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The Role of Clinic in Linking Law and Justice

Keynote Address - Australian Clinical Legal Education Conference 11 July 2003, Caloundra Queensland

Author: Judith Dickson BA, LLB, LLM
Clinical Supervisor, La Trobe University School of Law and Legal Studies
Issue: Volume 11, Number 1 (March 2004)

Contents

    Law teachers are teachers like professors in other disciplines. But unlike their colleagues in some other disciplines . . . the products of their intellectual processes need not and should not be measured solely by so-called scholarly research and writing. Law Teachers must go beyond this and assume the responsibility of being judged for improving the quality of the legal process. They must be judged not by articles and books alone; but also by what they are doing to promote dignity, humanity, and justice for individuals through the legal process; and by what they are doing to this end in the process of providing legal education to future lawyers.[1]

    Introduction

  1. William Pincus threw out this challenge 35 years ago as he was encouraging law schools in the United States of America to develop clinical programs with the help of Ford Foundation funding and CLEPR (The Council for Legal Education and Professional Responsibility). He was very clear that lawyers, including law teachers had a professional obligation to use their legal skills and experience for the benefit of all members of their society - not just those who could afford to pay for them. In fact, his dismay at the absence of awareness of such an obligation in the numerous research grant applications he reviewed at the Ford Foundation was the catalyst for his work in the clinical field.

  2. I like William Pincus. I like the determination and passion for his educational adventure that comes through his writings and I like his apparent ability to persuade and lobby those in power by focussing on clinical legal education as a necessary and obvious part of legal education.

  3. Yesterday, Simon spoke to us about a 'reconceptualising of legal education in the clinical model'. Today I want to take up some of his threads as well as those of William Pincus in the quote I have shown.

  4. One of those threads is the idea of reflection on our practice. If, as William Pincus suggests, we, as law teachers are to be judged on how well we are 'improving the quality of the legal process' through our educational programs, then we certainly need to look hard and closely at what we are doing and ask some perhaps uncomfortable questions.

  5. I begin with some questions about the meaning of 'law' 'justice' and 'clinic' and then some more questions about our ideas and practices within clinical legal education. What are our goals and what are the assumptions leading to formulation of these goals? This leads me to wonder how we see ourselves within the law school environment. My tentative answers to these questions leads me to some ideas about the role that clinical legal education might play in linking or integrating law and justice and some practical suggestions for how that role might be played out.

  6. Underlying my ideas are two concepts that have interested me and my teaching and research partner Mary Anne Noone for quite some time. These are first, the concept of the law teacher and specifically the clinical law teacher as role model; and secondly the nature of ethical practice.

    'Law' 'Justice' and 'Clinic'

  7. What do we mean by these words? The first two in particular are bandied about by lawyers, legal educators, commentators and the general public in different circumstances and for different purposes. What are some of the ways in which they are used? I want to spend some time on these usages because I think they influence the way in which clinical legal educators approach their work.

    Law

  8. Being a practical person, my starting point is a dictionary. The Oxford English Dictionary 1989 2nd edition defines law first as "A rule of conduct imposed by authority" and under that heading as:

  9. The Macquarie Dictionary Federation edition 2001 defines 'law' as:

  10. The Collins Thesaurus (1995) lists as primary synonyms "charter, code, constitution, jurisprudence" and as secondary synonyms includes " act, canon, code, command, ...edict, rule, statute".

  11. This all seems as we expect and know in our daily life. There is the idea of imposition and the idea that the rules and regulations constituting the law reflect the norms of the society. As citizens, how we respond to the laws that bind us might depend on how energetic we are individually and what our personal political views are. In any event, I agree with Margaret Davies in her book Asking the Law Question when she says that : . . .law defines, categorises, and sets conditions for communication. . . It may at times be necessary or desirable to question or transgress the definitions and order(s) which law establishes, but this does not mean that we can do without it in some form or another.[2]

  12. I can't see how, as citizens, lawyers and legal educators, we can disagree with this.

    Justice

  13. Perhaps to the surprise of no-one here, the dictionaries give a clear moral foundation to 'justice'. Both the Macquarie Dictionary and the Random House Dictionary of the English Language (2nd ed 1987) define the word first as " the quality of being just; righteousness, equitableness, or moral rightness". The Oxford Dictionary similarly defines it first as "the quality of being just" and then " the quality of being (morally) just or righteous; the principle of just dealing. . . " The Macquarie Dictionary goes on to define justice as "the moral principle determining just conduct" and "conformity to this principle as manifested in conduct; just conduct, dealing, or treatment".

