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Abstract

The editors of the Review asked me to consider whether I still adhere to the views I expressed in my 1986 Message from the Chair in the Newsletter of the Clinical Legal Education Section of the Association of American Law Schools. That newsletter Message was in response to a position taken by Dean Susan Prager of UCLA Law School, then the President of the Association of American Law Schools, that clinical teachers should be required to produce scholarship - by which she meant research and publication. In the newsletter, I expressed concern that a publication requirement would diminish the time and effort that clinical teachers can devote to their teaching. I suggested that additional funding to support research should be obtained, so that we could avoid reducing the number of students supervised by clinical teachers. I also recommended that "scholarship" be defined broadly to include clinical work that is the result of professional collaboration between law students and their clinic supervising attorneys. Looking back at that Message and considering the developments in clinical teaching and scholarship since then, I find that many of my original concerns remain. To the extent that we define "scholarship" as publication of law review-type theoretical articles in traditional law reviews, we limit and undercut the basic mission of clinical legal education. In my view, the new Clinical Law Review should provide a forum for accounts of students and teachers collaborating on actually improving the law and societal institutions through their case work in law school clinics. In this article, I will explain the practical and pedagogical considerations that lead me to this conclusion. I will leave for another day, and other articles, a demonstration of the approach I propose.

Publication Title

Clinical Law Review

Volume

1

Issue

1

First Page

127

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