Place-based education: Clinical Legal Education and ethics

Abstract

This chapter posits that clinicians should examine and make more explicit the links between Clinical Legal Education (‘CLE’) and place-based education (‘PBE’). Bringing together these two disparate strands of literature and practice enriches both. A clear understanding of the place where a clinic operates – from a geographical, historical and socio-economic perspective – ensures that clinic advisors can better understand how to serve the needs of that place, as expressed in the clinic by its clients. This approach also helps promote a deeper articulation of our clinics as discrete locations with their own unique place identities: doing so promotes reflection on our relationships with the communities we serve, as well as with the legal profession and our law schools. Attention to place in clinics opens up critical ideas about the situatedness of law and legal practice – an antidote to dominant acontextual methodologies in legal education. Overall, a focus on place in clinic design and delivery deepens and enriches the moral dimension of CLE and allows for important insights into access to justice and ethical clinic practice.