by Richard Prior
Staff Writer
One of the better ways to get students used to the “real world” outside the classroom is to let them get a taste of that world before they graduate.
They can gain experience, confidence and, quite possibly, a job offer.
About 100 Florida Coastal School of Law students reap those benefits each year through externships with the courts and public or governmental agencies.
“The main purpose is to get them some practical legal experience,” said Associate Professor Lynn McDowell, director of Clinical Placement Programs. “This is one way they can fulfill their skills requirement.”
McDowell serves as a liaison between the students and their placement supervisors, the attorneys who guide them at the agencies where they work.
The program itself, and the regulations that govern it, are not much different from those at other law schools, said McDowell. But the program has been exceptionally successful at FCSL.
“It’s getting harder to place them because I’m getting more applications,” she said. “The school is growing, so there are more students, and there are more students wanting to do externships.
“The legal community also has been very supportive of it.”
A broad variety of public agencies offer the semester-long externships to students. They include State Attorney’s Office, public defender agencies, Jacksonville Area Legal Aid (JALA), the guardian ad litem and the City’s General Counsel’s Office.
One student this semester is working with the legal staff of Shands General Hospital. Another is working with bankruptcy trustees. Yet another is working with the prosecutor’s office in Brunswick County, Ga.
Some students stay in Tallahassee when they work at the Florida Supreme Court. Others are placed with judges and magistrates in the U.S. District Court and the Circuit Court in Jacksonville.
There can be a problem with students from other regions who prefer externships in or near their hometowns, McDowell said.
“The ABA encourages the externship supervisor to do site visits,” she said. “When the student is too far away, you can’t do that.
“So far we’ve just allowed it with judicial externships. If I talk with the judge, and I’m satisfied that it’s going to be an educational experience for the student, we approve them.”
The school does not give credit for working with private firms.
“I know of very few law schools that will allow students to get credit for working for a private firm,” said McDowell. “There’s sort of a feeling that the law firms can pay them.
“The main purpose of the externship is education. I think that most clinical educators, and I consider myself one, feel that, with a private law firm, too much can interfere with the educational purpose of the externship.”
There’s also a classroom component to the program.
McDowell meets with the students as a group six to eight times each semester. They discuss general topics, including ethics, interviewing and getting along in the workplace.
And she meets with them individually about two or three weeks after they start the program to get a feel for how the experience is going.
“I have them do a goals assignment at the beginning of the semester,” said McDowell. “Then we have a meeting at the end of the semester and talk about whether they met their goals, what could have been different, how this could have been better.”
Part of the assignment is for students to write three reflective journals in which they candidly assess their experiences. No one sees the confidential journals except McDowell.
“Most clinical educators are strong advocates of reflective lawyering,” she said. “It shouldn’t stop with anything. I should be a reflective teacher.
“I think we get busy, and it’s hard to do. When you teach a class you should come back and say, ‘What was right about that? What was wrong? How can I improve upon that?’
“I think it would be nice if more professionals did that, especially lawyers. So I try to give students a taste of that.”
The school also has a civil practice “live client clinic” that is supervised by Professor Mike Jorgensen.
“Working under a supervisor, the students actually represent clients,” said McDowell. “Clients are either referred by JALA or other agencies, and the students, for the most part, do family law type matters. Divorces, custody, visitation rights, some landlord-tenant matters, some elder law.”
It’s not just a one-way street with the program, said McDowell, who has fielded requests from agencies looking for just the right student.
“It can be a symbiotic relationship,” she said. “They need the help; the students get the experience. I think that, for the most part, the agencies and the people involved have had a good experience with the externs.”