 Okay, I think we're gonna get started. So welcome. On behalf of the New England Externship Consortium Law Schools, thank you for joining us this afternoon. And thank you so much for supervising and teaching our law students. Next, NEXT is the New England Externship Consortium. We're a new group of externship faculty at law schools throughout New England. This is our first joint event, but we hope to provide similar programming in the future. So thank you so much for coming today. I'm Susie Harrington-Steppen from Roger Williams School of Law, and I am delighted to be joined today by Matthew Bernstein from Vermont Law School, Crisanne Hazen from Harvard Law School, Kate Devlin-Joyce from Boston University School of Law, Jennifer Maley from Yukon Law School, and Rachel Reeves from University of Maine School of Law. Over the next 45 minutes to an hour, you'll be hearing from us about practical tips and ideas for supervising your law students in remote hybrid and in-person placements. We'll be moving through a lot of material. It's quite dense and we don't expect you to remember everything, but I think we hope that you'll walk away from today's session with a few new ideas that you can implement with your fall externs. Please keep in mind, we'll be using the term externship and field placement interchangeably throughout today's session. We provided some resources that our panelists put together and there's a Google folder that was sent out in yesterday's webinar reminder email. We'll send that again tomorrow and we'll also include a recording from today's session and the slides. So when you're taking your notes, please know that there'll be another way to sort of remember these practical tips. Finally, we'll be using the Q&A function in this webinar. So if you have questions or comments, please use that and we'll try to get to those questions at the end of the presentation. I'll now ask our panelists to turn off their cameras and I'll turn things over to our first panelist, Kate Devlin-Joyce from BU. It's all yours, Kate. You're muted, you're muted. We need to hear you. We see you though. My apologies. Thank you, Suzy. As Suzy mentioned, my name is Kate Devlin-Joyce and I'm joining you from Boston University School of Law. We're thrilled that you made time to join us today. So first we're going to discuss who are your students. Many of you have a mix of students in your office, unpaid interns, perhaps both undergrads and law students. Some of you have pro bono law students. Many of you have paid student employees perhaps during the summer and during the academic year and then all of you, for which we are very grateful, have legal externs who are earning academic credit. Today we're going to focus on that particular group of students, legal externs who are receiving academic credit for their experience with you. Why are they different? Unlike the other three categories of students, externships for academic credit are subject to the ABA standards. You're going to hear about the ABA standards throughout this presentation and it's important to know that the ABA standards guide what we require of our students, of you, our supervisors and of ourselves throughout the externship experience. So terrific, thank you. The standard we're going to focus on today is standard 304. It focuses on the experience and its requirements. The ABA envisions the faculty member, the site supervisor and the student all working together today we're really going to focus on site supervisor, you and the student experience. If you have any questions about the faculty member's relationship with the student or with you, please feel free to reach out to any of us. One thing to note per the ABA, all students enrolled in an externship or field placement also take an accompanying tutorial or seminar. All of us teach either a seminar, tutorial or both. It's one of our roles. Now, standard 304 requires that the field placement provide a substantial lawyering experience that is reasonably similar to that experience of a lawyer advising or representing a client or engaging in other lawyering tasks. It also must provide direct supervision of the student's performance by a site supervisor, so by you and we're going to talk about this and multiple opportunities for performance, feedback from the site supervisor and self evaluation. We're going to be talking about all three of these later in the presentation, but before we get to them, we're first going to hear from Chris Ann Hazen of Harvard about inclusiveness and externships. It's Kate and hello everyone. One of the most important issues we want to cover right off the bat is the importance of making sure that all students feel welcome and included at your agency. I'm referring to and especially describing those students from historically marginalized backgrounds including black, indigenous people of color, other people of marginalized races, people with disabilities, LGBTQ plus people, religious minorities among others. We are in the midst of a lot of change when it comes to how we think about equity and education and in the legal profession. Law schools are doing everything they can to welcome and create an even playing field for their students of diverse backgrounds, knowing that students learn better and perform better when they feel welcome and included. Specifically our schools have identified the need to confront and dismantle those structures and systems that perpetuate racism through the exclusion and inequitable treatment of students of color. We are working on these issues at both an institutional and personal level. This is challenging work and requires intentionality as many of you already know. As supervisors and teachers responsible for educating the next generation of lawyers, judges and leaders, collectively we have an incredible opportunity to generate real change in the profession by recreating legal workplaces so that historically marginalized people may succeed at the same rate as white able-bodied individuals. In doing so we can disrupt race, racist power structures more globally within the legal profession. On an individual level, we encourage you to make conscious and name the ways in which your organization includes and elevates students of diverse backgrounds. We want to support you and your organizations as you take some of these steps. Many of you are probably already doing this work and we hope to leave you with a message that we wish to partner with you in your efforts. For others, we hope to provide a few ideas and resources for you to consider as a way of creating more equitable learning spaces for students coming to your organizations. Borrowing from our colleague, Alexi Freeman at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, we want to highlight a few key ideas. Next slide, please. First, this challenge asks you to take stock of your own and your organization's practices and policies prior to taking on a student. To