Introduction

Welcome to “Learning in Place: A Living Landscape of Practice” (4th ed). The name of this text is drawn from the book Learning in Landscapes of Practice: Boundaries, Identity, and Knowledgeability in Practice-Based Learning  by Etienne Wenger-Trayner, Mark Fenton-O’Creevy, Steven Hutchinson, Chris Kubiak and Beverly Wenger-Trayner (New York: Routledge, 2015). As they wrote,

“If the body of knowledge of a profession is a living landscape of practice, then our personal experience of learning can be thought of as a journey through this landscape.”

Lawyer’s personal experiences and embodied knowledge are always lenses through which law and client experience is interpreted and mediated. Lawyers as holistic human beings impact practice inside the firm, clinic, business, courtroom, tribunal, mediation, community meeting space, and the many other places they touch. Personal and community embodiment of practice is part of the practice landscape – one that changes over time and the changing seasons. Law students are typically exposed to a certain slice of that landscape in their doctrinal courses. They are exposed to a part of the landscape during a work-informed learning experience. This book focuses on a wide scope of practice, focusing on the novice lawyer’s personal relationship with that practice.

Initially written for students in externship, internship and co-op placements, this text has expanded to include clinic students and students-at-law. New lawyers – particularly those who did not take part in work-informed learning – will find parts of this text useful. The text is aimed at a Canadian audience, although some chapters are usable more widely.

Conceptually, this book brings together a wide array of resources – from more traditional texts to online and informal resources, art, and memes. The heart of this text lies in the written contributions from law students (many of them now lawyers). Each term, students from Windsor Law and the College of Law, University of Saskatchewan, submit reflections of their choosing to augment the text. Their insights contain many powerful messages to their future colleagues about what many seasoned lawyers take for granted – from the operation of law offices (why don’t lawyers eat?) to experiences of disclosing disability in the workplace. There are also chapters on specialized forms of placements meant to be read as supplements for students in judicial internship, clerkship or policy-focused placements.

The fourth edition adds reflections from another year of students who engaged in some form of applied learning during their time in law school. It also includes a new chapter on Supervision, supported by funding from the Law Foundation of Saskatchewan and the Canadian Bar Association.

Because this text is open source, it is updated frequently. The text can be exported and printed at any time. Students who choose to print the text should check back with the text regularly to ensure they are using the most recent version.

All errors remain the primary author’s.