5.1 Mentorship and Supervision

Mentorship and Supervision

Supervision is the “beating heart” (D. Nicholson & J. Newman, How to Set Up and Run a Legal Clinic: Principles & Practice (Elgar Publishing, 2023) at p 151) of clinical legal education, but it is one of the least researched and most poorly understood parts of both applied experiential learning and transition to practice contexts. Some core principles and definitions are helpful in setting out the context of supervision in law practice.

First, students might hear the terms “mentorship” and “supervision” used interchangeably in a law practice context. While these roles may overlap in practice, they also have key differences. Derek Milne’s definition of supervision was adopted by Michael John McNamara in his book Supervision in the Legal Profession:

The formal provision, by approved supervisors, of a relationship-based education and training that is work-focused and which manages, supports, develops and evaluates the work of colleagues. It therefore differs from related activities, such as mentoring and therapy, by incorporating an evaluative component… and by being obligatory. The main methods that supervisors use are corrective feedback on the supervisees’ performance, teaching and collaborative goal setting… The objectives of supervision are ‘normative’ (e.g. case management and quality control issues), ‘restorative’ (e.g. encouraging emotional experiencing and processing) and ‘formative’ (e.g. maintaining and facilitating the supervisees’ competence and general effectiveness). (Derek Milne, Evidence-Based Clinical Supervision: Principles and Practice (WileyBlackwell, 2009), 8–9 in McNamara (2020)).

In contrast, “mentorship” has a more expansive meaning than supervision. As noted above, some mentors are also supervisors. However, a mentorship relationship is not a core component of supervision. As Peter Gaughwin notes:

Mentoring is more than oversight, though oversight may be part of the mentoring process … Mentoring is a shared or collaborative experience where mentor and mentee share both professional and personal experiences in order to develop self-discovery and confidence in the position in which one is placed; it is thus about more than mere performance. (Peter Gaughwin, ‘Collaborative Mentoring: Antidote to Bullying, Substitute for Supervision? Part 1’ (August 2011) The Bulletin 20.)

Some students expect a mentorship relationship will be part of workplace supervision. This is not always the case. In some firms or clinics, students are assigned a mentor and a supervisor – two different roles with unique characteristics. In most placements, students do not have a choice of supervisor or mentor.

As noted above, supervisors have legal duties to the client. Since students work under their supervisor’s license, students also owe legal duties to the client. The supervisor is responsible for students’ actions, which can add stress to the supervisory relationship. As one lawyer in another study stated, “[y]ou have to be very specific [about instructions] so that [students] understand not just what the deficiency is in terms of their performance but the impact on the client which is very important and also the risk to my license” (Interview 17, Buhler & Smyth, 2025, Dalhousie Law Review, forthcoming).

In a law placement context, the supervisor is typically required to have some pedagogical as well as legal duties. They might include actively evaluating and grading students, giving informal feedback, formally instructing a student in class, marking up written submissions, or other duties. These duties vary significantly in different work environments. This “dual role” can create a dynamic tension between client and teaching priorities. As one clinic supervisor in the above study noted, 

“clinical supervision ..requires a set of skills that is largely teaching but not just teaching because it’s like there’s a mentorship element that goes beyond teaching. People might think they know what the job is like but the actual job is just different from that, broader than that [and law schools] might not appreciate how difficult balancing those two roles is” (Interview 2).

These responsibilities are further complicated by the fact that most supervisors have never received formal training on how to supervise. Indeed, some supervisors are themselves being supervised – sometimes well and sometimes poorly.