Introduction to Representing Clients is the first step in a continuum of experience that enables students to take responsibility for the delivery of legal services to real individuals and entities.

IRC is a simulation course designed by the clinical faculty to prepare students for client representation. IRC students practice interviewing, counseling and negotiation skills by representing one another in mock cases, learning the art of critique by observing and evaluating one another and their own videotaped performances.

The course does much more than train competent technicians; it also encourages students to explore the values that are explicit and implicit in the actions they take in the lawyer’s role, drawing on insights gleaned from self- and peer-critique and from the experience of being in role as client.

Students ordinarily take IRC in the semester preceding the clinical semester. However, with good cause, professors will authorize students to take IRC as a co-requisite.

Each semester, the law school offers three or four sections of the course, each of which is taught by a clinical professor or a practicing lawyer serving as an adjunct professor.