Learning by Doing: The Clinical Method, Simulation and Role Play
Chapter Thirty-One
Syllabus topic 2, "Methods of Teaching - Merits and demerits"
Pages 113 to 116 of 543
In one line
The clinical method teaches by having the student do the work, either on a real client whose problem is real or on a simulated one whose problem is constructed, and it is the only family of methods that produces skill rather than knowledge about skill.
In the wording a student can write in an exam: the clinical method is instruction through supervised performance of lawyering tasks, on live clients in a legal aid clinic or on simulated facts in a classroom; simulation and role play are its classroom form, in which students take the parts of lawyer, client, witness or judge and perform a task which is then reviewed; Schedule II of the Rules of Legal Education 2008 requires simulation expressly for the clinical papers, and the method's distinguishing feature is that learning is followed by structured feedback on the performance.
Why it is a different kind of method
Every method before this one works on statements about the law. A lecture states it, a case method extracts it, a problem applies it on paper. All of them stop before the doing.
This one starts at the doing. The student interviews, drafts, negotiates or argues, and the material of the class is the student's own performance.
And it has a distinctive third stage. Preparation, performance, and then debriefing, which is the structured review of what happened. The review is where the learning is; a simulation without a debrief is an activity, not a method.
Simulation and role play
What a simulation is. A constructed situation in which students perform a legal task: a client interview with a teacher or student playing the client, a negotiation between two pairs, a bail application, an examination of a witness, a conciliation.
What role play adds. The student takes a part that is not their own. A student who has played the client, and been kept waiting, talked over and given advice they did not understand, learns something about interviewing that no instruction conveys.
Merits. It is safe: nobody's real case is harmed by a bad performance. It is repeatable, so the same skill can be practised until it improves. It can be designed to raise exactly the difficulty the teacher wants. It can be run without a clinic, a client or a court, so a college with nothing can still do it. And it can be assessed directly, which Schedule II requires.
Demerits. It is artificial: everyone knows the client is a classmate. It needs materials, which somebody has to write. It needs the teacher to be able to give useful feedback on performance, which is a different skill from teaching doctrine. It is slow, since each student needs a turn. And it is easily reduced to theatre, where students enjoy the exercise and nobody says afterwards what should have been done differently.
Learning by Doing: The Clinical Method, Simulation and Role Play
The live-client clinical method
What it is as a method. The student works, under supervision, on a real person's real problem: takes the facts, researches, drafts, advises, and sometimes appears.
Merits. The stakes are real, and nothing produces care like a consequence. The facts arrive in the wrong order, incomplete and mixed with the client's emotions, which no constructed problem reproduces. It teaches professional responsibility as a lived thing rather than as a paper. It integrates every subject at once. And it serves somebody, which is the objective of chapter 40.
Demerits. A client can be harmed by a student's mistake, so supervision is not optional and is expensive. It cannot be scheduled: real problems do not arrive in syllabus order or in convenient volume. Coverage is accidental, since the students learn whatever walked through the door. Ethical and confidentiality obligations bind students who have not yet been taught them. And it needs a functioning clinic, which chapter 520 shows is the thing most Indian colleges do not have.
What Schedule II actually requires
This is where an answer stops being general. Schedule II of the Rules of Legal Education 2008 does not merely permit these methods; it prescribes them for the clinical papers.
Paper 21, drafting and pleading, is to be taught by class instruction and simulation exercises, preferably with the assistance of practising lawyers or retired judges, with not fewer than fifteen drafting exercises and fifteen conveyancing exercises carrying marks, and ten marks for viva.
Paper 22, professional ethics, is to be taught in association with practising lawyers, and its examination rules are to include assessment through case study, viva and periodical problem solution besides written tests.
Paper 23, alternative dispute resolution, is required to be conducted by senior legal practitioners through simulation and case studies, with evaluation in practical exercises for at least a significant part.
Paper 24, moot court and internship, is chapters 290 and 300.
So a college that teaches these four papers by lecture is not exercising a pedagogic preference. It is departing from the instrument, and a candidate who says so with the Schedule cited has a much stronger answer than one who says clinical education is neglected.
A worked example
Teaching the client interview, three ways.
By lecture. The teacher lists the stages of an interview: greeting, open questions, narrowing, checking understanding, advice, next steps. The class writes them down and can reproduce them.
By simulation. Two students interview a third, who has been given a page of facts and an instruction to be anxious and to mention the important fact only if asked. The interview runs eight minutes. In the debrief the class works out that the interviewers never asked an open question, interrupted twice and missed the fact.
Learning by Doing: The Clinical Method, Simulation and Role Play
By live client. A person arrives at the college clinic with a maintenance problem, a bundle of papers in no order and a hearing next week. Two students take the facts under a supervising advocate.
Compare what each produced. Knowledge of the stages; the discovery that the student personally does not do the stages under pressure; and the experience of a real person depending on the answer.
And compare the cost. Fifty minutes for a class of two hundred; fifty minutes for a class of twelve plus written materials; and a clinic, a supervising advocate, an insurance of care and a real duty to the client.
Distinctions
| Simulation | Live client clinic | |
|---|---|---|
| The problem | Constructed | Real |
| Risk to a third party | None | Real, so supervision is mandatory |
| Coverage | Chosen by the teacher | Whatever arrives |
| Repeatable | Yes | No |
| Needs | Written materials and a room | A clinic, a supervisor and clients |
| Schedule II | Required for papers 21 and 23 | Recognised through the clinic and paper 24 |
Quick revision
The clinical method teaches by supervised performance; its three stages are preparation, performance and debriefing, and the debrief is where the learning is.
Simulation and role play: safe, repeatable, designable, runnable without a clinic, directly assessable; but artificial, materials-hungry, slow, and easily reduced to theatre without a debrief.
Live client work: real stakes, real disordered facts, lived professional responsibility, integration and service; but risk to the client, no scheduling, accidental coverage, ethical exposure and a clinic most colleges lack.
Schedule II prescribes these methods: simulation exercises and fifteen plus fifteen practical exercises for paper 21; case study, viva and periodical problem solution for paper 22; simulation and case studies conducted by senior practitioners for paper 23.
Test yourself
1. Name the three stages of the clinical method and say which one carries the learning. Preparation, performance and debriefing. The debriefing carries the learning, because a simulation without a structured review of what happened is an activity rather than a method.
2. Give three merits of simulation over live client work, and two merits of live client work over simulation. Simulation is safe, since no real client can be harmed; repeatable, so a skill can be practised until it improves; and designable, so the teacher can raise exactly the difficulty intended. Live client work has real stakes, which produces care, and presents facts as they actually arrive, incomplete and out of order, which no constructed problem reproduces.
3. What does Schedule II require for paper 23, and why does that matter to this topic? That alternative dispute resolution be conducted by senior legal practitioners through simulation and case studies, with evaluation in practical exercises for a significant part. It matters because a college teaching that paper by lecture is departing from the instrument rather than exercising a preference.
Learning by Doing: The Clinical Method, Simulation and Role Play
4. Why is supervision described as mandatory rather than desirable in live client work? Because a real person's legal position can be damaged by a student's mistake, so the risk falls on somebody who is not part of the educational arrangement and cannot be asked to bear it.
The rest of this subject
These notes are cut from the University's printed syllabus. Open the syllabus itself, or the past papers, for the same subject.