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Abstract

The idea of offering an Extern (or Field Placement) Clinical Program can arise in one of three ways: 1) students may want certain "work" experiences for their educational or career advancement; 2) law offices or agencies in the community may seek students to do "volunteer work" with them; or 3) the faculty may conceive of experiences in the legal community as offering educational benefits that will complement or augment the existing curriculum. Whatever way the idea of an extern program arises, all three of the above contingencies must be fully considered and coordinated. Designing a field placement clinical program should be a dynamic and fluid task in which the students' desires, the placement agencies' needs and work, and the law school's evolving curriculum must be coordinated and adjusted with one another. In prior years, many in the academy assumed that student desire for work experience or agency desire for free labor was the sole explanation for a field placement clinic. The "education" was assumed to be inferior in the "out-house" clinic because neither the student nor the agency were focused on "education" as the goal. At a time when clinics existed primarily to teach skills and professionalism, the field placement - presumably staffed by novice legal services lawyers - was suspect. How could novice legal service lawyers supervise students and teach skills and ethics as competently as the seasoned litigators and law-reformers hired as faculty for the "in-house" clinic?

Publication Title

Clinical Law Review

Volume

5

Issue

2

First Page

527

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