The Building a Better Bar study found that mere knowledge of the Rules of Professional Conduct is not sufficient to prepare new lawyers for minimally competent and ethical practice: new lawyers often struggle to put the rules into practice (pp 32-34). New lawyers need experience identifying ethical issues in the context of fluid client problems, rather than in the static fact patterns offered on written exams. They also need practice responding to ethical lapses by supervisors, peers, and opposing counsel. For this reason, the study proposed that new lawyers need both knowledge about professional conduct and the skill of acting professionally with that knowledge.
One way to ensure that new lawyers have the skill of acting professionally is to require each aspiring lawyer to take at least one supervised clinical experience during law school. Cinical professors are adept at helping students identify ethical issues in practice, reflect on those issues, and address them. Clinical students gain experience identifying ethical challenges in their own work, as well as in the work of peers or opposing counsel. In the latter cases, clinics help them raise these issues in appropriate ways.
Externships and simulation courses may achieve some of the same goals, but they can be more limited than clinics. Simulations lack the realism of clinical courses and cannot duplicate the sense of responsibility for a client's welfare that clinics offer. Well supervised externships that offer opportunities to reflect on professional challenges can be as effective as clinics, but some externships lack that degree of supervision and chance for reflection.
Licensing systems that incorporate postgraduate supervised practice can also assess candidates for their ability to act professionally. Supervisors of these programs typically lack the time that clinical professors have to provide feedback, but "train the trainer" programs can help them do this effectively. Jurisdictions can also require candidates to submit journal entries reflecting on ethical challenges they have confronted in practice. Bar examiners can then assess those entries to determine both whether the candidate has sufficient knowledge of professional ethics and whether they have achieved the skill of acting professionally. An Oregon committee has proposed this approach (Rule 6.7) as part of their Supervised Practice Portfolio Examination pathway for licensing.