Editorial
Spring is here at last!
Elaine Hall
Northumbria University, UK
Elaine.Hall@northumbria.ac.uk

Spring brings with it this year a blossoming of clinical ideas, linking across editions, continents and jurisdictions.  
Continuing the conversation about Health Law started by Leslie Wolf and colleagues in the last edition, Elizabeth Curran, Isobel Ryder and Caroline Strevens provide an insight into the important collaboration between the study of health and law in a pilot interdisciplinary student clinic. They explore the potential for this kind of pedagogic innovation to challenge stereotypes and foster more holistic practices. 
From Australia, Jacqueline Weinberg gives insight into the use of Alternative Dispute Resolution in clinic as a pedagogy that helps students to understand the role of litigation and adversarial techniques in a lawyer’s arsenal, as well as providing an additional set of skills, knowledge and dispositions in negotiation and mediation. 
Continuing our discussion of mediation, in his ‘Proposal for an Italian Family Mediation Clinic’, Andrea Gallinucci-Martinez argues the case for more clinic based learning for law students globally, and specifically the introduction of a family mediation clinic at Libera Università Maria SS. Assunta (“LUMSA”) in Rome. He explores the potential for clinical legal education to fulfil commitments to social justice through engagement with the community and the learning opportunities this presents for students. 
Francina Cantatore contributes an important study into the development of professional skills during pro-bono student work. She urges Law Deans to create better infrastructure to support pro-bono legal clinics for the benefit of their students. 
One potential model for this is explored by Louise Hewitt in her Practice Report, where she describes the creation of employer/employee environments in Innocence Projects in London which provide student ‘employees’ with an understanding of the real life application of law through pedagogy which combines work based and experiential learning.
In our From the Field section, Pat Heather Feast presents us with an argument for the incorporation of work based models of appraisal as effective methods for the assessment of students in clinical legal education using a case study from the University of Portsmouth. These methods motivate students through a process of long term and regular feedback which is both critical and supportive. 
In our second From the Field piece, Cecilia Blengino provides a rich account of the synergies that support clinical work in prisons, based around the experiences of the innovative clinic at the University of Turin.
Turin will be hosting the upcoming 6th Conference of the European Network for Clinical Legal Education (ENCLE), entitled “Clinical Legal Education: Innovating Legal Education In Europe.”, on 20th and 21st September 2018 in cooperation with the Department of Law of the University of Turin (UNITO) and the International University College of Turin (IUC).  The Call for Papers is now open!
While you are planning your clinical travels, another reminder of the next IJCLE conference hosted by Monash University in Melbourne, Australia on 28th-30th November 2018.   The theme of the conference is ‘Adding Value – How Clinics Contribute to Communities, Students and the Legal Profession’ follow this link for more details.  It promises to be an excellent conference with the added bonus of the option to attend/submit a paper to the International Legal Ethics Conference (6-8th December) following shortly thereafter.
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