11. What are the personal and professional benefits of learning about resilience and preparedness?

As we have set out so far, participation in climate clinics is directed to supporting climate action across individual, community and structural/systemic levels, and it brings personal and professional benefits.

Professionally, students develop the practical legal skills and theoretical understandings required to become a lawyer who understands the breadth of law relevant to climate change and is capable of using the law for the benefit of communities that are most affected by it (including people and communities often least responsible for climate change, and those with the most vulnerability to its effects).^[1] Students can begin to observe that they can make meaningful change and contributions not only to marginalised communities but to their own climate futures, as a lawyer for the climate and not simply by striking on a Friday^[2] or engaging in often fatiguing climate litigation.^[3] It is in this sense that climate clinics are often described as clinics for climate justice. While curriculum-based climate CLE is the focus of this chapter, the potential for wider, even global, connectedness through the co-curricular program (discussed further later in this chapter) also contributes scope for students to build their own climate law resilience and preparedness.

This chapter has so far explored the history and methodology of CLE, how it can operate to support wellbeing, and CLE’s role in promoting climate justice, preparedness and resilience. The next question we address is: what exactly does a student do, and might they do, in a climate clinic? With this in mind we now turn to setting out the types of climate clinics, the models they employ, and the key activities and learning of students involved in each.