examine your own implicit biases, review office policies and obtain a commitment for upper management to address these questions and issues. As you do the self-audit, please perhaps most important is not to dismiss or sweep under the rug the ways in which racism impacts your colleagues and certainly the interns and others without the institutional standing who may arrive at your door. Those for marginalized backgrounds are most certainly thinking about it, failing to recognize the impact that racism has on them could create a significant barrier to their success as externs and future lawyers and to your success as a supervisor. Before your students with marginalized identities even begin the application process, consider whether your materials are accessible to those with disabilities. Is your application process transparent and not designed to exclude students who aren't somehow in the know? Think about your physical space. When students come in for an interview, will they see authentic images that are representative of a diversity of experiences? And once students begin the externship, you might establish a mentor or a buddy system to match students with a member of your team who is also a member of an historically marginalized group or has demonstrated a commitment to an understanding of the challenges your student is facing. Consider the power dynamics in your organization. Ensure that you take steps to give your student access to important people and leaders at your agency. Be mindful of the unwritten rules in the office that might be unknown or alienating to marginalized folks. Be sure that you're not quote, flodding the diverse extern or are tokenizing them by asking them to speak for their entire race or other group. And finally, ensure equity and knowledge by giving all students a baseline understanding of important concepts. And ensure equity and opportunity by giving marginalized students a share of the plumb or media assignments. As Susie mentioned, we provided some materials to you at the, in yesterday's reminder email and we'll send those out again. And in those materials, there will be a link to this publication that I'm referring to by Alexi Freeman that develops these ideas a bit more fully. And if you prefer to learn by watching, there's a link to a fantastic training put on by our colleagues in the Bay Area that I strongly encourage you to watch if you have time. And with that, I'll turn it over to my colleague, Matthew Bernstein. Thank you, Chris-San. Before I get started, two brief pieces of housekeeping. First, there is a huge variety of organizations on this call. So just be aware that some of these suggestions won't apply to you necessarily. Second, I'm gonna run through a lot of practical tips that are a little bit more detailed than the slides. And as we mentioned, numerous times, these are all typed up in a document that is available in the resource packet. So if you missed something, don't worry. Next slide, please. So here's the definitions of what I'm gonna talk about. We're using the word onboarding to refer to the task to think about before the extern starts work and orientation to refer to the plan for the extern's first few days in the office or in the office. Next slide, please. So onboarding, what to think about prior to the start of the externship. First bullet there. About a week before your extern starts, we recommend that you do some structural thinking about what you want the extern to do in the coming months and to both set your own goals for the semester as well as letting your colleagues know that the extern is coming and to think about how they can be involved if applicable. In addition, your student will reach out to you prior to the externships start. And when they do, we recommend that you set up a phone or video meeting with your student prior to start for a number of purposes. One, to confirm their start and end day. This varies by program, but it's really important to get those calendars as soon as possible as things tend to move fast once they start. Second, to establish an initial work schedule for the hours the student will work and more on hours later in this presentation. Third, we recommend that you establish a backup supervisor or a contact at least in case of emergencies which can happen even of course on the first day. And then fourth, to include a bunch of first day essentials. Things like office dress code, what time should the student arrive on the first day? Where should the student arrive if there's a link which would make sure they have the link? Where can they park? Does the door have a key code? Can the student text you? Keep in mind that this may be the first time that your student has worked in a legal job and also for some in any job. So the big takeaway from this section is that structure is really crucial. Second bullet there and this technology administrative really should be logistics. So in our experience, these kinds of HR details can be incredibly time consuming and can really be a hold up. So we present these just to give you an idea of the kinds of issues that we routinely see. Does your student know how to use your communication software whether Outlook, G Suite, Zoom, Teams, WebEx, Slack, these are all powerful software but some of them require quite a bit of getting up to speed. Second, do you require a VPN or a virtual private network or a cloud data system? And how does that work? Will your extern have an organizational email address? Are there security or confidentiality documents they need to sign? Is there an employee handbook? Is there a remote work policy? Are there lingering background check issues or documents? Can the student use their own phone in their work? And if so, is there a number blocking service or is there something standard that you usually use? Do you have a Google voice number that the student could access to promote privacy, et cetera. Is there a conflicts inventory that the student needs to complete? And are there other background resources or information for students to read ahead of time such as, for example, organizational history or structural documents? Work space, where will the student work? If it's in the office, is there a dedicated space for the student? And if so, is there furniture or other peripherals like monitors or keyboards that the student might need? And if out of the office, the first thing to think about of course is confidentiality. We strongly recommend if the student is not working in the office that you have a detailed conversation you ask the student whether they're physically working if they are working from home or even a rented office or a shared workspace. Do they have a housemate or roommate? Do they have privacy? If not, what are your protocols for protecting client and other confidential information? And it's really worth drilling down and being specific and asking the student how they're gonna protect your clients. Their