'Re-Imagining Law School Clinics: Leveraging Resources to Do More, for More, Under a Hybrid Model'

Abstract

As law schools determine how to comply with ABA Standards 303(a) and (b), this article describes a way to provide an outstanding in-house clinical experience to all of a law school’s students, including their part-time evening students, through a hybrid clinic model. The model is structured to combine the best features of simulation courses, field placements, and in-house clinics, and operate like a mini-law firm and think tank. Through this hybrid clinic model, the scope and quality of student training is enhanced, the legal assistance to clients is improved, and wider access to justice for low income individuals and other vulnerable communities can be achieved. Through leveraging resources, this clinic model can also enable law schools to pay their full-time clinical faculty on a par with doctrinal faculty and still operate the clinic at “revenue neutral” or even a slight surplus. The hybrid clinic model explained in this article was developed by the first author and inspired by Richard Susskind’s re-thinking of how law firms and the way they deliver legal services can be structured to provide “better, faster, cheaper” legal services. Susskind’s ideas have contributed to the current “disruption” to how law firms provide legal services and it is hoped that this article will stimulate a similar positive “disruption” (re-conception) of how law schools can provide experiential training to each of their students.

Keywords: Law School Clinics; Hybrid Model; Access to Justice; Hybrid Model; Part-Time Evening Students; Disruptive Model