Paradigms We Discourage

     A. Bosses.  Fundamental to our pedagogical technique is a profound reluctance to tell you what to do.  We consider authoritarian direction to be, in most instances, a grossly ineffective method of education, and we also anticipate that, quite early in the semester, you will become so close to the cases (to both the facts and the particular law involved) that we would be ill-placed to override your judgment.

     B. Partners. We also don't want to be your partners regarding case-related matters.  The clients are fundamentally your clients and case matters are fundamentally your responsibility.  We think of a case team not as people working equally on a case but as two people (the interns) working on all aspects of the case and meeting frequently with one or two others (the advisors) who have some other defined and limited relationship to the matter.   This does not mean that we want to deter you from asking questions(we underline this because some interns have misunderstood this point), using our experience, or otherwise discussing case matters with us.  In fact, there are no areas we would exclude from a case team's mandate -- we are perfectly willing to discuss all aspects of your cases in as much detail as you would like -- but it should be clear that the primary responsibility for making decisions (including the decision about how to use the advisor) is yours.  And, as you will see when you read the formal statement, we think that it is often useful for us to propose turning a question back to you, not because it was wrong of you to ask, but because we think you can learn a lot from deciding whether you really want an immediate answer (if we happen to have one) rather than an opportunity to work out the problem for yourselves.

     C. Leaders. We think that in general it is desirable for you, rather than us, to exercise primary leadership within the case team meetings over matters such as what the agenda should be for a meeting, what preparatory work should be undertaken by each member of the case team prior to the next meeting, etc.  In our view, control over the agenda -- beginning with the first case team meeting -- is one of the most important forms of power a person may exercise in that setting.  For that reason, the agenda will be your responsibility.  We would like, however, to have the option to suggest additions to your agenda for any particular session.

Paradigms We Encourage

     A. Resources.  One role that we want to fill is that of serving as resources on a variety of topics.  Each of us has certain strengths, skills, experience, expertise, etc. that we hope you will feel free to draw upon, and we will strive to fill roles within the case teams that will allow all of its members to take advantage of each other's resources.  Incidentally, advisors and interns who are not members of your case team (and the office manager) may also have special expertise or experience that make them useful resources.

     B. Catalysts.  Although we as case team advisors do not want to do your work for you, we do want to be able to assist you.  We would like our roles to include helping you to pursue your individual goals.  We can help you to identify and refine unarticulated goals, to develop a plan for achieving them, and to highlight behavior that advances or is inconsistent with or destructive of stated goals.  We can also help you become a better planner by asking you hundreds of questions about your decisions and actions; questions that you are increasingly likely, as time goes on, to begin to ask yourself.

     C. Consultants on interpersonal issues.  We would also like to help you to learn about interpersonal issues which involve your work as a lawyer.  The Clinic is a particularly good setting in which to study six such relationships: those that you will have with us, with your partner, with your client, with witnesses and potential witnesses, with opposing counsel, and with adjudicators.  In addition, the Clinic is a place in which you can examine your feelings about the practice of law.  These issues are easy, but costly, to ignore.  Unless you tell us otherwise, we believe we have a special burden to encourage you to think about these issues.

Advisors and Clients

     As noted, we consider the cases to be your cases, not ours.  But our role is far from minimal.  As “catalysts,” we will raise hundreds of questions about your work and we’ll also make suggestions from time to time.  Our purpose is to stimulate your thinking, not to make decisions for you, so you may always question our suggestions.  Also, as professional advocates and educators, we have a responsibility to ensure that the clients are being adequately represented.  Part I of the Case Team Method therefore includes a statement authorizing us to intervene in your case under certain limited circumstances.  To that extent, we serve as your safety net.

     This is not a comprehensive safety net.  This standard is deliberately designed to discourage our intervention in a situation in which we simply feel that we would do the job differently from or better than you.  At a hearing, for example, we will act only as observers and will not ordinarily speak to the judge.  We will, however, be available to consult with you, at your option, during any recess.  We will give you the freedom to do the cases your own way, even if the process produces anxiety.  We are confident, because of the structure of the Clinic and the quality of our students, that our standards of representation are higher than those of most practicing attorneys.  Therefore, we can afford to allow you a great degree of freedom to make decisions and take action on your cases.  You may learn much more from reflection on a "mistake" than from any amount of prior direction.             

     Although you will take full responsibility for your case, there may be times during the semester when we might step in to give the team greater direction, input, or focus.   During these times, we (your advisors) may tell you that we would like to become more active in our role with you because we feel that it is necessary to give you some suggestions which could include advice about priorities that we believe that you should consider, legal theories that you may be overlooking, and case-related time commitments that you may be over- or underestimating that may affect your case.             

     There may be other times during the semester when you want the advisor to step in and give the team greater direction, input, or focus.  During these times, we encourage you to talk about this in your case team meeting,  where you and your advisor can decide how involved your advisor should become and for how long your advisor should step in to give greater direction.  There is nothing wrong with asking for more guidance – in fact, it is certainly more responsible to tell your advisor that you need more help or that you need your advisor to help you make certain decisions than to remain quiet when your case might be at risk.  On the other hand, sometimes interns mistakenly think they need their advisor to “make decisions for them” when, in fact, they are in a better position to make the decision than their advisor and when their case is not at risk; the advisor for these interns may encourage them to continue making all of the decisions and continue working on the case with little extra input from the advisor.             

     In your first case team meeting, you and your advisor will discuss the CALS teaching style and the circumstances during the semester when you or your advisor may want your advisor to play a more involved role in your case.  Although it may seem too early to discuss your relationship in detail, we believe that it is important for you and your advisor to begin to think about your choices concerning this role.  In addition, it establishes an open dialogue to continue discussing these issues later in the semester if you need to do so.             

