We believe that you will find it helpful if, at the very outset of your work, you identify a few priority learning goals for your work on your cases and in our case team meetings.  Therefore, we ask each of you to bring to the first case team meeting a Goal Identification Form (Attachment A), copies of which will be given to you at the end of the first class (Orientation) and electronically, on which you specify some important goals in these areas.  Of course you will discover new goals during the semester, and you may achieve or abandon some of your initial goals.  We welcome revisions of your goals at any time.  Meanwhile, committing goals to writing will help us to emphasize certain aspects of your work as we talk with you over the semester, and it will help you to measure your own progress in the Clinic.

     The process of identifying and refining individual goals is a fundamental focus of our work.  Explicit concern with goals is an appropriate starting point for almost any enterprise or task.  There may be many occasions during the semester when progress on case matters, or on educational matters, requires that you first step back and ask why you are undertaking a particular action.

     The range of goals available to you in the Clinic is vast.  The point of identifying some priorities at a very early date is to encourage you to think carefully about exactly what you hope to accomplish through your participation in the clinic, and to provide a framework for making deliberate, self-conscious choices among competing objectives.

     On the Goal Identification Form, we ask you to focus on general goals concerning your development as a lawyer and a professional.  We assume that everyone in the Clinic wants to develop basic practice skills such as interviewing and oral advocacy.  The Form allows you to specify two or three of these practice skills for emphasis, but you will have opportunities in the Clinic to gain some experience in all of these basic skills areas.  In addition, we ask you to state a few personal goals, and to identify factors that might inhibit you from achieving them.

     The task of selecting a small number of personal goals may prove very difficult.  We have included, as Attachment B to this chapter, a partial list of possible personal goals.  It is intended to stimulate your imagination, and to help you realize the array of possible activities open to you this semester.  We hope you will use it, not as an exhaustive checklist from which to select, but to spur your own creativity.  We would also like to be clear that we regard the goals you specify on your forms to be only those goals that, in your view, merit particular emphasis -- not the exclusive agenda for your activities.

     As you select personal goals, you might think about both the short term and the long term.  How might you challenge yourself in CALS by making desirable but difficult changes in your work habits?  And also: what goals might you embrace now that will help you to have, throughout your life, satisfaction and happiness both at work and at play?

     After you have selected your personal goals, the next section of the form asks you to identify the "obstacles" that might impede your accomplishment of them during your CALS semester.  The purpose of this section of the form is to prompt some additional introspection, exploring whether, for example, a tendency toward "perfectionism" might interfere with a goal of improving collaboration skills, or whether your prior successes at "last minute" cramming might now obscure your new commitment to advance planning.  The more carefully you can identify the behaviors or attitudes that might sabotage your pursuit of the selected goals, the better the odds of your being able to succeed.

     Finally, the form asks you to select one goal and propose some specific actions you will undertake, immediately, to begin your pursuit of it.  Again, specificity and concreteness will probably pay off here: instead of saying, rather abstractly, that you will "pay more attention" to the behavior or idea in question, can you identify any discrete actions, perhaps some externally-observable or even quantifiable actions, that will help you focus?  What particular steps can you undertake, especially starting within the next couple of weeks, to begin practical work on this goal?

     Not every goal, of course, will lend itself to this type of precision in a short-term implementation plan, but if you think about it creatively, you might develop something that would help convert a general, abstract "wish" to improve something into a workable plan.  For example, in the past, some interns have found value in combating time management difficulties by committing to prepare, and to share with case team partners, a detailed daily "to do" list, or a journal that records how much progress was made on anticipated activities.  Similarly, interns who wanted to ensure that they pay attention to interpersonal dynamics might agree to schedule a weekly one-hour conversation devoted exclusively to that topic.  Other steps, which might in some sense seem "artificial" can likewise help start you down the path toward your goals: to pursue an interest in "becoming more creative," for example, you might commit to doing one routine thing differently every day; to become more comfortable at public speaking, you might undertake to speak at least three times in the first hour of the next few CALS classes.

     For purposes of Part 4 of your Goal Identification Form, you need select only one of your goals and develop an "early action plan" for it.