Professional Legal Education and the Clinical Method: From 'CLEPR Colonies' to Competency Taxonomies

This paper considers issues relating to professional legal education and clinical legal education. It provides a brief overview of the history of clinical legal education in the United States and in England and Wales. It considers law school identity, the theory and context of professional education and professional work, the analysis of what lawyers do, and the distinctions between a “competencies approach” and a “reflective practitioner approach”. The paper goes on to ask whether clinic was a creature of its time and then considers “evidence-based practice” as a means of building a collaboration of academics and practitioners for the training of lawyers.