Quality-Lite for Clinics: Appropriate Accountability within ‘Live-Client’ Clinical Legal Education

Abstract

Our paper will explore the tensions. We are not going to be able to jettison quality assurance, even if we wish to. So we will propose a ‘quality-lite’ agenda for law clinic objectives and student outcomes, asserting that self-governance and our own QA processes will protect live-client clinics from ill-designed, externally imposed bureaucratic pressures. Encouragement of innovation in clinical legal education – and its support via quality-lite – need not be restricted to a few institutions that are independently funded. Ultimately, QA must be facilitative of development in technique and policy or there will be less and less to ‘assure’, let alone deliver to communities in need.