Client Conversations: A Simulation and Video Learning Guide to Interviewing and Counseling (Coursebook)

New book purchase includes complimentary digital access to the eBook and video resources.

Client Conversations provides an engaging simulation-based approach to the study of legal interviewing and counseling. Created by two clinical professors at the University of Connecticut School of Law with a combined forty-five years of teaching experience, Client Conversations features video recordings of ten contemporary and discussion-provoking lawyer-client conversations. In the videos, lawyers use varying approaches to interviewing and counseling their clients about a will dispute involving issues of testamentary capacity and undue influence.

To enhance the educational value of the videos, Client Conversations includes time-stamped discussion questions and annotated transcripts highlighting the lawyering techniques demonstrated in each meeting and comparing approaches among meetings. The video discussion materials raise questions about the extent to which differences between the lawyer and client—including differences in race, ethnicity, gender and age—may impact rapport, information gathering and the development of a productive lawyer-client relationship. In addition to the video materials, Client Conversations contains detailed instructions for planning, executing and debriefing simulations of client interviews and counseling meetings involving the same legal problem depicted in the videos. In this way, Client Conversations provides a comprehensive guide through the interviewing and counseling processes, from planning to execution to reflection and critique.

Client Conversations is designed for use in clinical and field placement courses, as well as courses in lawyering skills, client representation, trial advocacy and professionalism. The videos and learning materials may supplement any legal skills textbook or serve as a basis for stand-alone lessons in experiential course orientations, negotiation programs or law office trainings. Whatever the course or context in which it is used, Client Conversations will help law students and legal professionals understand how choices about lawyering approaches and techniques affect the lawyer-client relationship, and develop their own professional identity and style.