Katz, H N --- "Counseling externship students" [2010] LegEdDig 10; (2010) 18(1) Legal Education Digest 35

• Counseling externship students

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Counseling externship students

H Katz

Clinical Law Review Vol 15, No. 2, 2009, pp239-253

Counseling externship students improves student decisions when choosing placements and identifying learning goals, and continues to help them throughout their experience of learning from supervised practice. A collaborative counseling relationship between student and faculty supervisor can provide a foundation for both problem-solving and encouragement and is a critical component of a successful externship experience. The importance of this collaborative counseling relationship is echoed across many professional disciplines. I believe, further, that it can help each student cross the ‘bridge to practice’ in becoming a lawyer.

Much scholarly literature about externship pedagogy discusses a role for faculty that implies or encourages counseling students, especially in regard to establishing learning goals and handling supervision issues, while not exploring method or difficulties of such counseling. In externships, faculty are involved ‘to the extent necessary to ensure the achievement of educational objectives,’ particularly by communicating standards and reviewing accomplishments, and by placing students in settings taking into consideration students’ ‘needs and preferences’ with methods that include ‘individual consultations between students and faculty.’’ The best externship programs take steps to be sure that students are in placements appropriate to their learning needs, identify goals for their individual development, and know how to make good use of supervision. Each of these aspects of externship would seem to benefit from counseling the student through listening, advising, and clarifying objectives.

Wortham recommends that each student meet with the faculty supervisor to review the student’s proposed individual ‘Learning Agenda’ before reviewing the goals with the field supervisor. At this review, the faculty member can help the student use ‘conscious goal setting’ as a paradigm for individual learning as well as for setting goals for the externship experience itself; Wortham asserts that ‘intrinsic, self-set goals’ lead to greater life and professional satisfaction. Properly advised, students can increase their ability to learn from experience, and begin habits of self-directed learning.

Experienced externship faculty will appreciate the value, but also recognise the main challenges, to counseling their students. I separate these issues into three broad categories: permission, competence, and, of course, time.

Care needs to be taken to develop the sense of permission necessary for a counseling relationship, to set the expectation that externship students will be asked to reflect on their own professional development and to be open to discussion with the faculty supervisor.

Those of us who were previously in-house clinicians are familiar with teaching that includes challenging each student to grow professionally with regard to individual lawyering skills and personal capabilities. Both in clinics and in simulation-based skills courses, we teach and try to practice counseling skills such as listening, empathy, knowledge about the subject area and about the experience of similarly situated clients, and the ability to explain and discuss relevant issues with the client. This approach may be transferable to counseling externship students, as we try to apply the lawyerly counseling skill of providing perspective as an informed, neutral, but empathetic professional, while respecting client autonomy.

On the other hand, those of us who entered externship supervision from a background in career services, or are still responsible for employment assistance for students, are familiar with career paths of lawyers and the experiences that can help a student select and move along such a path. Career services professionals are likely to be familiar with assessment tools, various career paths for attorneys, and the particular stresses that result from the law student’s employment concerns.

As a community, we would benefit from sharing those two divergent perspectives. However, even if we do share these sources of expertise, few of us are also professionally trained in a counseling discipline that delves deeply into personal issues.

In a larger program, with a leaner full-time teaching staff, counseling is likely to be limited to students most in need, and therefore to focus mostly on negative situations requiring significant intervention. In addition, establishing a relationship with each student that helps them in selecting a placement requires significant time for counseling before placements are chosen. Pre-placement meetings would likely be needed at the end of a prior semester, and therefore compete for our time with grading in other courses, including other externship aims like end of term evaluation. Desire to get all course registration matters settled could make students impatient with this process. Faculty are also juggling externship responsibilities such as development and monitoring of placements, along with other teaching interests, involvement in their campus and neighbouring communities, and work on scholarship.