  14. When we look at the definitions of "just" we see them as "actuated by truth, justice, and lack of bias/ in accordance with true principles" (Macquarie); "upright and impartial in one's dealings; rendering every one his due; equitable" (Oxford). We see synonyms for 'justice' as "equity, fairness, honesty, impartiality, integrity, . . ." (Collins).

  15. Justice also means vindication of a right, exercise of authority or power to enforce a right and then it has the vengeful sense of infliction of punishment on an offender (Oxford). There is another strand, however, to the definition with which we are also familiar in our daily work. This defines justice as the 'maintenance and administration of law as by judicial or other proceedings" (Macquarie).

    Current usage of the terms

  16. It is this latter meaning which seems to appear most frequently in legal and political language. Justice is frequently used as part of the term 'justice system'. For example, 'criminal justice system'; 'civil justice system'; 'juvenile justice system.' It really seems to be interchangeable with the term 'legal system' which we understand more easily to be the law(s) and the system of courts and tribunals set up to administer and enforce it. I always feel a little uneasy at this usage. Somehow it seems at odds with the primary meanings of justice.

  17. We are also used to the term 'access to justice'. This was used in the 1990s by governments in their inquiries into the operation of the law and the legal system in Australia. We had the Access to Justice Advisory Committee, chaired by Ronald Sackville, with its Report Access to Justice : An Action Plan. We then had the Justice Statement of the then federal government implementing the Sackville Committee report. And there have been other inquiries by both government and the legal profession using the terms. Law Societies have their 'Access to Justice' committees. In these reports 'justice' or 'access to justice' seems to refer to the treatment of citizens within the legal system.

  18. The Sackville Committee thought that there were three essential elements to the concept of access to justice. These were:

    * Equality of access to legal services
    * National equity
    * Equality before the law[3]

  19. This approach to justice seems in keeping with the ideas of equity, fairness, impartiality and integrity contained in the primary definitions. This is not surprising given Ronald Sackville's history. I have wondered whether he felt a sense of déjà vu in 1994. After all, 19 years earlier, he had written the report Law and Poverty in Australia[4] as part of the Commission of Inquiry in Poverty. In it he had argued that absence of substantive equality before the law was the critical failure of the legal system at that time.

  20. Recently, the Victorian Attorney-General made a ministerial statement entitled 'A fair, accessible and understandable justice system'. In it he described 'justice' as :

  21. The echoes of the Law and Poverty Report and of the 1994 Access to Justice: An Action Plan are clear in this description. To achieve justice, that is, to achieve equity, fairness, honesty, impartiality and integrity in our legal system requires attention to structures and systems and to the substantive law. In 1975 the Law and Poverty Report pointed out that many areas of the law including tenancy law and criminal law positively discriminated against poor people. In 1994 the Access to Justice: An Action Plan stated clearly that:

  22. It seems clear from a glance at any of the definitions of justice that I have outlined and at the usages I have described, that law and justice are inextricably linked. How can anyone say otherwise? Nevertheless, they do, and frequently, and in my experience 'they' are usually found within law schools. Practising lawyers, whatever their area of practice, have an experience based knowledge of the connection. Just to finish my definitional section I'll pass on to:

    Clinic aka Clinical legal education

  23. There have been attempts at definition. Both Simon Rice and myself have defined clinical legal education as a legal practice based method of legal education in which law students assume the role of a lawyer and are required to take on the responsibility, under supervision, for providing legal services to real clients. 'Clinic' in Australia now includes not only the community legal centre based university programs but also field placements or externships in a variety of agencies and even private law firms. The definition is perhaps too narrow now as some programs move away from the direct provision of legal services to individuals or groups and focus on involving students in legal policy or campaign work - real law in practice but perhaps not with an individual client sitting in front of the student. We are all familiar with the origins of clinical legal education in Australia. At our last conference in 2000, Jeff Giddings from Griffith University thoroughly surveyed the history and development of clinic in Australia- its growth out of the free legal services movement in the early 1970s, which had a substantial involvement of students and legal academics. The consequent ongoing connection of clinic with the community by the situating of programs within community legal centres - the university - community legal centre connection- has been traced by Mary Anne Noone,[6] and remains a distinctive characteristic of clinic in Australia.

