Plenary One: How Far We Have Come and How Far We Need to Go

We open the conference by examining the “Coming of Age” of externships in the Clinical Legal Education sphere. In the twenty years since the first “Externships” conference at The Catholic University of America, there has been an explosion in the number of externship courses across the academy, and with that, a growing sophistication in the pedagogy, scholarship, and creative design of externship courses and programs. Both the role of externship faculty in the academy and ABA regulation of “field placements” have evolved as well. This panel will set the stage for the rest of the conference by reviewing the past, examining the present, and articulating the future challenges and opportunities for externship teaching