Faculty/student consultation may occur before a placement is decided on, near the beginning of the placement experience, at mid-term or other established points during the experience, informally as students encounter challenges, and at an exit interview. While each point in time presents different possibilities, it seems certain that earlier connections with students make subsequent efforts more likely to succeed.

When meeting with students before selecting a placement, externship faculty can challenge student assumptions, increase their knowledge about legal placements, and help them realistically connect goals to placement opportunities. As a result of such counseling, students may be more likely to pick a placement that defies stereotypes or exceeds the student’s own expectations. A student can be encouraged to challenge existing skills. Focus on the student’s goals for professional development – whether to try a new skill set or to develop expertise in an area of competence – would help the student decide which of these avenues to take.

Externship students’ individualised goals for their professional development may include concrete objectives such as developing substantive or skill expertise, or clarifying the student’s career preferences by reflecting on simply ‘what it’s like’ to practice in the selected field. Meeting with each student early in the term, externship faculty can help a student identify or clarify such goals.

By two to three weeks into the term, an externship student should have a great deal to say about the work of his agency and the nature and quality of his supervision there. In most externship classes, students have discussed supervision expectations in class and shared information with each other about assigned work. Topics to be reviewed on what might be called the micro level include clarity of assignment, guidance as to resources and methods, and effective feedback about student progress. In regard to the larger picture, faculty should be able to learn about whether the student has begun to be immersed in the work and to understand the mission of the agency and the challenges faced by its lawyers.

The faculty-student relationship begun at the outset of the externship placement will grow during the term. Classroom discussion, journal writing/dialogue, and informal contact in the law school building can serve to make clear that the instructor cares about the student’s experience. If student and faculty create a foundation of trust as a result of these interactions, the faculty supervisor is in a good position to communicate effectively as the term continues to support the student, whether to applaud success or to help the student resolve problems.

No law student learns all she needs to know during law school. Yet most students (and faculty, as well) focus on the tasks of completing course requirements, not on identifying what they will continue to try to achieve. Externships, like other clinical programs, aim to prepare students for continued self-directed improvement in skills. As the externship experience comes to a close, students can be asked to commit to a new set of personal goals, whether to correct deficiencies or toward further accomplishment in skills in which the student has found herself proficient or potentially talented. While this task may be assigned as part of a final written self-evaluation, it could also be the subject of an exit interview.

I meet with each student early in the term, after he or she has begun work, for the purpose of reviewing learning goals, supervision patterns and general student satisfaction with the placement.

At an orientation class at the beginning of the term, each student signs up for a time to meet with me for the express goal of review of their goals and their experience. Prior to the meeting, the student has submitted time reports and journal entries for the first two weeks or so of the term, along with a written statement of learning goals which has been read and approved by the field supervisor. The meeting, for which I set aside about a half-hour, is scheduled two to three weeks into the 14 week term.

I greet the student with two general questions – ‘how are you doing at the [name of placement]?’ followed closely by ‘what are you working on?’ I do have concrete information that I plan to review at this point in the term, if possible: who is the direct supervisor, what tasks have been assigned, have the student learning goals been reviewed and concurred in by a supervisor, what guidance and feedback has been provided so far, how does the student plan to accomplish each of the learning goals, are the learning goals appropriate to the placement, do planned assignments make the best use of the placement’s opportunities and the student’s interests, and so forth. But first, and primarily, I am listening to both content and tone of the student’s response to my intentionally very open-ended questions. I am listening for an account of the student’s experience that is both informed and enthusiastic – affective success in the form of enthusiasm and interest in the work and the people of the placement, as well as cognitive success in the form of thoughtful engagement with the work.

As the student and I talk about matters s/he is researching or cases that his or her office is working on, I listen for clues about the working relationship between the student and the field supervisor. In response to a comment suggesting doubt or confusion about a matter, I may ask what the supervisor thinks about the student’s concerns. I am not concerned with exactly what the supervisor thinks, but about whether that conversation has taken place. I am prepared to ask more specific supervision-related questions about guidance, assignment clarification, and feedback. But the student’s unprompted comments on these subjects will reveal the student’s own grasp of the importance of these supervision activities. We may also need to talk about realistic expectations for supervision in some placements.

