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Clinical Law Prof Blog
And Best Practices For Legal Education

Conducting a Clinic Audit

By Virgil Wiebe

“The checklists provided two main benefits . . . . First, they helped with memory recall, especially with mundane matters that are easily overlooked in patients undergoing more drastic events. . . . A second effect was to make explicit the minimum, expected steps in complex processes.”
Atul Gawande, The Checklist, The New Yorker, 12/10/2007

Does compliance with the new ABA standards on experiential education give you the creepy crawlies? Here’s a cheat sheet for conducting a “clinic audit” through the lens of the new standards.

Seizing the ABA Site Visit Opportunity: UST had the pleasure of anticipating a sabbatical ABA accreditation in the fall 2015, and as a law school we seized on the occasion to fast forward our compliance with the new ABA standards for law schools. Our faculty meetings had a bit more zest in the spring of 2015 as we haggled over our new Learning Outcomes (see p. 17 of the link).

The Power of Checklists: Also in anticipation of the ABA site visit, I and our office manager Crixell Shell conducted what came to be called “clinic audits.” We put together guidelines drawn from (1) the new standards; (2) our law school’s response those rules; and (3) questions our malpractice insurer asks us every year anyway. We also referenced the ABA Managing Director’s Guidance Memos, particularly the March 2015 memo on Simulation Courses and Law Clinics.

We sat down with the faculty for each clinic to review the questions. For a number of clinics (including my own), we created a “to do list” for follow up – in most cases that involved revising syllabi, looking at how office systems could be improved, and considering how to improve assessment of student performance. In one case, we decided to re-designate a program that had evolved beyond being a great clinic into an outstanding externship.

Freedom to Celebrate and Contemplate and Collaborate: What else did we learn? Rubrics do have a systemic power – checklists that are applied across the board provide a freedom to discover and celebrate quiet successes that have been under the radar and also to have more difficult conversations about areas that need improvement. Cross clinic pollination and collaboration is also a hallmark for us, and the audit strengthened that trend.

Mapping Clinic Courses to New Learning Outcomes: Conducting the audit after our law school faculty had just passed our new learning outcomes pushed the clinical faculty to map pre-existing course goals and clinic activities to those newly identified outcomes. A pleasant but not surprising finding was that clinics already address many of the school’s learning outcomes.

Understanding the New Experiential Requirements in Practical Terms: Our faculty decided to start the new experiential 6 credit requirement with our 2015 incoming class. Conducting the audit of clinics provided us with a working knowledge of the standards and the guidance memos, knowledge which can be useful as our curriculum committee and faculty review the rest of our courses to see if and how they can be designated as experiential.

Assessing compliance with standards may not be the most enjoyable part of clinical management, but we’ve got to do it. Hopefully putting the standards into a question format can be useful to others. Here are the questions we used.

Clinic Audit Questions
I. What is a Clinic?: ABA Standard 303(a) Experiential requirements:
How is the course primarily experiential in nature? (“primarily” means “essentially, mostly, chiefly … The experiential nature of the course should, in this sense, be the organizing principle of the course”)

How does the course integrate doctrine, theory, skills, and legal ethics, and engage students in performance of one or more of the professional skills identified in Standard 302?

How does the course develop the concepts underlying the professional skills being taught?

How does the course provide multiple opportunities for performance?

How does the course provide opportunities for self-evaluation?

II. ABA Standard 304(b) Clinic Course Requirements
How does the course provide substantial lawyering experience that

(1) involves one or more actual clients; AND

(2) How does the clinic include the following:

(i) advising or representing a client;
(ii) direct supervision of the student’s performance by a faculty member;
(iii) opportunities for performance, feedback from a faculty member, and self-evaluation; and
(iv) a classroom instructional component

III. ABA Standard 310. Determination of Credit Hours for Coursework.
How does the course meet UST Law standard III.A.5, that for clinic courses, 42.5-45 hours of coursework over the semester are required for each credit hour awarded? (see below for nitty gritty)

A “credit hour” is an amount of work that reasonably approximates:
(1) not less than one hour of classroom or direct faculty instruction (i.e. 50 minute hours) and two hours of out-of-class student work per week for fifteen weeks, or the equivalent amount of work over a different amount of time; or
(2) at least an equivalent amount of work as required in subparagraph (1) of this definition for … clinical . . . work leading to the award of credit hours.

IV. Professional Ethics and Class Attendance
Professional Responsibility and Ethics coverage – How do you cover professional responsibility issues?

V. Standard 702. FACILITIES. How does your clinic meet this requirement?
(a) A law school’s facilities shall include: . . . suitable and sufficient space appropriate for conducting any in-house clinical programs in a manner that assures competent and ethical representation of clients and meaningful instruction and supervision of students, including confidential space for (i) client interviewing, (ii) working on and discussing client cases, and (iii) security for client files;
(b) A law school shall provide reasonable access and accommodations to persons with disabilities, consistent with applicable law.

How is class attendance kept?

V. NLADA Malpractice Insurance: Loss Prevention – Risk Management Factors

  • Does the Clinic use or have the following: (If yes, describe; If no, what steps will be taken to comply.?)
  • Engagement Letters with more than 80% of its new clients?
  • Disengagement Letters with more than 80% of clients?
  • Non‐Engagement Letters with more than 80% of prospective clients?
  • Written fee agreements with at least 80% of clients?
  • Two or more independent docket control systems?
  • Written procedures regarding maintenance of custodial accounts?
  • A formal system for identifying, avoiding, and disclosing conflicts of interest?

VI. University of St. Thomas Academic Policy Manual: Course Syllabus, Course Learning Outcomes and Course Assessment (UST Academic Policy Manual – III-C-9)
How does your course meet the following requirements? (this requirement does not officially kick in until the 2017 school year, but I strongly suggest seizing the moment)

By the first day that the class meets, the instructor shall provide all enrolled students in writing with

(1) ground rules (including attendance and participation rules, office hours, and expectations for students)
(2) an overview of the topics to be covered during the semester or, at the instructor’s option, planned assignments
(3) a statement of learning outcomes (instructor shall state course-specific learning outcomes and indicate how those learning outcomes connect with the “General Learning Outcomes” for the law school) (suggestion – also incorporate goals you identify on the course evaluation form completed by students).

            UST Law General Learning Outcomes:

• Professional Formation & Ethical Responsibilities
• Knowledge of Substantive and Procedural Law
• Legal Analysis, Reasoning, and Problem Solving
• Written and Oral Communication Skills
• Legal Research and Factual Investigation
• Teamwork and Relationship Skills

(4) a description of assessment (see III-C-9 from the UST academic policy manual, p. 60.)