Are work placements different?

The difference between externships and work placements appears, at first, to be just a matter of degree, but on balance I suggest that there is a significant difference if the work experience is less than well integrated into the students’ overall educational experience. ‘Proper’ clinical work is primarily an educational process, not just an opportunity to get experience of a legal work environment.

Factors which can make work placements qualitatively different are:

• where training is prior to the placement and generic rather than specific. By contrast, good externship programmes involve at least some element of coordinated (prior and continuing) training and supervision between the law school and the specific service provider.
• where the student’s performance is not evaluated by the field supervisor, or the only assessment is self assessment by the student, or the placement is not formally assessed at all
• where supervision of work placements by faculty (as opposed to field) supervisors is infrequent and chiefly by remote means (e-mail, telephone), or there is no active supervision by faculty during the placement period

This is not to say that work placements are an inferior experience to clinic, but it does highlight the extent to which clinic and work placements may have quite different learning objectives and outcomes. If you want students to have clinical experience, that will not necessarily be achieved by sending them out on work placement (and vice versa).

Last Modified: 2 August 2010