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Foreword
Welcome to issue 13 of  the International Journal of  Clinical Legal Education. This is the first issue
of  the journal under the current editorship and I would like to pay tribute to Professor Philip
Plowden, my predecessor and driving force behind the IJCLE, its associated conferences and the
development of  a vibrant international clinical community. Philip has become Dean of  the School
of  Law at Northumbria University but remains heavily involved in clinic including not only
continuing his clinical teaching but contributing to conferences, symposia and other scholarly
activities.  

In this edition
When reading through the proofs of  the articles for this edition the theme that struck me was
diverse notions of  lawyering. The three main articles reveal the rich diversity of  approaches to the
role of  the lawyer and the lawyering process. We see the lawyer as agent of  social change, as moral
activist and as zealous advocate of  individual client interests. Together these articles serve to
reinforce the need when educating students to be aware of  the plethora of  potential professional
roles and to understand one’s own professional and ethical compass and the influence this is likely
to have on student lawyers.  

In the first article Professor Nekima Levy-Pounds and Artika Tyner explain how they seek to
integrate the principles of  Ubuntu into their clinical curriculum so as to train law students to
become agents of  social change. They describe Ubuntu as a sense of  interrelatedness; of  society’s
need for love, peace and justice. Their conception of  lawyering is all encompassing and they urge
clinics to focus students’ minds on uncomfortable realities of  prejudice, oppression and inequality
and to begin to address the potential role of  the lawyer in alleviating these wrongs. The paper
challenges the traditional view of  the lawyer as an amoral mouthpiece for advancing individual
rights. They propose a more communitarian approach to the lawyering process. They outline how
their clinic encourages students to think outside the box – to problem solve, collaborate with
stakeholders and participate in meetings of  grassroots and civil rights organisations to use their
legal skills to benefit those from disadvantaged backgrounds. They introduce the idea of  the
student as participant observer – going out into the communities served by the clinic and engaging
with the needs of  the underserved. Their view of  the clinic as a start point for development of
students as agents of  social change will not be attractive to everyone but it is a broad, expansive
and ambitious view of  the potential role of  the lawyer and that clinicians have the ability to
influence students in a positive way to work for social emancipation.

In the second article Ross Hyams asks a basic but fundamental and ultimately intractable question,
“what sort of  lawyer do we want students to be”? He posits that mainstream legal education has
proved to be poor at inculcating elements of  professionalism such as autonomy, judgment and
commitment to lifelong learning. He argues that clinics are well placed to nurture professionalism
in students but acknowledges the elusive nature of  the concept. He outlines a range of  different
approaches to lawyering and believes that clinicians should be aware of  this range and in particular
their own approach so that students will understand the context of  the messages they are being

Foreword

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given. He concludes that teaching professionalism remains very challenging for supervisors and
often confronting for students but that clinic provides the best opportunity to achieve this. Finally,
he offers Atticus Finch of  “To Kill a Mockingbird” as a role model for inculcating a sense of
professional responsibility in their students, praising his compassion, tolerance, perspective,
courage, wisdom and belief  in the role of  the courts as the great levellers of  society.  Clinicians: get
down to the library and borrow a copy.

In the third article Professor Genevra Brown recognises the symbolic and cultural power of  the
paradigm of  innocence on a micro and macro level. On the micro level she observed in her
students a natural inclination towards the client who unequivocally claimed her innocence and
away from an equivalent client with more ambiguous instructions. As a public defender, Professor
Brown advanced the principle of  zealous representation for all clients regardless of  innocence or
guilt and attempted to inculcate this within her own students. On a macro level, the article tracks
the attractiveness of  the innocence paradigm to policy makers and legislators and summarises
criminal appeal reforms that have focused on factual innocence and away from constitutional
violations. While acknowledging the social, legal and educational contribution of  Innocence
Projects she is uneasy that the notion of  innocence has a tendency to dominate the legal and
educational landscape and argues that quality representation should never be reduced to
essentialist standards of  guilt or innocence.  

In the Clinical Practice section I am delighted to present Dr Izabella Kraznicka’s detailed and
highly interesting examination of  the Polish legal framework and the success story of  clinic in
recent years together with ongoing challenges to integrate clinic into the curriculum to ensure a
sustainable future. Laurence Donnelly provides an analysis of  the slow development of  clinical
legal education in Ireland, recognising that the clinical method has not caught the imagination of
the academy in the way it has elsewhere. However, using the National University of  galway as a case
study, he shows how clinic may continue to develop and become more accepted as a mainstream
method of  educating law students. Finally, Angela Macfarlane and Paul McKeown offer 10
“lessons” from the no doubt scores that they learned in their first year as new clinicians, having
joined a university law clinic directly from legal practice and with no prior teaching experience.
Their insights should be helpful to other new (and perhaps some not so new) clinical supervisors.
In particular, I would like to emphasise the last lesson: enjoy!  

Kevin Kerrigan
Editor

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Journal of Clinical Legal Education December 2008