Not So Dangerous Liaisons: A Clinical Perspective on Interdisciplinarity

Clinical education represents a site where conflicting accounts of law are at maximum tension, in part because the clinical experience tends to highlight the startling contrast between the narratives and social realities of law. While this contrast provides some of the fodder for the critical exploration that characterizes clinical education, the idiosyncratic shape of law as a discipline means that much of what students require to handle that fodder in a rigorous, analytical way is located elsewhere. A clinical lens indicates that exposing students to interdisciplinary perspectives is crucial if students are to be able to understand and engage with the multi-layered reality of law in an intelligent and integrated manner—and perhaps to build sustainable professional identities as well. Indeed, since students usually go on to become practitioners, judges, legislators and policy-makers—all law creators in one form or another—a lack of rigorous or sound knowledge in this regard has potential implications for the quality, integrity and viability of law more generally. To the extent that this problem is one of curricular space and logistics, the “foot in each world” perspective of the clinical educator allows for the debunking of professional rationales for the current degree of doctrinal content, and points to features of a fluid legal landscape that reinforce the increasing necessity of interdisciplinary content and methods