The 1L Client Counseling Competition, held during the month of January, provides first year law students with an opportunity to develop valuable skills interacting with and proposing solutions for clients. The competition simulates an office environment consultation in which each team of two student-attorneys meets a client for the first time. The team attempts to obtain legally relevant factual information from the client and then supplies the client with a preliminary summary of the client’s legal position and possible actions. The two winning teams of the intramural competition are then provided with personal coaching by a BCLS professor and go on to represent the school at the annual Regional Client Counseling Competition, held at a different regional law school in March of each year.
Competition Format:
Teams conduct a 30 minute interview with the client, after which they have 15 minutes to confer with each other about their impressions of the interview itself and how they would handle the situation going forward. Both the interview and the post-interview conference are observed and judged as part of the competitive round.
Role of Attorney-Judges:
Judges observe two one-hour rounds of counseling in an evening, providing feedback to the teams, ranking them on elements of their performances, and ultimately choosing a winning pair to move on to the next round.
Evaluation Criteria:
Teams are evaluated on their ability to elicit information from the client, to establish a rapport with the client, to convey the necessary legal information to the client, and to plan future action.
Materials for 2006-2007 Participants
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