    Goals and assumptions

  24. If we are to advocate the proposition that clinic is the model on which legal education should be based shouldn't we spend some time reflecting on what it is we do and why we do it? Perhaps we believe the verandah is the best place for clinic. After all, in traditional Australian domestic architecture, the verandah serves many useful purposes. Not the least of these is to bring a breath of fresh air into the house. But verandahs need cleaning from time to time. Reflection is in order.

  25. So why do we do whatever it is we do? What are the goals of clinical legal education? And what are the assumptions giving rise to them? Is it foolish to attempt a statement of generic goals? If we look back to our origins we might say that the goals came first and the method developed to achieve them. Are there therefore goals common to all programs? I am going to attempt the task.

    Goals

  26. Clinic in Australia has traditionally had both educational and service goals. I would describe the educational goal as multi-faceted, that is to:

    * Through the practice of law to introduce law students to the ways in which legal rules and processes (law/ the legal system) impact upon ordinary people

    * Encourage students to reflect upon their experience of the law in practice and as part of this to critically analyse the social and legal impact (the justice) of existing legal rules and procedures.

    * Guide students to consider alternatives to the existing legal rules and procedures

    * Foster the acquisition of practical legal skills

    The service goal is I think one of community service. That is the provision of legal services to poor and disadvantaged people in the community.

  27. I put these forward as suggested general goals. I could expand on each and I recognise that specific programs might have additional specific goals. I also recognise that over the nearly thirty year history of clinical legal education in Australia, the balance between the educational and service goals has tilted at various times.

    Assumptions

  28. Underlying these goals is and was a set of assumptions about the law, justice, law school, law students and lawyers. Here are some examples:

  29. If you accept this list as a fair representation of the range of assumptions underpinning the clinical method, then it certainly portrays a view that law and justice go hand in hand.

    Who do we think we are, or our self image as clinical teachers

  30. My research into supervision practices conducted over the last two years (and still in the 'draft' publication stage - the 'too busy' excuse) revealed a profile of clinical teachers as lawyers coming into education from a legal aid or community law practice. This was not exclusively so but mostly so. For some time after becoming clinical teachers and supervisors, we still thought of ourselves as community lawyers first and teachers/academics second. Mostly, this changed over time. The self- description became closer to 'clinical supervisor and practitioner'. We continue to value and give a high priority to our role as legal practitioners but there was a recognition that we were in the clinic to educate our students. Consider the goals again.

  31. I have some other suggestions about our self- image. Not all of them, when I see them in print, make me feel very comfortable. Some of them come out of my research and others are my own ideas - thrown up perhaps when I was feeling particularly self- lacerating.

  32. Is the self- image based on reality and knowledge or is some of it at least, based on prejudice and insecurity?

  33. Does our practice bear out our beliefs about ourselves? I come back to a point made by yesterday's speaker about the irony of clinical teachers urging students to reflect on their practice but failing to do so themselves.

  34. I have asked these questions and tried to confront us with some perhaps uncomfortable ideas about how we see ourselves as clinical teachers because I think, clinical teachers - even more so than other law teachers - have to meet William Pincus' challenge. In other words, if we set clinical legal education up as the most appropriate method of legal education and ourselves as extraordinary teachers and academics, then we have to work hard to meet the expectations.

    The Role of clinic within legal education

  35. This leads me to the core of my talk - the role of clinic in linking law and justice.

  36. My response to this topic - essentially a question - comes out of the preceding discussion. My strongly held view is that the only legitimate purpose for the continuance of clinical legal education programs in Australian law schools is the integration of law and justice into the legal education curriculum. The role of clinic in legal education therefore is to be the means by which students and academics make the link between law and justice in practice. I have only recently realised that this is what I think but it is a view that has been bubbling away and directing a variety of my activities for some time. It should follow that if the link is continuously made the community will be served by more ethical lawyers and experience access to justice more effectively. High hopes indeed!

  37. Before I go on to talk about how clinic can play out this role, I make the probably obvious point that while it is useful for directors of clinical programs to focus on the practical skills aspect when recruiting students and persuading Deans and governments to put up more money, there is strictly speaking no need in the Australian legal training system for universities to fund a clinical program to teach practical legal skills. That supposedly happens in the Practical Legal Training post degree stage of legal education. In any case, skills are embedded in law courses these days and simulation is a wonderful opportunity for skills training. Skills training might be better with a real client and a critical approach but it doesn't need poor clients.