business is unfortunately your business. Can the student use their own computer? Will you mail them one? If not, where can the student save their work? Does the student have her need a printer? Are there restrictions on what they can print? These are especially good questions if they're working from home. So this is a good segue into the third bullet on your screen, their ethics and professionalism. I know I probably don't need to remind you again but the students are working under your license. And we recommend strongly that you conduct an ethics and professionalism training including a review of confidentiality rules based on the actual and practical issues that you frequently see in your practice. We also recommend that you assume a low knowledge of ethics in every student. Not every student has taken professional responsibility or is familiar with the rules of professional conduct. I wanna be very clear that all of our programs teach students about ethics but your targeted specific perspective will be incredibly beneficial to them. And even a law school course in ethics does not necessarily prepare students for what they see in practice. A simplified way to do this if you feel like, oh, that's kind of overwhelming is to focus on the seven Cs, confidentiality, competence, communication, conflict of interest, candor, commingling and civility. And again, those are listed in that document, the resources document. And I think most of you on this call just off the top of your head could start rattling off the rules in each of those categories. Okay, so that was the end of onboarding and now we're gonna talk about orientation. Next slide, please. So again, orientation is the extern's first few days in the office. And this section is much shorter than onboarding because the idea is that if you've done enough pre-work to onboard your student, the first few days in the office should go smoothly. So the first bullet there, connecting to the office or the virtual office. The first and most important question, as we all know on day one, to really connect the student to the office is where is the bathroom? So be sure you cover that. Second, plan and hold an office orientation of some kind. Be explicit about the support structure of your program and who the student should reach out to for what kind of issue. Supervisor, coordinator, technical support, building maintenance, et cetera. It really helps the student to know where to go for each kind of problem. Next, provide opportunities for your student to get to know your office and your coworkers and help them create a network to the extent that you can. And on this end, creating, giving an office tour to the student is incredibly important. And even if there were remote, some kind of virtual tour, I think goes a long way. Next, it helps if you can explain as much as you can about the culture of the office. For example, how do people address each other? How are meetings handled? Are there regular employee or attorney meetings the student can or should attend whether they're in person or virtual? Has COVID and the pandemic changed the way you do business? Has your mission or practice changed? Have people been laid off? Are there budgetary issues? How is morale? This kind of context is useful for the student to know. So the next bullet, connecting to other externs, this is super important in creating community. Will you plan social events that include all externs if you have other externs or other people in the office, bowling, happy hour, paint nights, even just a coffee chat on Zoom, some kind of out of the office personal connection. And then the third and final bullet point, connecting to mentorship in the field. If you can make the time, we think it's great to have a detailed conversation with the student at the outset and ask them what their professional goals are down the road after this externship, after law school, what do they wanna do? What do they wanna be? And how can you, the supervisor, help them in some way down that road? And it's worth asking yourself if you consider yourself a mentor or you could potentially be a mentor for this student. And it's fine not to be, but I think most of us know the importance of a mentor and have gotten here with the help of a mentor. So if it's not you, who can you connect the student to? Who could potentially be a mentor? Can you assign a less formal mentor to the student? For example, a new attorney that the student can connect to who's a working attorney but it's closer in experience to the extern and maybe remembers the feeling of being a new attorney better than some of the more experienced attorneys. And are there other professional connections you can make for the student? Even if those are remote, can you help the student set up informational interviews with professionals on the career path and interest the student? Are there events or conferences you recommend the student attend or if you can even pay for them, that's great. Are there, actually, I'll press pause on that. I don't know the ethics around that. You should ask your program but are there professional organizations that the student can connect to of some kind? And how can you help the student feel part of something bigger, something larger than just the office? How can you connect them to a career path? So in conclusion, I just want to return to the kind of or point out the overall theme here which is really creating some kind of a community for the extern and connecting them to the broader legal community. Okay, so thank you that wraps up my section. I appreciate your attention and now I'm gonna pass it to Jennifer Maylee from UConn to discuss communication. Hi everyone, thank you for being here. I'm gonna talk about communication. The communication between and among students site supervisors and externship faculty is essential from before the externship begins and throughout its duration. All of our next consortium schools send supervisors information about the respective roles and responsibilities of each party to the externship, expectations of the student's experience and guidance about best practices for supervision. This may be in the form of the supervisor's manual, memorandum of understanding, placement confirmation letter or some other writing. Faculty also make call, visit or video conference with supervisors at the beginning or during the externship to check in on how the student is doing and address any issues that may occur. All of our next externship faculty are here to help you address any questions, problems or concerns that may arise during the externship. Please, please contact us. I know that it may be difficult to call out problems with a student, but I'm always saddened when I learned that there were ongoing problems that festered during an externship and the supervisor did not feel comfortable talking to me about them until after the externship ended. We externship faculty are your partners