BEING THE CHANGE: SOCIAL JUSTICE IN EXTERNSHIP PROGRAM EVALUATION

• Main Author: Katie Spillane
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Windsor 2017-03-01
• Series: Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice
• Online Access: https://wyaj.uwindsor.ca/index.php/wyaj/article/view/4843

Around the globe, clinical legal education [CLE] narratives resonate with a desire to promote social justice and the vindication of human rights. Yet scholarship exploring CLE’s accomplishment of these aims is scant and generally focuses only on student outcomes. This literature appears to be based not on theory and results, but hope: the hope that changed students will change the world. To invest on hope alone is unwise, particularly when all stakeholders face financially precarious times. In this context, this article argues that the existing focus on student outcomes is disproportionate and unhelpful. The existing narrow focus on student outcomes marginalizes other stakeholders and creates significant blind spots in program evaluation. This article proposes a broader analysis that would ask what value systems and power distribution CLE programs themselves create or reinforce, focusing on both the immediate impact of CLE programming and reinforcing the values human rights education seeks to inculcate by incorporating these into the structure of CLE programs themselves.