The Kinds of Clinic

In one line

There are five recognised models of clinic, and they differ in one variable that decides everything else: whether there is a real client, and if so whose client they are.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: the principal models of clinical legal education are the live client or in-house clinic, in which the college itself takes clients; the simulation clinic, in which students perform lawyering tasks on constructed facts; the externship or placement clinic, in which students work under an outside lawyer or organisation; the street law or community education model, in which students teach law to non-lawyers; and the specialised or public interest clinic, which takes a defined class of case; each differs in cost, in risk to a client and in what it can teach.

The live client or in-house clinic

What it is. The college runs a clinic, takes clients, and its own teachers or engaged advocates supervise. The file belongs to the clinic.

What it teaches. Everything: interviewing, fact investigation, research on a live problem, drafting, advice, negotiation and, where permitted, appearance.

What it costs. A room, a supervising advocate, professional indemnity in substance if not in form, and continuity, because a client's matter does not stop at the end of term.

Its risks. A real person can be harmed. Confidentiality binds students. Continuity across vacations must be managed. And a matter that turns out to need litigation cannot simply be abandoned.

Where it fits in India. The NALSA (Legal Services Clinics) Regulations 2011 recognise it, and regulation 24 brings clinics attached to law colleges and law universities within the regulations. Chapter 600.

The simulation clinic

What it is. Constructed facts, a classmate or a teacher as the client, a task performed and then debriefed. Chapter 280 treats it as a method.

What it teaches. The same skills, safely and repeatably, except the one distinctive skill of chapter 480: extracting an account from a real person.

What it costs. Written materials and teacher time. No clients, no supervision risk, no continuity problem.

Where it fits in India. Schedule II requires it by name for papers 21 and 23, so every recognised law course already runs a simulation clinic whether it calls it that or not.

And it is the model a college with nothing can start tomorrow, which is why an answer should name it as the realistic first step rather than dismissing it as artificial.

The externship or placement clinic

What it is. The student is placed with an outside lawyer, a legal services authority, a company, a court or a non-governmental organisation, and works there under that organisation's supervision, with the college assessing.

What it teaches. The profession as it is, and a range of work no college clinic could generate.