in making the externship an excellent learning experience for the students and a rewarding supervisory experience for you. Now, before the student shows up in your office, whether in person or remotely, you and the student should have discussed the kinds of legal matters the student will encounter, the assignments the student will receive, the activities the student will participate in and the events the students will observe. Making accurate predictions about law office workload is impossible for many practices. So we don't expect that the student experience will proceed exactly how it is planned, but there should be a plan so that students can have a sense of the nature of the work they will be doing and what opportunities they will have to develop their knowledge and skills. Part of the early communication with the student will focus on the student's learning plan. I'll talk about this in a bit. Next slide, please. Now, communication between supervisors and students is key to the success of an externship, not simply to ensure that assignments get done but to develop productive working relationships and incorporate the student into the community in which the student is working. Communication is particularly challenging when students are not in the office. To ensure that the lines of communication remain active and open, we recommend that you plan for both structured and impromptu communications between you, your student, and with other members of your office. Consider establishing a standing meeting each week when you and the student can catch up on how things are going and what is on the student's schedule. Doing a daily check in on the days the student is working is also a good idea, perhaps at a particular time each day. One useful tool is asking the student to email you at the end of each week to provide a status update, projects completed and yet to be done, upcoming events and activities. If the student is reporting an upcoming law in work or activities, that signals that you should begin to seek out new projects for the students to do. Giving the student opportunities to communicate with others in your office and to see how you interact with your colleagues and staff is an ideal way for students to understand your legal work environment. We recommend that you invite students to regularly scheduled staff meetings and conferences, as well as planned strategy sessions, moods, department lunches, trainings, any gatherings that will give students insight into your legal practice and professional interactions. Whenever you put these gatherings on your calendar, invite the student to join you as well. Now, planning for impromptu communications sounds like an oxymoron, but hear me out. You may not be able to plan for impromptu conversations or meetings, but you can plan to have them when the opportunities arise. Use time after attending meetings or conferences to debrief what the student has observed. Pop in the student's office for a coffee break or call for a brief chat if you have an unexpected break in your schedule. Some students may be hesitant to bother you with a question or a request for more work if you don't have a pre-scheduled meeting. By reaching out, you will invite these conversations. If the office has impromptu gatherings, pull the student in. Sharing cake in the break room for a colleague's birthday or to wish luck to a trial team headed to court makes the student part of the office and gives the student a full understanding, not just of the work of a lawyer, but the life of a lawyer. All of these suggestions are to say that you should be intentional about communicating regularly with the student and connecting them to the personnel and activities of your office. Next slide, please. Now, as I mentioned earlier regarding early communication with students, one of the first assignments many of our students have is to prepare a learning plan. A learning plan or what some next schools call a professional learning plan or a learning agenda is a document where students identify some major goals of their externship and the activities that they believe will help them achieve those goals. Now, there are many purposes of the learning plan. First, it requires the student to engage in planning for the externship, to be intentional about what they will gain from the externship and how. Second, because students are required to share the plan with their supervisor, the plan is a vehicle for communication between the student and the supervisor. The student conveys to the supervisor what the student hopes to learn and the types of assignments and activities that will further that learning. Third, the plan can serve as a benchmark throughout the semester. Both the student and the supervisor can refer to the plan and see where the student is on meeting their goals. This again makes the learning plan a vehicle for student supervisor communication. Let's say the student identified a goal of learning about the discovery process and they have asked to engage in discovery activities. It's now halfway through the externship and that hasn't yet happened. The learning plan will prompt the student and supervisor to talk about whether there will be opportunities in the remaining time of the field placement to get the student involved in document production or invited to attend a deposition. Perhaps the supervisor might reach out to other lawyers in the office to provide a discovery experience. Lastly, the learning plan helps with evaluation. Students and supervisors can evaluate the student's experience at least in part by measuring whether and how they achieve their learning goals. Next slide, please. What kinds of things do students identify as goals? Usually students choose a combination of hard and soft skills. Students want to deepen their knowledge of substantive and procedural law and hone their lawyering skills. Skills like legal and factual research, writing briefs or letters, drafting contracts or legislation, interviewing, counseling, negotiation, oral advocacy, witness preparation and preparing and delivering legislative testimony. Some goals go to the development of professional identity. For example, understanding the ethical issues facing a criminal defense lawyer or a child protection lawyer or understanding the relationship between in-house and outside counsel. Other learning goals may go to career development, learning to network, having a polished writing sample, determining whether family law is a good career choice for them, developing confidence in oral presentations. Now, once students identify their goals and we usually ask them to prioritize three or four, they identify the kinds of activities and experiences they believe will help them achieve those goals. Such activities might include planning, observation, participation, performance, receiving feedback, debriefing and engaging in professional interactions. I usually direct my students to include