Turning Down the Static: Fine-tuning Feedback, Supervision and Difficult Conversations

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Session Type: Concurrent Sessions

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Feedback conversations between law students and supervisors are critically important yet often distorted. Students may be self-conscious about their work, reluctant to seek feedback, and defensive about being critiqued. Supervisors may need to manage their own emotions about student or supervisor mistakes and their consequences for a case. Without carefully crafted and delivered feedback, students will tune out vital lessons from their experiential education. The ability to have difficult conversations is an essential skill for students to learn in order to improve their lawyering skills, develop a habit of of self-critique and evaluation, and form a professional identity. As faculty, we are ultimately responsible for creating a positive learning environment, which includes setting the scene for constructive feedback. In this session, we will first discuss the similarities and differences between feedback for supervision of students taking in-house clinics versus externships. Next, we will introduce specific feedback techniques for faculty to employ such as (a) how to prepare students to receive positive and negative feedback, (b) how to increase student “buy in,” and (c) how to encourage two-way feedback. In breakout sessions, attendees will use these techniques to develop strategies in a simulated feedback exercise and report to the group as a whole. Attendees will leave with a sheet summarizing the feedback techniques and a short bibliography.