Tightening Clinical Training : Improvements in Legal Education Support Programs : Final Report, Student Bar Association Symposium on Clinical Legal Education

Within the last decade, Langdell\u27s case method of legal education has ceased to be the exclusive means of instruction in the Nation\u27s law schools. The increasing support of the traditional academic curriculum at Georgia with seminars, simulation and burgeoning clinical programs clearly demonstrates that legal education here is no longer inextricably bound to the case method. Underlying the recent trend among law schools to revitalize the academic curriculum with supplementary practical experience is the growing realization of a public obligation to produce technically competent and professional lawyers by graduation. Defining clinical legal education as lawyer-client work by a law student, under law school supervision, for credit toward the law degree, CLEPR President William Pincus finds its principal objective to be the maturation of a sense of professional responsibility in the law student. The theoretical underpinning may be supplemented with the learning of professional skills and of the moral and social leadership role of the attorney. In short, the clinical movement seeks to teach some aspects of professional training in a better, more compelling manner, using learning concepts developed elsewhere. Certainly, inherent problems of funding, supervision and evaluation vary widely among clinical programs, necessitating an individual consideration of each program. The value of the learning experience offered through clinical legal education both in the clinical program itself and in the traditional classroom where interest in the subject may be inspired, easily offsets, however, the high cost of administering such programs. The purpose of the Symposium on Clinical Legal Education was to survey the clinical educational opportunities existing at the Georgia School of Law and to initiate an exploration of the means by which the clinical component can be further developed here. The Symposium sought to survey our potential resources and limitations