    Practical Opportunities - How to carve out the Role?

    It is in the practical development of the role that the two concepts I mentioned at the outset, clinical teacher as role model and the nature of ethical practice, have most importance. Carrie Menkel-Meadow echoed William Pincus when she asked 'Can a Law teacher avoid teaching Legal Ethics?'[7] Her argument was that everything we do and say in teaching the law gives a message to our students "This is how the law works. This is how lawyers work". How much more is this the case in the clinical environment where we carry the added influence of practitioners.[8]

  38. The nature of ethical practice influences the way we approach this assumed role. It must include a belief that lawyers have a positive obligation to work to improve access to justice and conversely that they do not encourage the use of law to bring about injustice, oppression or discrimination.

  39. I refer back to some of my earlier questions about specific practices in working with clients.

    How can we do more than we do?

  40. I can hear a collective but politely silent groan around the room. What is this woman on about I hear you ask? She mustn't have enough to do in her clinic if she is dreaming up more projects! I can assure you I'm pretty busy but - on reflection - maybe I could organise my work better and maybe I should rethink what and how I do what I do.

  41. It is in this spirit of reflection and self-analysis that I make some practical suggestions. I hope that they might make our lives as clinical teachers more fun, lead those of us who want to, onto the scholarship path and certainly not simply add to our work -load.

  42. A final point before I begin my list. As I said a little while ago, it is implicit in what I say that the clinical goal of community service is central to this project.

    Practical ways for clinic to link law and justice

  43. First step: If your clinical program and you, are based off campus, pay regular visits to the law school. If that's too hard - although I strongly urge you to make the effort - at least visit the website and visit your academic colleagues via cyber space. Why?

  44. Let's value our own work but let's not be prejudiced. Let's not be dismissive of the pressures on our non-clinical colleagues. A narrow and self-absorbed attitude might simply marginalise clinic even more and emphasise the distance (intellectual and physical) between clinical and mainstream legal education.

  45. Second step leading on from the first: Look at the programs we run. I know that much if not all of the work done in clinical programs around Australia could be described as educating clinical students to draw connections between law and justice (making the link). BUT I THINK IT IS MOSTLY DONE IN ISOLATION FROM OUR ACADEMIC COLLEAGUES AND THE VAST MAJORITY OF LAW STUDENTS.

    Proposals

    1. Take a close look at the work you are doing in the clinic. If it's a generalist clinic, are there recurring problems, eg, credit, mobile phone debt, employment abuses, etc. In a specialist clinic are there legal issues that need research. Does the work raise wider issues of public policy?
    2. Identify the research strengths of your colleagues - use the web page. Work out who seems to be working in areas related to the issues you have identified.
    3. Wearing your innovative teacher hat, imagine yourself as a contracts teacher or an employment law teacher or a teacher of international human rights. Would your casework issues present interesting class problems?
    4. Wearing your clinical teacher on the scholarship trail hat could the legal issues you have identified form the basis for a research grant application?
    5. Ring up your colleague, suggest you have an idea for a research proposal and thought they might be interested in working together. Flatter them, suggest a coffee - on campus at first - and then invite them to the clinic. You may be astonished at their knowledge of the area and interest in a collaboration. Don't be dismissive of them just because they don't know anything about legal practice and might not want to know. You might end up with a valuable piece of research with practical use. At the very least you have made a connection with a colleague for the future and they might, with your encouragement, use your examples in their teaching.
    6. Talk to the Director of the law degree honours stream. Suggest they refer students who are looking for topics, to you. Suggest some topics to the director. Talk to your clinical students about an honours thesis.
    7. Get to know the first year teachers. The direct clinical experience is only open to a few usually advanced students. The first year teachers have enormous influence over hundreds of students. Suggest you could come and talk to the group.
    8. Continue to do as many of us already do. That is, occasionally organise seminars around topics relevant to the clinical work. Play the game and word the title in a way to appeal to an academic audience (but don't get carried away by post-modern language)
    9. Examine your assessment in the clinical subject. Perhaps that written assignment could be redesigned as a team project and a law reform submission. I know at least one Australian clinical program where this has happened with much resultant publicity and potential for student publication. While this might be restricted to a few students it spreads the message to the community and to the law school [9]
    10. Continue to be a publicist for clinic and its work. Most of us are quite good at this. It is important to ensure that we don't appear to denigrate our law school colleagues in the process
    11. Offer to give a staff seminar. Most law schools have these on a regular basis as a way of staff presenting ongoing research. It need not be too threatening although assessment by one's peers is always nerve wracking. Go back through the semester's work and find a case that raised difficult legal or procedural issues or some other issue of law and justice. You might present it as a teaching issue or you might be able to present it as ongoing research into the particular issue and an opportunity for further research. Think of the seminar as one of your classes and you'll be fine.
    12. Even better and probably less work, explore them with visiting lecturers. This is an opportunity to share your knowledge of a different experience of the law by introducing eg, a public interest lawyer, an activist, a partner of a law firm who does pro bono work. You might find that your colleague is delighted. Two colleagues of mine from University of Sydney Law School, Les McCrimmen and Graeme Coss, and I were fortunate to be able to take this approach at our respective law schools this year by taking advantage of the Commonwealth Law Conference in Melbourne. We persuaded our law schools and our student associations to put up a small amount of money and we brought a wonderful Ugandan human rights lawyer and parliamentarian (Dora Byamukama) to Sydney and Melbourne early to speak to our first year classes and give other seminars. At La Trobe University, the law students association rapidly organised a public lecture and publicised it widely. The feedback from the first year teachers at both places was that the students were buzzing after the talks. They were certainly full of questions. That was probably close to 500 students in total. Personally, I had approached the first year coordinator in the belief that they were rigid and narrow in outlook. I discovered that they were excited by the idea and want to do something similar next year.

