Abstract
"Supervision" is an issue of concern in externship pedagogy. Clinicians have focused over many years on the relationship between supervisor and student as a critical aspect of clinical legal education. Among the educational goals of clinical legal education, supervision is believed to have an important, though not uncomplicated relationship to teaching students to think critically about legal practice. Externships tend to separate the supervision functions between the placements and the campus, making coherent supervision challenging. In addition, externship faculty often have relatively large numbers of students. This essay explores one aspect of the resulting supervision/critique puzzle. Can student understanding of those critical thinking goals that are especially appropriate to the unique advantages of fieldwork be improved by joining members of the nonclinical law school faculty in the teaching effort? As an introduction to this issue, consider the distribution of clinical teaching tasks and how they appear in an externship. In the classic model of clinical legal education an attorney-supervisor assists the student in preparing for a legal task, accompanies (and sometimes helps) the student in the performance of the task, and critically discusses the result with the student. During each of these phases the supervisor encourages the student and others in the class to reflect on the systemic, strategic, and personal issues implicated by the task. In addition to modeling skills and values, the supervisor attempts to advance the student's insight and reflection on their experience through critical inquiry.
Publication Title
Clinical Law Review
Volume
5
Issue
2
First Page
437
Recommended Citation
Harriet N. Katz,
Using Faculty Tutorials to Foster Externship Students' Critical Reflection,
5
Clinical L. Rev
437
(1999).
Available at:
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/clr/vol5/iss2/5