Eliza Platts-Mills (qLegal Teaching Fellow) and Emily Wapples (qLegal Project Coordinator) recently attended, and presented at, the worldwide clinical legal education (CLE) conference.
The online conference was hosted by Northumbria University, in partnership with several of the leading CLE organisations and this year’s theme was, unsurprisingly, how to turn challenges into opportunities in this time of crisis.
The need for clinics to find practical ways forward out of these challenging circumstances couldn’t be more pressing. The three day online event saw law clinics from all over the globe share their experiences and best practices from recent months with a view to addressing this concern. Eliza and Emily each presented their recent papers during separate symposia on the final day. Flying the flag for qLegal, their presentations made valuable contributions to the wider discussion about what students learn by participating in CLE activities and helped to promote the excellent work qLegal and our students do.
Eliza’s paper (submitted for publication with the International Journal of Clinical Legal Education) discusses the key legal skill of thinking broadly before thinking deeply to determine the best legal solutions for clients. This skill is particularly important in qLegal’s commercial law clinic. Our small business clients often present challenges that require advisors to step back and map out whether the solution is forming an entity or agreeing contracts, for example, and where students are advising clients on an array of legal areas from IP to corporate law.
Thinking broadly is an important marketable skill for lawyers and developing this skill early in their career helps students boost their employability. At the symposium, Eliza discussed the key concepts in her paper and also contributed to a wider discussion on the lawyering skills that law students learn in policy and public legal education clinics. Emily’s paper (published in the IJCLE in December 2020) discusses the steps qLegal takes to promote positive mental health in our international qLegal students. We recognised early in the pandemic that providing qLegal students with the postgraduate experience they expected was as much about the activities we organised outside of the classroom, as the activities inside it. Emily updated symposium attendees with the strategies qLegal has adopted in the past year to deliver the best possible clinical legal education and pastoral support in a remote learning environment.
As the academic year draws to a close, the conference also offered an important period of reflection. We don’t know exactly what kind of CLE experience our next cohort of students will have, but whether it is online, in person, or a mixture of both, we know that qLegal will make it the best experience possible!