receiving feedback and having the opportunity to incorporate it into future assignments as one of the activities correlating with improving any legal skill. The students' goals and activities should be part of an ongoing conversation between student and supervisor throughout the externship. The plan is not designed to be static. Goals and activities make change based on the realities of the practice. But the idea is that when the supervisor knows what the student wants to learn from the externship, the supervisor is in a better position to help the student have the kinds of experiences, assignments, interactions that will help the student achieve those goals. Now I'd like to turn to my colleague, Kate, to talk about externship assignments. Thanks, Jen. So the following few slides really build on what Jen and others have already presented. As I'm sure all of you know, the most successful assignments for you and the student are ones that have a plan in place. And ideally, as Jen mentioned, connect to the student's learning goals. When developing a plan for an assignment for a student, consider how many hours a week the student is spending in your office. Obviously, a student who's in your office 12 hours a week is not going to have the same number or breadth of assignments that a student who's there for 24 hours will have. In addition to planning the assignment and figuring out your goals for the assignment for the student and connecting them to the student's learning goals, it also helps to provide the student with context for the assignment. How does this assignment fit in with the larger context of the work? Whether that's a trial, work for the office, negotiation, contract, et cetera. Communicate clear expectations for the assignment, the length of the assignment, the breadth, depth of research, what types of law the student should be considering. Provide any available research to the student. So I've had students who complete an assignment and then realize that they've got the wrong format because they hadn't seen an example. So is there a memo bank? Are there previous examples of deposition questions? What does a successful motion argument look like? Then ensure that the student understands how and when it's best to contact you in case they have questions, which they absolutely will. Are you someone who's comfortable if you're in the office with a student just stopping by and asking a random question? Or would you prefer for them to make set a time to meet with you? Same goes for emails. Are you okay with quick emails to you or would you prefer that the student gather a number of questions and wait until they have a set number of questions to email you, perhaps at the end of the day or after two or three days? But set the time to discuss these issues. While this may seem like a lot of upfront work, what we found is that this preparation makes the experience both for you and the student so much better. It also becomes routine as you're providing assignments. An additional tip is when you think about assignments, consider the short-term assignments which our students absolutely love because they feel like they're really getting things accomplished and they also really appreciate the feedback on those quick turnaround assignments. Also consider giving them a longer-term assignment so that when there's downtime, they have some place to go. They have an assignment that they can continue to work on while they're waiting for another of those quicker turnaround assignments. As Jen mentioned, so this is a reiteration, we all recommend that students follow up an assignment discussion with an email memorializing what they understood the assignment to be so that they know they're on the right track. We also all recommend that students at the end of the week submit to you, email you with a list of what they've been working on and where they are in the assignments. So hopefully that's helpful to you. If it's not, obviously have a conversation with them about that, but know that we all recommend that to our students. Next slide, please. So what kind of assignments are typically given and what do we recommend? As was mentioned earlier, the ADA standards require that students engage in substantive legal work. And we and the students appreciate when there's a diversity in the type of projects. And we realize that this isn't always possible in every placement, but when it is, we really appreciate when you engage the students in a mix of research and writing, observational opportunities and opportunities for presentations. All of these help the students develop their legal skills throughout their externship. Next slide, please. One of the questions I've gotten over the years of doing this work from friends who are supervising attorneys is how do I make or improve the observational opportunities for students? So first, I wanna confirm that students appreciate being able to observe you and your colleagues at work. They're in the process of reflecting on the type of attorney they want to be and figuring out if this is the practice area so any type of observational opportunity is exciting to them. But how does one make it more concrete for the student? Students appreciate the opportunity to assist in providing research for a meeting, preparing an agenda, a draft agenda for a meeting, being tasked with note-taking during the meeting or drafting a summary of the meeting. These experience all enhance that observational opportunity. And it also helps if you're able to take a couple minutes just to debrief with the student at the end of the experience. Next slide, please. Presentations are another skill and opportunity for performance and feedback. And we have a list here just to get your minds going about what types of presentations might students do or provide. Students appreciate any of these opportunities to develop their presentation skills, whether it's providing a case summary at a weekly staff meeting that perhaps they've been observing the weekly staff meeting for a few weeks and now it's time to hand the reins over and give them that opportunity to present the case summary. Maybe it's having them lead a brown bag for other interns or externs in the office or assist in mooting a colleague or providing a formal presentation on their longer-term research project that they've been working on throughout the semester. All of these experiences provide students with professional development opportunities and we're incredibly grateful for you to provide them to them. And now I'd like to pass the baton to Rachel who's going to talk about how to provide feedback to our students. Thank you. Great, thanks so much, Kate. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm pleased to join you today to talk about feedback in the externship context. So we're gonna jump right in. Next slide, please. Although you've heard about the standards from my colleagues, I think it's useful when we're talking about feedback and why it matters in the externship setting to sort of look back to the standards which have an inclusion of a feedback requirement within them. So you'll see here field placement courses must provide opportunities for student performance, self-evaluation and feedback from a faculty member or for field placement, a site supervisor. And so as I sort of dive into this part of the presentation, just highlighting the shared role between the externship faculty and our site supervisors in the teaching training and mentoring of students in the field for academic credit. Okay, next slide, please. So in starting my presentation, I'm going to sort of focus in on three styles or methods of feedback. I'm borrowing here from Sheila Heen. We have linked to a video that you could choose to watch if you have some time after this presentation. And if you'll do, if you do, you'll see that she starts talking about these methods in reverse order. So I'm going to do the same. As I starting at the bottom with evaluation this is just what you would expect that it is. So a rating or ranking of externship student performance in my program that takes the form of mid semester and final evaluations. And I imagine that that is true for most of my colleagues in the externship community. The second one right in the middle is coaching and that's really where I'm going to focus in on for this portion of the presentation. And this is really anything that's aimed at helping the student to learn. So mentoring, advice, corrections. This is kind of the bulk of feedback in my view for the externship student. And at the top is appreciation. And I really view this in the externship context as something more than thanks for your work or we're happy to have you here. And so you heard in the beginning about creating community for your student. And I would say that fully integrating them into the work of your office is really a method of providing feedback to them regarding their value to you and your organization while they're there for the semester. So any opportunity that you have to fully integrate them into the work of the office. So some of the things that you've heard already before and we might touch on again a bit later, that is really a great way to show the students that you value them and their work over the semester. Okay, next slide please. So focusing in on coaching feedback. So I've worked with students in this role for quite a number of years at this point. And some things that I've found that are really helpful to them and useful to their development in this transition from law student to lawyer are these things. So I'm starting with frequent feedback and within that I'll include regular. And so sometimes when we think about feedback we think about giving really substantive feedback on a written work product, for example. But I just wanna expand that a little bit to remind you that students really value frequent feedback. And so a variety of opportunities from feedback. So if it's walking back from a motion hearing or a few minutes after a client meeting or maybe the student has delivered legislative testimony making sure to give feedback frequently on a variety of projects is really useful to them. And the other part of that is regular feedback. And so you've heard a lot about this standing meeting I'm gonna talk a bit more about that for feedback. So having frequent and regular feedback for the student is really important. The other thing here is recent feedback. And so one of the things you've heard about is having a long-term project for your student which is very useful to them and they appreciate that but something about a long-term project is generally speaking it's probably not of high priority for you or for your organization. And so it might be some time for you before you even review that project for the student let alone are able to provide feedback on it. But the problem is when a lot of time has elapsed between when the student has created work products and when they have an opportunity to review feedback from it is they might forget why they made some of the decisions that they made and it might be harder for them to incorporate edits going forward. So recency is important in the feedback context. And last on my list and in my view most important is specific feedback and this is really true for positive feedback or constructive feedback. And I know from working with supervisors in my program we have a lot of fantastic lawyers and judge supervisors who are very supportive of the students. And so I know my students hear that they're doing a great job and they appreciate that but the thing about law students and maybe you recall I certainly do as a law student and new lawyers is we don't as law students and we didn't fully trust ourselves. We didn't necessarily trust that we knew what we were doing had done a good job. And so what I would say to you is law students really want some supporting evidence for those statements. So if you tell the student they've done a great job it's really helpful to give them a specific example about what it was that they did well. So if you're thinking about a written work product and there's a section in there that you can take apart and say your command of the case law here was fantastic. Your ability to write for a specific audience is right on so that they understand what they're doing well and they can continue to do those things in future projects. And then for constructive feedback this is really important as well. So this is a little bit harder to deliver but we're gonna talk about that in a minute but for constructive feedback if you can really break down a section of what the student did not do well that's gonna be much more useful to them than some sort of generalized feedback or for example if you just remove a section of their writing for a specific reason. So if you can dive into a project a little bit and tell the student exactly why that work product didn't meet your expectations or wasn't useful to the case or to the client. So if you can say to them I think you went too far in trying to connect these two concepts together or your writing was too technical for your audience and really giving them an example of that that's what's going to help them learn and grow for their next assignment and then longer term in their career. So next slide please. So I'm gonna talk for a minute about barriers to providing feedback and possible solutions and I would say hands down the number one barrier is time. You are all busy attorneys with your own caseloads and your own practices that you're managing and you're also very graciously teaching, training and mentoring our law students. And so I wanna just circle back for a minute to the shared role between externship faculty and state supervisors to say that some of what we're talking with the students about is part of that shared role. And so in my program one of the things