  46. Some of this might appear to require more work and we already think we work harder than our colleagues. The answer might be, once again, to reflect on how we run the clinic, to focus on our goals and to readjust our priorities. This might mean making hard decisions such as the decision not to take on a new area of work. It might mean 'letting go'. By this I mean accepting that we can't control every aspect of clinical work. We might have to allow others in the law school who are not clinical academics to develop a program, write the curriculum and take the credit.

    Conclusion

  47. The key to clinical legal education's role in linking law and justice - in integrating the two within the law school mentality - is, in my opinion, collaboration with our law school colleagues. Unfortunately, it is probably up to us to make the overtures and make the case that it is in their interests. It's also up to us to make the case that, as Gary Blasi said at the 1996 APLEC conference: Law is about problem-solving, but it is also about justice, about moral judgments and ethical decisions, about the intersection of how things are and how they ought to be [10]

  48. There are no doubt lots of other ways in which we might proceed than my short list of suggestions. However, given the state of university education in this country and the challenges facing the legal profession as lawyers try to find a new vision of lawyering in an uncertain regulatory environment, who better than clinical law teachers to set the example of the value of justice in law.

Notes

[1] William Pincus, 'Lawyers' Professional Responsibility' (1969)22 Journal of Legal Education, reprinted in Clinical Education for Law Students: Essays by William Pincus CLEPR 1980, 37-68

[2] Margaret Davies Asking the Law Question LBC 1994, 2

[3] Access to Justice Advisory Committee, Access to Justice: An Action Plan (1994)

[4] Ronald Sackville, Law and Poverty in Australia Second Main Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Poverty, October 1975

[5] Access to Justice Advisory Committee, Access to Justice: An Action Plan 1994 para 2.4

[6] Mary Anne Noone, 'Australian Community Legal Centres - The University Connection' in Jeremy Cooper & Louise Trubek (eds) Educating for Justice: Social Values and Legal Education Dartmouth Press 1997

[7] Carrie Menkel-Meadow, "Can a Law Teacher Avoid Teaching Legal Ethics?" (1991) 41 Journal of Legal Education 3.

[8] M.A. Noone & J.A. Dickson, 'Teaching Towards a New Professionalism: challenging law students to become ethical lawyers' (2001) Legal Ethics

[9] At La Trobe University, the program 'Clinical Legal Education' based at West Heidelberg Community Legal Service and taught by Liz Curran. See also, for a US example, Elizabeth M. Schneider, 'Building Bridges between Theory and Practice, Scholarship and Activism' (1992) 40 Cleveland State Law Review 493

[10] Gary Blasi, 'Teaching/Lawyering as an Intellectual Project' (1996) 14(1) Journal of Professional Legal Education 65,72


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