfactorily and to run effectively, the teachers conducting such courses need training administrative and peer support.

For effective evolution of these courses four aspects need to be taken care of.

1- training of teachers in newer skills;

2- evolution of criteria for determining the teacher-student ratio and workload;

3- evolution of supervision techniques and evaluation criteria; and 4- representation by students and professional responsibility.

Until now teaching in classrooms has been limited to teaching law to the LL.B. students.

The full time teachers are' assigned substantive law subjects ,and theoretical papers and the part-time teachers who are, ful1 time lawyers are seen as better equipped to teach the procedural law Courses. Neither set of law teachers has been 'taught' these skills. Teachers learn some skills like legal research and writing, communication, argumentation by doing it in course of their research and teaching, similarly the lawyers also learn their skills on the job. Both need to be first convinced that such skills can be 'taught' and then learn how to teach skills in addition to teaching law. Large scale skills training of teachers therefore are a precondition. Such training courses will need to focus not only on imparting the skills but also on how to teach those skills, impart some additional skills in developing simulation exercises such as how to write role plays, or developing negotiation / mediation problems.

These courses will require coordination and cooperation of all parties involved in the operation, namely, the law school administration, teachers, students, clients, placement agency and the state bodies before whom the matter may be pending. The minimum resources that a clinical course will need include space ensuring privacy for meeting clients, communication tools like phone, stationary, travel expenses for students and other contingencies.

The training of the law teachers will be required to incorporate the following aspects:

a) Changing focus from teaching only the black letter law to interpersonal and communication skills;

(b) Methods for teaching those skills;

(c) criteria for evaluation of those skills;

(d) Generating materials for teaching those skills;

(e) Administrative skills; and (f) Fund raising.

It is important to recognize that student-teacher ratio is crucial to the success of student centered active learning. One teacher may give a lecture to a large number of students but it is humanly impossible for one teacher to supervise umpteen numbers of. Subgroups of students carrying on simulation exercise in a class. Implementation of the UGC norm of one teacher to twelve students in professional courses is the absolute necessity for these courses. In addition to class teaching, the teachers teaching. a clinical coursers in collaboration with a field agency will also be required to hold individual and group meetings to reflect on field work, seek and secure appropriate placements, training and briefing the field agency, monitoring the continued suitability of placement, monitoring and coordinating the students' attendance and work at the agency.

Moving out of students from classroom to field also requires reorientation of classroom teaching schedule. The classroom teaching in other courses will need to be limited to fewer days in the week leaving some days completely free for the students to pursue these

practical courses. It will also need decisions about supervision of students in the field.

It will involve clearly indicating to the placement agency what is expected from it in terms of supervision as well as skills learning, identifying objectives of supervision and telling the students their responsibilities and the manner of supervision and evaluation criteria.

Running a live-client c1inic¹³ with litigation work needs issue of professional responsibility for the case clearly determined. It rests with the teacher-supervisor. As the full-time

teachers are not permitted to practice, a part-time teacher willing to accept the professional responsibility will be required to be necessarily attached with the course. ¹⁰²

Amendments in the law will also be needed to allow second and third year students to present clients' cases under supervision of the teacher. An academic course in contrast with a community based project has a clearer course structure, defined hours of work, prescribed readings, definite workload and precise assessment criteria while a community based project evolves with the work undertaken and the progress made. Hence it is important to identify the issues that need to be addressed before a legal aid clinic or other community-based project may be converted into an academic course.

102 Ved kumari

Training centres for Law teachers

Yet another important aspect is about the need to revamp the teaching system by establishing a number of special institutions to enable law teachers to update their knowledge. While we agree that there are several good teachers in law schools who are highly qualified and very competent, there is always need to keep abreast of latest needs of the practitioners, and of the latest Judgments of our Courts and our statutes as well as Judgments of the House of Lords, American and Canadian Supreme Courts, ¹⁰³ Judgments of the Australian High Court and New Zealand Courts and of the European Human Rights Court at Strausborg. It is also necessary to keep in touch with new principles of law emanating abroad and to several developments in important subjects like trademark,

copyright, patents, the Trips Agreement, Cyber law, Environmental law, Human Rights and other new subjects.

Further, when it is necessary to teach several subjects dealing with procedural laws at the college level, there is need that law teachers must get acquainted with several practical aspects of the procedural laws. Training for the teachers is, therefore, necessary.

Apart from the existing refresher courses conducted by the University Grants Commission, it is necessary to impart professional training to the law teachers.

To start with, at least four colleges must be started by the Central Government in

consultation with the Bar Council of India and UGC, in the four corners of India. The law teachers must have exposure to centres by experts in various branches of law and for this purpose guest lecturers from other States or even from other countries have to be invited.

It will be for the UGC and the Government of India to make the necessary funds available for the above purpose.

Law Commission recommended addition of clauses (ie) and (if) after proposed clause (id) in section 7 (1) as follows:

“(ie) to take such measures to facilitate the establishment of institutions by the Central Government for continuing legal education for law teachers;

(if) to take measures for raising the standards of teaching in law in consultation with the Central Government, the State Governments and the University Grants Commission.”

It also recommended that the ‘problem method’ be introduced in the examination system to an extent of above 75% in each paper, apart from 25% for theory. The students should

103 Chapter IX of law commission Report on Examination System, Problem Method and Training Centres for Law Teachers

obtain a separate minimum number of marks for the theory and a separate minimum in the problem part of the examination. This will enable the student to apply their mind seriously to every subject. This will also eliminate malpractices. Attendance to classes is also bound to improve.