that I talk with students about is how they can really be engaged in some student initiated review. So that it doesn't take as much time for the supervising lawyer. And so an example of this is any of us who've drafted anything we could set it aside for two weeks and go back to it and edit our own documents. I'm sure maybe you've had that experience as well. So for the student for example they've drafted something for you and two weeks have gone by and maybe they haven't gotten feedback yet. You know, I could say to the student you might wanna just go back at your own work product go through it and see where there are places that you might make changes. And then the student can come to you during the regular meeting and say, you know I re-reviewed this draft and I found some places where I think I could have done this differently or I think this maybe wasn't quite what I intended to say. And so really some student initiated review but having that regular meeting will allow the student to come to you with those kinds of questions. Another way that this can be solved not that much time investment on your part is just making sure the student has access to final drafts of documents. So even if they're not redlined or even if you haven't had time to go through with the student why you made the changes that you did just having the student look at the final draft and compare that to what they drafted and then again at a regular meeting they could come to you and say, I noticed you moved this section or you didn't incorporate this argument and can we talk about why you made those choices? A second barrier may be providing constructive feedback or navigating difficult conversations telling the student that their work wasn't exactly what you're hoping it would be as much more challenging than telling them that it was of course. And so I would just tell you that the first thing is students are really eager for constructive criticism. In fact, students tell me every semester that they wish they knew more about what they didn't do well so that they could work to improve that over the rest of their law school career or as they enter the practice of law. So they're really eager for your feedback positive or a constructive. And the other thing I would say is we're talking about this coaching style of feedback which is anything that's designed to help the student improve. So the context of matters here. And so if you're really approaching this as a coach and you're helping the student to learn how to do something better in transitioning from student to lawyer that comes across to them. And so I really encourage you to not worry about giving constructive feedback the students really, really do appreciate it. And you are giving them an opportunity to learn about the transition from law student to practice that really, really exists outside of these experiential learning programs. So we appreciate the work that you do with the students. And then the final barrier or challenge could be remote or hybrid work environments. And maybe you are still in a remote or hybrid work environment or perhaps you may be transitioning back to one based on the constant changing environment that we're in currently. So I'd say just a solution to this is the regular meeting whether you're in person or you're remote or some combination. And just to end on a positive note here instead of a challenge, one of the things going back to the appreciation portion is really thinking about the ways that remote or hybrid work environments have allowed for us to expose students and involve them in things that they may not otherwise be able to. So I think back to the fully in-person model of externships and perhaps students were there Tuesday, Thursday and that's really what they were limited to observing or being part of. But now really thinking about how to fully integrate your law student extern into the work of your organization just thinking about how technology might allow for them to participate in things on their not regularly scheduled externship days. So it's been great to talk with you today. Thanks for your time. And I'm gonna turn it over to Jen for reflection. Hello again. So you may wonder what we faculty are doing while you are supervising our students' legal practice experiences. Well, we are meeting regularly with our students in classes, seminars or individual meetings to discuss their externship experiences, ensure that they are maximizing the educational impact of their placement and helping them to reflect on what they are learning about the law, legal systems, the legal profession and their own professional identity. Now the ABA standards require that externships provide students with ongoing contemporaneous faculty guided reflection. So what is reflection? Well, reflection has been described as analysis of an observation or experience that leads to greater insight understanding lessons that can then be applied to future observations and experiences. Reflection involves digging below the surface of an event or interaction to ask questions, derive new perspectives, challenge assumptions or critique systems. Students reflect by stepping back from an experience or observation, whether it is a court hearing in which a judge admonished a litigator, a conference call in which the participants worked through a disagreement about contract terms or a sleepless night spent in fruitless research then analyzing it, thinking deeply about what happened and why and drawing lessons for the future. What went well? What went badly? If things went badly, how and why did they go badly? Are the problems the result of individual, group or systemic deficiencies? How can these problems be addressed in the future? Reflection can occur in a variety of ways. Students may keep journals, write reflections on topics of their choice or ones assigned by the instructor, make presentations, participate in class discussions, lead case rounds or post comments to a discussion board. I used to bring M&M candies to my seminar classes, not just to keep my students awake, but to remind them that we were there to reflect, to maul and to muse, I would say, over what they were seeing, hearing and doing at their placements. Next slide, please. Now, reflection topics can cover anything that a student might encounter. A sample of recent reflection topics in my seminar include lawyer-client communications and client authority, the role of the in-house lawyer, judicial decision-making and constraints, implicit and structural biases in the criminal justice system, responding to feedback, defining professionalism, creating a healthy legal work environment, managing stress and mental health and the perceptions and misconceptions about certain practice areas. Next slide, please. While the faculty oversee the reflective process, you too can help your students reflect. Take some time to debrief activities that students have participated in or have