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Abstract

A distinctly sleazy aura surrounds an advertisement of this sort, even when it appears in the Clinical Law Review. In the clinical tradition of risky self disclosure for the sake of reflection, however, I admit I want to know about my students' lives beyond law school. This urge guided my participation in planning for the opening plenary session of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Clinical Conference, held in May, 1995. Charged with creating scripts addressing some aspect of "Evaluating Our Supervision," Professor Margaret Martin Barry and I met to plot our course. Professor Barry proposed a scenario in which her student, "Lewis," floods a supervision session with personal issues. It was easy for me to imagine the contrasting frustration of the student who reveals nothing. Writing the "Derrick" scenario for the AALS plenary was harder. First, it raised the strictly practical problem of showing something not happening. Second, it lead me through a series of questions I found increasingly difficult to answer. Miss Manners or Emily Post might respond to the query, "where are the appropriate personal boundaries in supervision?" - obviously law professors may not satisfy prurient curiosity about their students' lives, simply because they meet one-on-one or the professor can use rank to coerce disclosures. But beyond this simple ethical tenet lurk questions that should concern all of us who strive to model the reflectiveness we urge on our students. Is the clinical teacher entitled to personal information other teachers don't need? What justifies getting personal at all? What is "personal?" What methods may the teacher use to learn personal information? What will work? And, in the end, what is the teacher equipped to do with such information if she gets it? This essay uses the "Derrick" script as a starting point for approaching those questions. It offers some reasons why clinical teachers do need to know more than classroom teachers about individual students. It suggests those needs lead the teacher along a continuum, on which the professional slides into the personal; in this supervision context, disclosures of feelings or emotions as well as life experiences do not appear strictly personal. The essay then explores limits and risks attending some methods of "getting personal," and ends by illustrating constraints the supervisor faces in responding to personal disclosures.

Publication Title

Clinical Law Review

Volume

2

Issue

1

First Page

211

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