THE PROCESS OF EVALUATING A CLINICAL LAW PROFESSOR

There are some special challenges involved in the mechanics of evaluating a clinical professor. When evaluating law professor work, peers generally rely upon a review of written course materials and observations of the professor teaching students in a classroom.

It should be obvious that assessing the work of a clinical teacher is a bit more complex. In addition to the challenges already alluded to, such as determining which part of the overall clinical design was created by the teacher under review or how to determine what sorts of choices the clinical teacher is making relative to supervising students, there are other problems not encountered in the review of other law teaching. These problems relate to the different role of students and faculty in a clinical course, as well as the confidential and private nature of much of that work. This section will describe some of those

considerations and provide some practical suggestions for conducting such reviews.

A. Temporal considerations

A clinical course is a time-based experience which changes dramatically during the semester. The reviewer must be aware of the particular course component being observed.

Generally, one can expect to see the clinical professor giving more help to the students early in the semester to help the student get his or her bearings, feel more confident and jump more quickly to targeted skill sets. By the middle of the semester, one should see the student generating most of the ideas. At the end of the semester, the student should be making most of the major judgment calls, and the student should be engaging in reflective activity.

The first weeks of a clinical course are often more heavily instructional; clinic faculty orient the students to this intensive and often self-directed style of learning. In some courses, before specific learning about the particular skills or values can take place,

students must understand the substantive and procedural context of the relevant law. Many clinical law professors create an opportunity early in the semester to help the students understand this context. Often clinical professors will bring in guest speakers or provide overview lectures of specific substance or procedure to facilitate this process, while others prefer a "sink-or-swim" immersion approach followed by discussion. Students in a live-client clinic might engage in intensive simulations, written drafting assignments or "field trips" to the local courts or agencies to speed up the natural learning curve. Generally, such opportunities will not provide students with opportunities to discuss or learn the nuance of the law; rather, they are designed to quickly instill in each student a common parcel of knowledge that the student will use as a platform for the rest of the semester.

Similarly, the students must become familiar quickly with the structure of the course, because it involves much coordination and planning. In a live-client clinic, you should expect to see an intensive overview of office procedures, forms used, supervision methods and the physical layout of the office. In some courses, students actually engage in

designing office procedures and choosing practice methods. n48 In an extern course, there should be an early explanation of the format of experience -- how the placement will be made, how and when the student and professor will meet, the nature of the student's

responsibilities. In a simulation course, the student needs to know how the simulations will work: how, when and where to pick up materials, when evaluations or assignments will be due, etc. The middle of the semester is characterized by student-generated activity and collaborative coaching by the professor. The student, having been given information and materials, is typically working out self-created action plans on behalf of a client or as a simulation. At this stage, the one-on-one supervision sessions between student and faculty are critical. Here, the faculty member ensures that individual work is taking place (outside of the session), and the faculty is available to hear the student's ideas, to ask questions, and provide guidance.

The final stage of the course should be characterized by additional reflective activity and a transition into a more collegial relationship. Faculty should be helping students understand how to engage in self-critique. This overall rhythm of the course is replicated on a smaller scale throughout the course as well. Each time the student gets a new problem to be solved, the pattern of intensive help, student-generated planning and reflection is repeated.

However, as the semester goes on, the need for intensive help lessens and the capability for students to generate and critique their own ideas increases.

B. Methods Used by Clinical Law Professors

Clinical professors use a variety of techniques for accomplishing their goals. Typically, clinicians will meld together some or all of the following:

-class sessions

-one-on-one supervision sessions

-small group meetings or small work groups

-partnerships between students working on experiences -reading assignments

-written assignments -simulations

-journals

-reflection papers

-exercises and demonstrations

Many clinical professors find the heart of the course is in teaching students how to engage in the three-part process for their professional lives (developing action plans, executing those plans, reflecting on those plans). Therefore, many clinicians will require students to

prepare a set of explicit goals at various times throughout the semester and to reflect upon how well they are achieving their goals. It is truly a goal of a clinical course to engage the student in the process of learning and understanding how the learning process takes place.

n49

C. Practical Problems in Evaluating Clinical Law Teaching

Faculty who do not teach in clinics fail to understand some of the extrinsic demands of the clinical teacher. The traditional separation of "teaching", "service", and "scholarship" as an evaluation device is often not a helpful construct when evaluating a clinical educator.

The concept of "service" in the typical law school setting involves the faculty member's work on law school committees, perhaps a university committee or two, and perhaps some limited involvement in a community-based group or work in a professional organization such as the AALS or ABA. Untenured faculty members are counseled to limit their

"service" activities to gain more time to work on scholarship and teaching. Such advice is not useful for most clinical law teachers.

The clinical law professor is required to be an active member of the practicing bar. That statement bears repeating, with an emphasis on the word "required." While other law professors might choose to practice law, the clinical law professor practices law as a requirement of the position. The clinician is a member of the bar with special duties that arise because of clinical teaching. These special duties arise from the reciprocation of the clinician's need to keep up with developments in law practice specialties and the

profession's need for input gleaned from the experiences of clinical law professors.

While there are a number of different ways to accomplish the first goal of keeping up with developments, most of them involve frequent interactions with other lawyers, judges, community advocates, and so on. Because most clinics represent indigent clients, interaction with other practitioners - often legal services or public defender attorneys is

While there are a number of different ways to accomplish the first goal of keeping up with developments, most of them involve frequent interactions with other lawyers, judges, community advocates, and so on. Because most clinics represent indigent clients, interaction with other practitioners - often legal services or public defender attorneys is