     We have considered alternatives to this educational model.  For example, the advisors could be the ones principally responsible for the cases, with the interns acting as our clerks or assistants.  Or the cases could be yours, but we might intervene frequently, directing your actions and trying to prevent any errors, and helping to ensure a more “efficient” procedure for handling the cases more the way an ordinary law office might.             

     In this Clinic, we subscribe to the principle of intern responsibility because we believe that this model offers the richest learning opportunities.  There may be times when you feel we are withholding from you; when you feel it is "artificial" for us to encourage you to pursue answers yourself, rather than simply resolving the issue for you.  It may be useful to keep in mind that CALS – unlike law firms, government agencies, or other places you may work – is fundamentally an educational institution and its mission is to help you learn.  There might be situations in which the client's interest could be better served by another method of operation, but that reasoning would, at the extreme, compel us, as the experienced professionals, to do all the significant work, while the interns did little.  Such an arrangement would hardly be educational and would thus disserve both your interests and the interests of your many, as-yet-unknown future clients for whom you will need to call upon the expertise you develop in this Clinic and elsewhere.  The balance between client service and student education is a difficult one to strike, but in CALS you will be afforded a large degree of responsibility.   These issues about the tensions lying behind the question of how much responsibility law school clinics should devolve to their students is explored at length in Philip G. Schrag and Michael Meltsner, “Reflections on Clinical Legal Education” (1998).  This book also includes a considerable amount of history of CALS and its previous incarnations from 1971 through 1996.

Intern Freedom

     A few discrete limitations on intern authority have already been discussed.  We will not, for example, permit serious damage to clients nor will we abandon our responsibility for requiring you to make hard choices.  Other limitations are specified in both parts of the formal statement of our method and in the substantive law manual that you will receive.  Still others could emerge from discussions within the case team.  Nevertheless, while we will hold you to high standards of practice, the CALS Case Team Method is designed in part to accord you more power than you exercise in other parts of the law school and probably more power than you will exercise in the early years of your professional life.

Partnerships

     The relationship between partners is likely to be more immediately familiar than the relationship between partners and their advisor, because you have probably worked in close collaboration with a partner on some prior project.  However, there are some obvious differences between your prior collaborations and this one.

     First, although you may have worked jointly with lab partners or other peers in college or in a work setting, it may have been quite some time since you had a partner that you did not help to choose.  In CALS, partners are assigned through a random process at the first class.  Second, you probably have had few prior working collaborations involving as many hours per week as an asylum case will require.  Finally, the importance of the case to your clients imposes distinctive stresses on any partnership.             

     For the vast majority of interns, the partnership experience is a deeply enriching and rewarding one, producing not only extraordinary learning but also many life-long friendships.  We hope that you will find your partnership relationship to be one of the best aspects of your CALS experience.             

     We should note, however, that virtually all partnerships involve some degree of conflict, resulting from inevitably imperfect meshes in schedules, different working or writing styles, contrasting ideas about how much work should be spent on the case, different theories about what should be done on the case, or personality clashes.  Sometimes conflict can become more serious and protracted.  If you and your partner do have conflict, we hope that you will recognize that a certain amount of it may accompany any intense working relationship, that any such conflict itself presents learning opportunities (because similar issues may well arise in your future legal work with others), and that whether any conflicts become more or less serious, and whether you learn from them, are matters that are at least in significant measure in your control.             

     We offer the following suggestions in case of conflict.  First, we encourage you to see the conflict as an opportunity rather than a problem.  Schedule some time to talk about it before it becomes a significant issue.  Sometimes, trying to work things out away from the office, in a social setting, may help.  Often, a frank conversation is all that is needed to change the dynamic of a problematic working relationship.             

     If that isn’t sufficient, you should consider asking others to assist you.  You are invited to put interpersonal issues on your case team agenda at any time.  The advisors do not regard having conflict as a “problem” to be taken into account in grading, though they would regard it as a problem if a partnership with a protracted conflict did not seem to be trying to resolve the conflict, particularly if the problem was having negative consequences for a client or for other participants in the Clinic.  In other words, if you are having conflict and you are worrying that it might affect your grade, the worst thing you can do is to try to sweep it under the rug.             

     If you so desire, you could also ask other interns, or even former interns, to help you to work things out.  Of course, we do suggest that a decision to seek the assistance of advisors, interns, or former interns be made mutually, so that the consultation does not become still another source of conflict.  On the other hand, once in a while an intern is very unhappy because conflict is so troubling, and the intern’s partner does not want to discuss it with anyone else.  Under these circumstances, the intern who wants to bring up the subject with advisors might consider the language that you will find in one of the explanatory notes in Part I, Point 8, of the formal statement of the Case Team Method.             

     In addition, we suggest that every team schedule a mid-semester case team meeting to evaluate how the members of the team are working together.  This meeting should evaluate the advisor/intern relationship as well as relationships within the partnership.

The First Case Team Meeting

     Please note that our Method requires considerable intern preparation for the first case team meeting, including (1) gaining an initial understanding of the Method, as described here and more fully stated in the remainder of this chapter; (2) filling out the Goal Identification Forms and giving a copy to your advisor and partner at or before the first meeting; (3) considering, with your partner, what you want to accomplish in the first meeting and what case-related and other issues you want to discuss; (4) reducing those aspirations to writing by developing a jointly-written agenda for the first meeting, and bringing copies for the advisor; and (5) planning how to lead the first meeting to work through that agenda in one hour (one way to do so might be to allocate time periods for each topic).

     Although you are probably excited about jumping into your case, the first case team meeting should be focused on your case team goals and on preparing for your upcoming interview.  Questions and discussions about legal theory can be the focus of subsequent case team meetings.