Comments on: What do clinics have to do with US News & World Report? The unfortunate answer is “not much”

By: Karen Lash

Karen Lash — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 11:32:22 +0000

Jason, I admire your efforts to infuse some actual data into the voting process. Knowing how challenging it is to collect and present survey results (a la Equal Justice Works’ The E-Guide to Public Service at America’s Law Schools), you get even more kudos. How will you be publicizing the availability of the Race to the Top website?

By: Lisa Bliss

Lisa Bliss — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 14:12:21 +0000

Your post raises interesting questions. The absence of articulated ranking factors for clinics causes confusion for the voters. Chapter 5 of Best Practices is the most comprehensive resource in existence that could serve as a roadmap for identifying factors to include when evaluating clinics. It certainly is useful as an informal roadmap to creating a clinic or reexamining a clinic that has been operational for some time.

The ideas you propose are not mutually exclusive, so my reaction is to say “yes” to all of them. For example, “yes” to exploring the option of adding a 5th clinical voter, and “yes” to urging the existing voters to consider Best Practices. The only option that should probably be rejected is the “do nothing” option. I too commend CLEA’s action as an important step in the process of educating the voters and stimulating conversation about clinical rankings.

By: Jason Solomon

Jason Solomon — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 23:26:31 +0000

Interesting post. On the question of how to incorporate clinical/best practices into the regular peer assesment survey (and lawyers/judges assesment) , I just wanted to point out that I’m trying to do a bit of that with the Race to the Top project, which sent out that “Best Practices” Survey several weeks ago, due this Friday from all law schools. http://www.racetothetoplaw.com/

We could certainly use the help of clincians and other skills faculty, including legal writing, to encourage “sympathizers” you know who are among the four voters at each school to vote according to the kinds of metrics you suggest above, and that we will be suggesting in our “Voters’ Guide” out next week.

By: dmaranville

dmaranville — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 22:23:41 +0000

Oops: “sure makes it easier to travel” should have been “sure makes it easier to take a chunk of the summer off and travel.”

By: dmaranville

dmaranville — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 22:16:54 +0000

I’m fortunate to direct a clinic at a school where our clinical faculty are well-integrated into the culture of the law school. Whether we’re in tenured, tenure-in-position or long-term contract positions, we vote and serve on committees. So I appreciate the importance of the factors that CLEA emphasizes.

And I’m all for challenging our tendency to give high rankings to “elite” schools, just because a) the person doing the ranking went to one and knows about the clinical program there or b) richer schools can afford to send out more fancy brochures.

But as we engage in ranking, I do think that we need also to give more thought to the program outcomes that we think security of position will produce. Why? Well, for one thing we’re building a significant number of schools with strong clinical programs where all/most/many faculty have tenure/clinical tenure/long term contracts. How do we distinguish among those programs?

And, I’ve come around to the view that allowing different statuses has advantages. Our founding director, Alan Kirtley, worked successfully to move our initial clinical hires from short-term to long-term contracts, and then to tenure.

But one of our colleagues has chosen not to move to tenure (sure makes it easier to travel!). And most of our newer hires are on “tenure in position” type lines, a choice necessitated by a different mix of funding sources. We’ve managed to rely mostly on (reasonably) stable funding sources. But this mix of statuses allows us to have a program in which 60% of our students graduate having taken a traditional clinic. (The others take an externship.) I think that’s a good thing. And my hope is that for schools like us, large, strong clinics will lead to clinic endowments and more security.)