In-house vs externship programmes?
Again, its probably best seen as a matter of horses for courses. The key issues tend to be:
| Resources | Start-up and continuation costs for externships tend to be lower as premises and equipment will already be in place, and paid for by the provider. You may still need to consider whether there are site-specific costs (for example, training for clinic supervisors) or other contributions that you ought to meet. In particular you should check the agency’s position as regards indemnity insurance. You may be surprised at the number of organisations who operate without adequate indemnity cover. |
| Control and Supervision | Externship programmes tend to be more complex to manage. They require a good level of collaboration between the law school and the placement, to ensure that an adequate quality of work experience, learning and field supervision is maintained. |
| Location | You need to consider whether your potential centre(s) is/are readily accessible to your students. Consider also that there may be safety issues with some locations, especially for female students or those of certain race/ethnic backgrounds. |
| Client Base and Advertising | One of the start-up difficulties (and costs) for an in-house clinic can be achieving a sufficient level of casework to sustain the programme in its early days. Externships in established centres may avoid this problem, but you should check that the agency you are approaching does have an adequate caseload for the placements you are proposing. |
| Range of Activities | On the plus side, externships can be placed with a variety of agencies and so may enable you to provide a range of experience to students that might not be possible in-house. On the minus side, some externships run into problems where there is a clash of expectations between programme leaders and field supervisors over the kinds and levels of work it is appropriate for students to do. For example, it needs to be made clear that students should not be expected to spend the whole of their time doing library research for their field supervisor! |
| Prior and/or/ Continuing Training | At the same time, depending on the structure of the externship programme, there may be a greater need with externships to ensure that students receive appropriate training and orientation before the clinic placement begins, as there may be less opportunity than with an in-house clinic to build classroom work into the programme itself. |
Last Modified: 2 August 2010
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