Editorial
How do we know what we know about clinical legal education?
Elaine Hall
Northumbria University, UK
Elaine.Hall@northumbria.ac.uk

My habit of relying on a poet’s eloquence to support my editorial comment continues.  This edition looks to R.D. Laing to evoke and crystallise the sense we have that understanding is ‘out there’ if only we knew how to grasp it.
There is something I don't know
        that I am supposed to know.
 I don't know what it is I don't know,
        and yet I am supposed to know,
 and I feel I look stupid
         if I seem both not to know it
                 and not know what it is I don't know.
 Therefore, I pretend I know it. 
         This is nerve-racking
         since I don't know what I must pretend to know. 
 Therefore, I pretend I know everything.

I feel you know what I am supposed to know
 but you can't tell me what it is
 because you don't know that I don't know what it is. 

 You may know what I don't know, but not
                that I don't know it,
 and I can't tell you. So you will have to tell me everything. 

Of course the idea that we can know ‘everything’ is part of the painful delusion – so here at the IJCLE we’ll settle for an exploration of what we do know and how we know it.
Tribe Mkwebu’s paper breaks new ground in clinical legal education as the first systematic review of the clinical literature.  He reports on the techniques of mapping the field in this way and gives a quantitative description of what we have to work with.
Rachel Dunn and Paul McKeown make us of another key source of knowledge – clinical colleagues.  Their From The Field report gives insight into the experiences of clinicians from the European network and how the competing elements in academic and legal practice work are playing out in particular countries and jurisdictions as well as across Europe.
We then move from the pursuit of knowledge to new approaches to its’ use.  Ann Thanaraj and Michael Sales share a Practice report on Virtual Clinic which encourages us to think about how our legal expertise can be shared through new media.  Their account gives insight into the parameters of such a service, through setting up, client and student experiences.
Finally, Amy Barrow’s paper looks in great depth at the need for and the growth of public interest law in Hong Kong – encouraging us to look at this place, this legal and philosophical position and the role of lawyers and law teachers in a new way.
Please let me know of upcoming events in the CLE world for our February 2016 edition.  Next year (1-3 APRIL 2016) our colleagues in South Africa host the Ed O’Brien International Street Law and Legal Literacy Best Practices Conference, which will honour our late colleague Ed O’Brien and celebrate the 30th Anniversary of the First International Street Law Programme established at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (formerly the University of Natal), South Africa.  The conference will be preceded by a three day Ed O’Brien Memorial Safari (29-31 March 2016) to the world famous Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Game Reserve where the white rhinoceros was saved from extinction).
Looking further ahead, a reminder of the two events scheduled (relatively) near to one another in time and space next July.  The IJCLE conference with the Association for Canadian Clinical Legal Education (ACCLE) Conference will be hosted by the University of Toronto from 10-12July.  The conference, entitled The Risks and Rewards of Clinic encourages participants to reflect on the balance between risk and reward for all the stakeholders in clinic.  We have a fantastic range of papers, seminars and symposia and I’m delighted to announce that we have managed to secure Sarah Buhler and Adrian Evans as keynote speakers.
This will be followed by the International Legal Ethics Conference VII (ILEC VII), which Fordham Law School will host in New York City on July 14-16, 2016 focusing on legal education, ethics, technology, regulation, globalization and rule of law (www.law.fordham.edu/ilec2016).  I hope to meet many more colleagues in 2016.


Laing, R. D., (1971) Knots. Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin.