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What are some of the challenges and possibilities animating modern Canadian clinical and experiential learning in law? This question was the starting point for our research, which examined two sets of data. In the first part of this project, we analyzed available information on existing clinical and experiential learning programs in Canadian law schools. This data revealed a growing quantity and variety of programs across the country. We then held qualitative interviews with deans, professors, and clinicians across Canada regarding their views of clinical and experiential learning. While the interviews suggested that many of the same financial and curricular challenges that dominated early debates remain stubbornly entrenched, there are also significant promising views and practices. No longer regarded by most as a legal education outlier, clinical and experiential learning has come out of the curricular shadows and taken a prominent place in most law schools in Canada. Nuanced questions now dominate thinking around this generation of clinical and experiential learning. What is the role of community in the creation, decision making, and continuity of clinical programs? How can students balance an increasingly intensive set of learning, professional, and financial challenges? How can clinical and experiential learning be better aligned with the rest of the curriculum, and as accessible as possible? As all respondent law schools but one are expanding their clinical and experiential learning options, these and other questions will continue to animate programs in the foreseeable future.

The initial purpose of this study was to examine the educational needs and perceptions of students and clinicians in Canadian legal clinics. The author conducted a literature review of leading legal educational materials in Canada and the United Status focusing on required or preferred competencies for law students. The author then interviewed law students, clinicians, social workers, and community legal workers, all of whom were working or studying at law school-affiliated legal clinics. Interview subjects were asked a series of questions about their learning experiences in hopes of informing the creation of teaching and learning materials. The data revealed an under-reliance on the affective elements of teaching, learning and practice in both existing literature and current teaching practices. The data also revealed deep structural divides between doctrinal and clinical teaching and learning approaches. Without further integration, students and, ultimately, communities and clients will not reap the benefits of an integrated curriculum.

Integrating curricular and co-curricular endeavors to enhance student outcomes reports on a variety of innovative approaches taken in universities in a number of nations of their experience in bringing together learning in courses with learning in co- and extracurricular activities. Topics range from study abroad programs to service-learning. Also covered are community-based learning, cross-disciplinary collaborations, and peer-mentoring. This volume will introduce you to research and many interesting contexts, such as the U.S. Naval Academy, where promoting ethical leadership to cadets has been an important focus. Frame-breaking approaches, such as having university business students and circus performers collaborate, are explained within the context of the literature. The leveraging of Somali immigrant education programs for student learning is a stimulating activity that is also covered. Another inventive issue explored is the reformatting of traditional co-curricular transcripts to reflect a wider indication and measure of students' skills and abilities

Clinical Law: Practice, Theory, and Social Justice Advocacy is the first Canadian text of its kind 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. Clinical Law is ideal for clinical law courses. The text features discussion questions, notes, and exercises to provide students with accessible information, including the varying contexts in which clinical law is practised, the practical approaches to building relationships with clients and communities, and the future of clinical legal practice.

English Abstract: Clinical work in law offers important opportunities for students to learn critical, reflective and politicized approaches to legal identity and practice. Such an approach is most meaningful when it is engaged by supervising lawyers and social workers in a clinical placement. The authors of this article, the Academic Clinic Director and Executive Director of two Windsor-based clinic programs, offer context, perspective and examples of how critical pedagogy (influenced by, but distinct from, critical legal studies) provides a roadmap for supervising lawyers and the programs in which they work. The paper briefly sets the context of the authors' teaching and practice. The authors then set out some of the interested parties in clinical legal education, including law schools, communities, students and clients. The paper concludes with ideas on how a clinical program might set out to strengthen critical pedagogy in the supervisory relationship.

Over the past several years, the regulation and accreditation of legal education in most common law jurisdictions is shifting significantly, with greater emphasis on ‘outcomes’ or ‘outputs’. In Canada, the Federation of Law Societies of Canada is entering more boldly into the approval and accreditation of law schools. In Australia, legal regulators are increasingly nationalizing their approach to legal education, and developing new ‘threshold learning outcomes’ for law schools. In the United States, the American Bar Association is shifting to a more outcomes-focused regulatory regime. The result of these accreditation processes is not entirely clear: however, most jurisdictions have set out their respective approaches in later-stage draft form, allowing an initial comparative view. While debate on regulation, accreditation and assessment in all three countries has been vigorous, a notable gap exists in discourse around the role of clinical legal education, particularly in Canada and Australia. This article then explores how clinical education fits either explicitly or implicitly in these accreditation schemes, focusing on the strengths and weaknesses of competency/outcome regulation from a clinical legal education perspective. Although there is potential for clinical legal education to be used as a ‘competency boot camp’, weakening the reflective, deep and integrative assessment approach that is the cornerstone of mature, ‘third wave’ clinical legal education, there is also potential for greater commitment to integration of clinical legal education into the law school curriculum more generally. This article then sets out the importance of curricular integration and self-assessment to realize the full potential of not only clinical legal education, but the aspirational vision of lawyering many hope to achieve.

Gemma Smyth, 2012 1-1 Canadian Journal of Poverty Law 145, 2012 CanLIIDocs 721

Vaillancourt's book is reviewed in the context of the Social Assistance Review in Ontario.

Roderick A Macdonald, Gemma Smyth, Maggie Liddle, Jenny Buchan, Tracy Wilcox, Dale Dewhurst, David Newlyn, Liesel Spencer, Mary J Shariff, Vanessa MacDonnell, 2012 6 Canadian Legal Education Annual Review, 2012 CanLIIDocs 705

Client interviewing is a cornerstone of lawyer-client relationships, particularly in often high-conflict child protection matters. This practical article focuses on the initial interview of adult clients involved in child protection matters. Part I sets out the social context of interviewing caregivers. Part II describes the theories of client-centred and engaged client-centred lawyering employed throughout the paper. Given the context and theory, Part III sets out four key stages of interviewing that may prove difficult for new lawyers: rapport-building, fact gathering, reality checking and concluding.

Mediation in the case of elder abuse and mistreatment is increasingly employed in North America to resolve conflicts that disproportionately affect older adults. The attendant dangers of mediation in these cases require awareness of and sensitivity to issues facing older adults and their families, including elder abuse, ageism, and consent and capacity. This article charts the introductory stages of an elder mistreatment mediation project started through a law school-based mediation clinic. Responding to expressed local need, the project developed an Intake Guide that attempts to balance the autonomy of the older adult with safety screening. The model employs an interdisciplinary approach, with specialist social workers acting as advocates throughout the process. Lessons learned from the project include: the importance of training; the need for flexible and responsive approaches to mediation; the importance of a specialized intake and screening tool; the benefits of interdisciplinary, strengths-based approaches and the centrality of collaborative community relationships to ensure program sustainability.