The Integrated Law School Practicum: Synergizing Theory and Practice

I. Introduction

Traditional law teaching efficiently conveys an impressively broad array of doctrinal law and theory.1 Clinical law teaching provides the opportunity to learn lawyering skills and apply them to real or simulated client circumstances.2 Students learn to organize, understand, analyze, and apply law in traditional courses; they learn how to conduct factual investigation, research, analyze, interview, negotiate, advocate, problem-solve, and resolve ethical dilemmas in clinics.

Yet lawyers know that neither doctrine nor skills alone a lawyer make.3 In practice, we solve real, not abstract problems, translating the language and methodologies of the law to our clients.4 Clinical education can provide these real circumstances; the traditional classroom can provide the legal understanding necessary to assist clients in confronting and resolving them. Clinical legal education also has provided valuable pro bono legal services to communities since its inception.5

This article reports on a successful integration of traditional and clinical methodologies in one law school course. Substantively, the course focused on a specialized aspect of bioethics and law: the legal regulation of decision-making near death. Pedagogically, we combined a traditional two-hour substantive classroom course (taught by Susan) with a one-hour clinical practicum that required students to develop a community workshop about advanced directives (taught by Rob). We had four objectives in mind when structuring the course this way. First, we sought to teach our students the relevant law and the policy considerations that influenced its development. Second, we hoped to instill in our students an understanding of the performance skills needed to apply law. Third, we intended to offer students the opportunity to develop problem solving and practical judgment expertise by engaging them in the process of responding to a person's individual situation.6 Fourth, we hoped to provide unbundled pro bono service to workshop participants.7

We enjoyed our collaboration and believe that we satisfied these objectives. But we also learned some unanticipated, valuable lessons about the challenges of blending doctrinal and clinical pedagogy. Inviting workshop participants to raise legal questions and draft advance directive documents in personal meetings also forced us to confront intriguing questions about the scope of client- lawyer relationships in the context of a rich educational experience.

This Article describes how we balanced our desire to teach substance, skills, and judgment; our hope to offer pro bono service; and our need to limit the scope of the client-lawyer relationship in the workshops. In Part II, we address the motivation and theory behind our development of this course. In Part III, we recount the evolution of our course structure and pedagogy during its first and second years. Part IV...

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