The Children's Justice Clinic: Ensuring high‐quality legal representation for children through clinical legal education.

Juvenile and family law uniquely require interdisciplinary education and experience to balance children's and families' legal rights with their best interests. Clinical legal education provides third‐year law students with advanced and applied experience in a specific area of law to prepare them for legal practice. Recent developments in clinical legal education advance this experience by integrating interdisciplinary experts and reflective practice into clinics. The Children's Justice Clinic is one such clinic that integrates classroom teaching, clinical legal practice, multidisciplinary expert consultation, and reflective practice to train practice‐ready Guardians ad Litem. Evaluation results from the first 5 years of the Children's Justice Clinic demonstrates that the Clinic is making progress toward its goals to provide third‐year law students with the knowledge and skills necessary to be effective Guardians Ad Litem, increase interest in child welfare and juvenile law practice among law students, and increase access to high‐quality legal representation for children. This paper presents the results from the evaluation and shares lessons learned during clinic development and implementation. Key points for the family court community: The Children's Justice Clinic is one such clinic that integrates classroom teaching, clinical legal practice, multidisciplinary expert consultation, and reflective practice to train practice‐ready Guardians ad Litem.Evaluation results from the first 5 years demonstrates that the Clinic is making progress toward its goals to provide third‐year law students with the knowledge and skills necessary to be effective Guardians ad Litem, increase interest in child welfare and juvenile law practice among law students, and increase access to high‐quality legal representation for children.Community and law college buy‐in are essential to creating a successful law school clinic to develop the curriculum and have a supportive community of legal professionals willing to work with and teach the students.Collaborations across the university system provide access to multidisciplinary experts for case consultation, reflective practice, and seminar lectures.To build you own clinic, consider increasing access to multidisciplinary case consultants, visit other similar clinics across the country, and integrate the clinic director into law school teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]