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1 UC Irvine L. Rev. 146 (2011)
Writing on a Blank Slate: Creating a Blueprint for Experiential Learning at the University of California, Irvine School of Law

handle is hein.journals/ucirvlre1 and id is 154 raw text is: Writing on a Blank Slate: Creating a Blueprint for Experiential Learning at the University of California, Irvine School of Law Carrie Hempel* I. A Necessary Beginning: The Selection of a Dean Who Truly Believes in Experiential Learning ........................................148 II. The Creation of a Strong Foundation in the First-Year Curriculum................149 III. Developing Second-Year Experiences that Build a Bridge to Work in a Clinic .......... ............ ........................ ..... 151 IV. The Third-Year Clinical Requirement: Keeping Students Engaged Through the Practice of Law... ..................................152 V. Conclusion ......................................... .......... 156 From its founding, the University of California, Irvine School of Law (UCI Law or the Law School), articulated its most important mission as preparing students for the practice of law at the highest levels of the profession. Fulfilling this mission necessarily requires providing every UCI Law student ample opportunities to learn, as part of their formal legal training, what it means to be a lawy er by actually practicing law. The most important of these opportunities is a student's participation in a substantial clinical course, in which the student, under the close supervision of a supervising attorney, represents real clients, addressing their legal problems in an environment that includes continual feedback, skills practice, and time for learning and reflection. In most, if not all instances, the supervising attorney will be a UCI law professor, and the student will be evaluated on the basis of her work on behalf of her clients.' In the first year of the Law * Associate Dean for Clinical Education and Service Learning and Clinical Professor of Law, University of California, Irvine School of Law. My thanks to colleagues who read and provided helpful comments on earlier versions of this essay: Erwin Chemerinsky, Christine Cimini, Catherine Fisk, Carrie Mlenkel-Mteadow, and Michael Robinson-Dorn. I am also grateful to Denisha McKenzie for her valuable research assistance. 1. What is appropriately termed experiential learning or a clinical course within a law school curriculum has long been the subject of debate within the legal academy and among those law 146

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