Similarly, I am listening for evidence of the student’s engagement with and immersion in the legal work of the placement. I ask additional questions, as necessary, on the topics s/he has reported working on. I would like to hear some indication that the student has at least an initial understanding of the context for the assignments relative to the mission of the placement. I would like to hear curiosity. I would like to hear that the field supervisor is responsive to student interest.

If, listening to the student, I hear indications of personal engagement, curiosity, substantial legal work with initial fruitful discussions with supervisors, my job is to support these positive indications. I briefly review what I am hearing, predict a successful experience, while inviting further discussion throughout the term, avoiding pronouncements that may imply that I would not be open to hearing about problems later.

On the other hand, I may see red flags. Examples of apparent problems could include an impression of apathy, or a lack of enthusiasm for the experience. The student may have goals that are unrealistic for the placement, which the supervisor has, seemingly carelessly, approved. The student may list his assigned tasks, but seem to have little understanding of how the assignments fit a larger project or fulfill the mission of the agency. I want to notice the early warning signs of a student who is not at least beginning to be engaged, immersed, connected.

This is a moment to discuss strategies to improve the student’s situation. My first goal is to help the student identify the issues as clearly as possible, paying attention to the open question of whether the target for reform is the placement or the student himself. I want to assure the student of my support. Finally, the student and I together ought to be able to identify initial avenues of action. I do not want to discourage the student. It is early in the term, and any concerns that have been raised are very initial impressions.

As we conclude our meeting, my final question is ‘any other thoughts or concerns?’ I pause as long as necessary for the student to admit worries not yet communicated, if any. The meeting ends with encouraging words, including briefly reviewing what we have planned to do about any issues of concern.

However imperfectly accomplished, I am trying to establish and begin acting on a counseling relationship with each student or to deepen the relationship begun with students I have met earlier in the externship process. I may provide advice, clarify or reinforce expectations about what the student should expect from supervision, or begin a conversation about the student’s professional development as a lawyer. Even in the relatively rare case of a truly problematic placement – for example, when assignments are insubstantial, or supervision is seriously inadequate – I want the student to leave my office convinced that s/he and I are a team that will solve the problem together. I also want to stimulate the student to have ideas for solving his own problems, and accomplishing his own goals, consistent with the aim of preparing students for continued self-directed learning.

As externship faculty, we approach most students with a good deal of knowledge about the placements, including what we have learned from the experience of previous students. We have established our general educational goals for every student’s experience working in the approved practice settings and judicial chambers of our programs. Through their responsibility for substantial legal work, students establish the beginnings of a professional identity and increase their ability to learn from experience. Our counseling task is to bring this information, and these pedagogical purposes, into focus with respect to each student as an individual. One-on-one discussion with externship faculty at as early a point as practical initiates a relationship between the faculty member and the student, a relationship that becomes a valuable resource for the student as s/he navigates the externship experience. Our counseling goals are to understand that student, helping the student make the decisions that will improve her professional development.

Externship faculty must engage in many tasks, both administrative and pedagogical. In a perfect world, we would counsel each student at regular intervals, consult with each supervisor frequently, conduct teaching workshops for supervisors, recruit and inspect new potential placements, coordinate our efforts with the law school career offices and pro bono staff and with local bar groups, write thoughtful and useful scholarship, and tap dance. While possibly some of our colleagues actually do all of these things brilliantly, most have to make choices. Choosing to invest time in establishing a counseling relationship with students contributes significantly to achieving our educational goals. To do so effectively, we need to communicate our expectations to students clearly, structure opportunities to be in contact with our students, and continue to identify and develop appropriate counseling skills.