Bridging different interests: The contributions of clinics to legal education

This chapter examines how clinical legal education, including its curriculum, teachers, teaching-methods, students, and social justice mission, influence legal education generally and connect law schools to their surrounding communities. It shows how clinical education introduced the study of lawyering to mainstream legal education and has promoted the use interactive teaching methods, including simulations, supervised case work, and problem-solving exercises, which help foster critical thinking necessary. Clinics also draw client interests, social justice, and professional values into the center of legal education, and have the capacity to promote links among various groups interested in the outcomes of legal education, serving as a bridge to broader community and professional engagement. The chapter argues that clinics have the greatest impact when insights from clinical experiences are incorporated in an integrative model with other teaching to form a developmental progression.