Beyond Skills Training

Abstract

This article promotes a broad view of clinical legal education as having a political and moral purpose that informs the field's intellectual and skills-training functions. Consulting the history of the field, the author demonstrates that the clinical approach to legal education has always been rooted in a social justice mission. The author urges clinical teachers not only to teach legal knowledge and lawyering skills but also the value of pursuing social justice. The author uses the Yale clinical program to illustrate some of the ways in which clinical legal educators can use client-centered legal services work to teach students to reflect on and recognize the lawyer's responsibility to seek social justice.