Standardised Clients – the HKU Experience

1. Standardised Clients – the HKU Experience Julienne Jen 16 August 2017 @ ANU

2. Why Standardised Clients (“SCs”)? • Context – SCs used in our Postgraduate Certificate in Laws (“PCLL”) course • Skills-based course • Students training to be trainee solicitors or pupil barristers • Monitored by the profession • How was it done before the SC Interviewing Programme (“SCIP”) was introduced? • Tutors role-played the client • Tutor feedback or peer feedback • Problems – unrealistic scenario; inconsistent role-play; constructive feedback???

3. How? – in terms of curriculum • HKU PCLL course – 2 semesters • Core (in the 1st semester of the full-time programme or year 1 of the part-time programme) • Civil Litigation, Criminal Litigation, Corporate & Commercial Transactions 1; Property Transactions 1; Professional Conduct and Management • Electives (in the 2nd semester of the full-time programme or year 2 of the part-time programme) • E.g. Listed Companies; Commercial Disputes Resolution; Wills, Trust and Estate Planning; Employment Law & Practice; Matrimonial Procedure & Practice; Personal Injuries; Trial Advocacy;…etc • In what course should we introduce the SCIP? • Core or elective? Transactional or litigation-based course? • In what stage of the course should we introduce SCIP? • Towards the beginning of the PCLL year or towards the end? • Should students get some practice first? • Should students be assessed? • Small-stakes vs high-stakes assessment

4. What we did at HKU (1) • 2012-2013: • Staff received training • Introduced it in the Will, Trust and Estate Planning Elective (“WTEP”) – around 30-40 students • Students conducted the initial interview for a client who was planning to make a will • Exercise and assessment (small stakes) • 2013-2014: • Introduced it to Civil Litigation – around 340 students – the whole student cohort took part • In November, students would interview a witness on their case file. Students had been working on this file since September • Exercise only • In the second semester, it was continued in WTEP

5. What we did at HKU (2) • 2014 – 2015: • All students took part in the witness interview in the Civil Litigation Core course • WTEP continued to offer this but this time, the interviews would be conducted in Cantonese (with a small number of English interviews still being carried out for students who were not able to conduct the interview in Cantonese) • It was introduced in the Employment Law & Practice Elective (“ELP”) (around 100 students) • Students conducted an initial interview of a client who suffered from injuries at work • Assessment (25%) • 2015-2016: • Apart from the above, it was introduced to Use of Chinese in Legal Practice (around 15-20 students). The interviews were conducted in Cantonese • 2016-2017 – same as 2015-2016 • 2017-2018 – same as 2015-2016, except for Civil Litigation, the SCIP will account for 5% of the marks in the subject

6. How? – in terms of preparing the students • Teaching structure of our PCLL course: • Preview in LGs • Practice in Focused Exercises in LGs • Practice in SGs & homework assignments • Review in LG • Preview by: • Lecture on interviewing skills generally • Explain what the SCIP is about • Going through the criteria with the students and explaining the “scoring” system • Video demonstration – highlighting areas of good practices • Going through the preparation required in the specific case scenario • Practice • Review • Common areas which required improvement • Areas which students did well in • Self-reflection • Reviewing their video • Reviewing their comments’ sheets

7. Who? • Since clients can come from any walks of life, can we just randomly pick anyone off the streets to become SCS? • What skills are required to be an SC? • Interested, common sense, creative, responsible, articulate • Would an SC require any legal training beforehand? • Any specific language requirement? • Where do we recruit our SCs? • How do we maintain our SC pool?

8. Timeline (Term time: September to December; January to May) • 1st 2 weeks of November • SC training - new vs. experienced SCs • Student training • Mid-November – SCIP exercise in Civil Litigation (around 340 students) and feedback thereafter • January – SC training for WTEP exercise and assessment on 2 separate occasions (around 30-40 students) • February – WTEP exercise and assessment • April – SC training for ELP (around 100 students), followed by the assessment in ELP • Note: invitations to SC pool sent around 3-4 weeks before the training sessions

9. Considerations • Which course? • Who is interested to do it? • Can you embody it into existing curriculum? • Student numbers • Timetabling • Venue • Facilities • Finance • Human resources • Research • Administer questionnaires and surveys about the experience from the outset • Keep track of the empirical data

10. Research value of standardized clients • Pedagogical research • Value in professional legal education • Comparing students performance over time, across different subjects, under different fact-scenario, course design and case files. • Interdisciplinary law research • Law and language, law and culture, law and gender : what factors have impact over students’ communicative competence ? • Initial findings - gender, language used in interviews have statistically significant relationship (see slides 11 and 12) • Further research – other background such as undergraduate degree, ethnic origin, career aspiration (solicitor/barrister), age, study mode (part time, full time), etc… a lot to be carried out either uni-jurisdictionally or across jurisdictions

11. Example – gender. Women talk better? Database: 2013-14, 14-15, 15-16 HKU PCLL Civil litigation SC interviews ; differences in red are statistically significant

12. Example – second language issue. Why use English (2nd language)