Listen
Up: Conversation Analysis Shows How Law Students Fail – And Succeed
– in a Brief Advice Clinic
Linda F. Smith, University of Utah, S.J. Quinney College
of Law
People with
family law cases often handle these cases themselves relying, upon brief advice
from attorneys. Law students sometimes assist lawyers to staff brief advice
“clinics.” Is this a match made in heaven or a disaster waiting to happen?
Pro bono law
students vary in their professional demeanor and skills interacting with
clients in a brief advice clinic. They have a strong desire to help
and to display their knowledge, but this sometimes creates problems and results
in the clients getting less than adequate services. The attorneys
who volunteer also vary in their skills as supervisors. Some provide a flood of
information for the student, covering much more than the student can absorb and
the particular client will need to know. Others are able to simultaneously
instruct the student about the law and process while giving the student scripts
to convey information and advice to the clients. Finally, these clients are
challenging to interview and counsel. They invariably raise
additional questions, but do not always provide the context or reason for their
questions. This study closely analyzes the student-client dialogues and the
student-attorney dialogues to identify what works and what does not at a
student-staffed pro se clinic.
Reflection Beyond Words
Dustin Marlan, The University of Michigan Law School
Reflection has long been central to
the clinical pedagogy. Yet, perhaps because words are a lawyer’s most essential
tool, the few reflective vehicles that drive the pedagogy are writing exercises
(e.g., journaling). Studies in cognitive
science and psychology find, however, that we think primarily in images rather
than words, and metaphors—i.e., comprehending and experiencing one thing in
terms of another—are thought patterns that help us understand meaning and make
sense of the world. Premised on this
concept, Harvard Business School professor Gerald Zaltman developed the Zaltman
Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET) to elicit metaphoric expressions from
consumers for purposes of marketing research. Participants are each asked during the ZMET process to collect a set of
visual images that represent their thoughts and feelings about a brand or
product. These images are then analyzed
during a multi-stage interview to uncover unconscious forms of consumer
thought, or “deep metaphors.” Beyond the “black art” of advertising, this
Article explores the use of deep metaphors as vehicles for reflective
learning. Consistent with ZMET, I asked
the students in our transactional law clinic to each collect several visual
images they believe best represented their clinic experience, which led to a
deeply introspective seminar discussion.