See also Clinical & Skills Courses.
The Clinical Program provides instruction in professional skills and offers live-client and other practice experiences that are not available in the traditional law school classroom. The clinical program prepares students for the practice of law, provides opportunities to gain practical knowledge, develops professional skills and values, and offers insight into certain types of law practice. The live-client clinics offer opportunities to represent clients, to work on real legal cases under supervision, to consider and resolve ethical issues, and to reflect upon and critique current legal practice. These activities are authorized under Hawai‘i Supreme Court Rule 7. In our live-client clinics, students practice criminal law, immigration law, family law, environmental law, and elder law.
The Clinical Program offers courses that teach and model excellent professional skills and stress a reflective method of looking at lawyering behavior. These courses are taught by full-time faculty, as well as by some of Hawai‘i's finest judges and lawyers -- who also critique student performances in delivering oral arguments, handling depositions, and negotiating for their clients in simulated sessions, and with real clients. Skills taught in the various clinical courses include: interviewing, counseling, drafting, fact investigation, negotiation, alternative dispute resolution, motion practice, trial practice, appellate practice, and legal writing. Of course the specific skills taught in any individual course will depend upon the subject matter of the course.
Our school has developed its Clinical Program to fit the unique needs and interest of our students and our state. Although we are one of the smallest schools in the nation, we have developed an exciting, well-rounded clinical program with a mix of live-client clinics, simulation courses, and externships.
The school is strongly committed to clinical legal education and requires that all students complete at least two credits of clinical courses to graduate.
