Rethinking Placements Under Revised Rules & Retrenchment: Successful (and Joyful!) Practicum Partnership Models

Hirsch Hall, Room J

This session addresses the new reality facing so many law schools: more demands for experiential learning and fewer resources to dedicate to such courses. We will explore the new era of changing ABA Standards and how to meet the challenge through “practicum” courses, which work to close the access to justice gap, provide students with rich service learning experiences, and forge community partnerships. We as presenters, a clinical professor and a legal writing professor, will share our experiences in this new space and ask others to share theirs. We will contextualize these ideas by sharing several thriving practicum models, which are embedded field experiences created with community partnerships and designed to include a rigorous academic component with an applied-writing requirement. The session will include active participant engagement and bring discourse and sharing in from the very beginning. We hope for a robust discussion of this new model and the complexity of labeling experiential learning under the AALS Section on Clinical Legal Education Glossary for Experiential Education (https://www.aals.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/AALS-policy-Vocabulary-l...). The Glossary in some ways begins (and begs) a conversation. We will add to that conversation by exploring how success and joy can emerge from new designs for experiential courses. This concurrent session will also include feedback from community partners who have been working with such models or who have related ideas. This approach will enrich the discussion beyond the primary lens situated within legal education. Participants will leave with shared ideas as well as a handout summarizing related courses following this model. A final version of the handout, reflecting the work of the session, will be available after Externships 9.