Well-being is a skill and value taught in many professional settings and now increasingly in law schools. This session describes how clinical and externship placements provide unique opportunities to learn this skill and value within the context of the ABA’s recently released report, The Path to Lawyer Well-Being: Practical Recommendations for Positive Change. We will explore questions such as:
- Why is well-being an ideal topic for a clinical or externship seminar?
- How is the mental health of law students languishing, based upon the latest research?
- How do we teach our students the skills for making a good and sustainable life in the law?
- How do we collaborate to teach our students transferrable skills across different professional environments?
Presenters will share how they teach well-being with emphasis on collaboration with other professionals, other clinicians, and doctrinal faculty. Information will be provided on how to connect this curriculum to other doctrinal and clinical courses. Participants will engage in an exercise designed to assess their own well-being and will discuss the results with the goal of including the topic and materials in their own externship and clinical programs.