6. What skills are learnt in CLE and how are they relevant to our shared climate future

CLE supports students to build skills for practice through engaging in real legal work under supervision. Through this process of hands-on experience, coupled with close supervision and feedback, CLE aims ‘to produce graduates who can deal effectively with the modern world’.^[1]

While the nature of the work of a particular clinic will shape the specific technical skills students develop — legal writing, analysis, advocacy or litigation process — CLE has a particular capacity to support essential skills for practice, including ethical awareness and ‘emotional skills, values, responsibility, resilience, confidence, self-esteem, self-awareness and humility’.^[2]

The question of what it means for law graduates to be ‘practice-ready’ has been described as ‘neither clear-cut nor well-articulated’,^[3] and it is a question made more complex by the ongoing and dynamic changes in legal practice and the profession, as well as in the regulatory framework, and the lack of certainty about our environmental future. New technology and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) open both opportunities and challenges for law and for legal practice.^[4] The skills required to be ‘practice-ready’ today are unlikely to be the same as those required in 5, 10 or 15 years.^[5] The most important skill in this context might be the skill of learning how to learn^[6] and to understand law in context and in the broader framework of clients’ needs and ethical practice.^[7]

While the future of work is unknown, it is accepted that the climate has and will continue to change.^[8] A climate clinic has the added role to prepare students as professionals entering that climate-modified future. This is partly achieved through supervised practice; it is also achieved through using reflective techniques that support professional self-awareness and acknowledge wellbeing and personal growth.