Assessments of the nature and efficacy of legal education often compare the field unfavorably to medical education. It is typically said that our society wouldn't allow a new physician to treat patients without having gone through adequate clinical fieldwork instruction in addition to classroom learning, and yet we allow new lawyers to represent clients in profoundly consequential matters without having previously engaged in actual practice under expert supervision. With the very recent changes in the accreditation standards for law schools that come into effect next year, all law students will now have to take six credits of “skills instruction,” but even this new rule will not require student practice during law school since it can be entirely satisfied with simulation courses.

Looking to medical education for guidance, we will explore whether the emergency room of a teaching hospital can serve as a model for a “full immersion” law school clinic that would teach law students the complete array of cognitive and practical skills that are essential for effective lawyering. This chapter proposes an emergency-room clinic that would parallel emergency-room rotations for third-year medical students. As in medical school, law students would take classroom courses to ground them in substantive knowledge and professional values before they enter the emergency room. Once in the emergency-room clinic, law students would conduct intake, employ diagnostic skills, and pursue remedies under expert supervision and training, just as medical students do. In addition to serving educational goals, this clinic is a model for how law schools can respond directly to the civil access to justice crisis documented elsewhere in this book by representing low- and moderate-income individuals.

A CLIENT-DRIVEN MODEL

In the clinic, as in a hospital emergency room, students would conduct intake, triage client issues, and offer consultation and representation. The chapters in this book paint a clear picture of the far-ranging unmet civil legal needs that an emergency-room clinic can address.