observed. Encourage students to ask questions and share their perceptions. Ask them questions, too. What did you think of that oral argument? Why do you think the prosecutor challenged that juror? Do you think our client understands the IP principles that we were discussing? Share your own perceptions, too. Point out issues or interests that may be driving the proceedings that a student may not be aware of. Talk to students about the legal system in which your practice operates and the ways in which it might advantage or disadvantage certain participants. Talk to students about office culture, client relationships, your own career path and your own choices. Students crave hearing your take on the practice of law and your take will provide them with a basis for thinking more deeply and perhaps critically about the system and profession that they are entering. And now we'll turn it back to Susie. Thank you to all of our panelists. We have some time to answer some questions. I answered one question about the slides and the resources that we've discussed today. Those will be sent again tomorrow and it'll be a Zoom email and there'll be a link in that email. So if you need any of the resources, if you want to look at the slides and I'll also include a recording of today's presentation. One question I had that I'll just say to the group was about the learning agenda, the learning plans. Please don't hesitate to reach out to your externship director if you want resources, if you want ideas, if you want to see what we're assigning in the class. I know personally I'm always trying to strike a balance where we're not overburdening you with too much information or asking too much of you, but please, at least for today's panelists, their contact information is on the slide but we're happy to connect you to any of the New England law schools or if you're joining us outside of New England, please reach out to me. I think I've got another question. So the question is, can you share further recommendations or best practices for bringing externs in on structured and impromptu office activities in the remote context? So I'll open it up to any of my panelists. Suggestions? Well, I'll jump in and then I'll have, Matthew also jumped in. One simple thing in the remote context is creating zooms, even if it's a check-in or a call. I know some people are getting so sick of Zoom or Teams, but I do think even if it's not a formal meeting deciding on Wednesday mornings, we're going to check-in or maybe Monday and you can ask the student, how is their weekend? Any way to sort of connect the way you would in an office setting works well and I personally think Zoom is the best or some sort of webinar is the best they can actually see you. They are really intimidated, especially in the remote environment to reach out too many times through email or phone calls. So you creating that space is one suggestion I think works really well. And I'll let Matthew chime in. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, this is a good question. I mean, it's hard as we all know in this new world. I guess I would say a couple of things. One, if you can, if you have the resources to upgrade sort of your setup in your office so that there's like a nice camera that's focused on the whole room and maybe a big monitor and some decent speakers so that like there's one meeting room where you can have a hybrid meeting, that helps. That said, I understand that that's not possible for everybody. I used to work in a nonprofit for a long time and we had no money. And we used to put, we had our legal director actually was out of stay and we used to have a bowl. We had a bowl from the kitchen and we just put the cell phone in like on audio to help amplify it. That was my great trick or our great trick, which is to say, like I think just everybody being willing to roll with it and realize that it's clunky and it's not the best but that having somebody from the outside be able to participate even in a clunky way is great and there's no easy answers here. So I think attitude is everything. So unless anyone else wants to chime in on that topic I'm looking at my panelists, anyone else have ideas? We have another. I just wanna add one more thing and I think it does help to have a schedule and this is something that Matthew talked about during his presentation. If you know when the students are available if you know when they're doing their externship work albeit remotely and you can just text a student and know that the student is available at that time and say, hey, something really interesting is going on. Do you wanna join this Zoom call? Do you wanna join this WebEx meeting? We're gathering kind of informally but we're doing so in a remote context and we'd love you to join. So again, I think it does help to just know a little bit about the student's availability and have that kind of relationship with the students so that you can notify them at the last minute of informal things that you can bring them in on. And that may be something that you wanna talk about during that onboarding and orientating process. There was one more question. Yeah, sorry, Susie. No, that's okay. I just wanted to- Sorry, I typed an answer. That's okay. It shifted over to the answered sections. Oh, that's okay. I apologize. But I was gonna also suggest sort of encouraging students to, if they're, I mean, this is true in person but especially remote to ask questions through Zoom and Teams. I would just keep in mind, I always say to the students, the first two weeks is gold. Like that is when they're creating rapport. You as a supervisor are creating rapport. They're trying to create rapport with you. So modeling the way you wanna communicate frequently, formal or informal. Each of you may have a different style but I do think you set the tone very quickly. And the student either sort of retreats because they don't feel comfortable or they're not sure how or they've seen you model how they should be communicating. So just remember how important, and I know Matthew talked a lot about onboarding and orientation, but that first week or two really sets the tone for our students. I'm looking at our time. I don't wanna keep anyone past the hour. We're so grateful that all of you joined. As we mentioned, it's the first time we've joined together in this consortium to do a presentation like this. And hopefully in the future, we'll provide sort of different levels, sort of more advanced supervision techniques versus a more basic presentation like today. So we appreciate it. Thank you for staying on. If you have feedback, please reach out to us. And tomorrow, please look for that email that will include a link to the Google folder with a lot of the resources that we referenced today as well as a recording of today's event and the slides. And with that, thank you. And thank you to the panelists. Thank you all. Have a great afternoon, everyone. Thank you.