Legal Education: Teaching and Learning Law

Clinical legal education (CLE) is potentially the major disruptor of traditional law schools’ core functions. Good CLE challenges many central clichés of conventional learning in law—everything from case book method to the 50-minute lecture. This guidebook is for anyone seeking to design and redesign accountable legal education; that is, education that does not just transform the learner, but also inculcates in future lawyers a compassion for and service of those whom the law ought to serve.

The first Canadian text to integrate the theories of clinical law and provide a set of practical tools to teach students how to effectively advocate for their clients in a legal clinic environment. This hands-on guide puts individual client advocacy at its centre with information on how to interview and counsel clients and how to manage a client file.

The Clinical Legal Education Handbook is intended to act as a good practice guide and practical resource for those engaged in the design and delivery of clinical legal education programmes at university law schools. The Handbook is primarily aimed at clinics in England and Wales, but is likely to have content that is of interest to those engaged in clinic in other jurisdictions. The Handbook offers direction on how to establish and run student law clinics and sets out guidance on both the pedagogical and regulatory considerations involved in the delivery of clinical programmes. It also provides an introduction to the existing body of research and scholarship on Clinical Legal Education (CLE).

Foregrounding the importance of schemata in learning, this book presents an integrated approach to the overall pedagogical theory of law. Krieger challenges the traditional stark dichotomy between doctrinal analysis and practice skills, arguing that skills education requires development of strategic reasoning in practice.