A warm welcome to the Simulated Client Initiative (SCI), an international collaboration to develop a research base and resources for the use of simulated clients in legal education. This public blog has been assembled as a resource for all academics, practitioners, students and interested in the use of SCs at any stage of legal education.
The blog is based on the work we have been doing over the past decade in the SCI, which now has projects in seven jurisdictions worldwide - work which derives from the substantial practical experience and considerable research base on simulation in medical education. Simulated patients have been in use in medical education for over half a century. In most cases, lay people are trained to simulate a patient with a specific condition. In a role-play consultation, medical students or medical professionals are required to recognise the condition from the patient's description using their clinical, caring and patient-handling skills. Patients are trained to assess doctors' communication and patient-handling skills, as well as their attitudes towards patients.
The aims of our project in legal education are to:
- Encourage the establishment and maintenance of SC projects globally.
- Collate and update pre-existing research on standardisation and simulation practices across a range of disciplines and professions.
- Research the use of simulated clients (SCs) in the education of law students, trainees and lawyers through a series of pilot projects and research publications
- Produce a body of resources that will enable staff in law schools and other legal educational centres to develop their own SC programmes, in undergraduate, postgraduate and professional legal education.
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