The Gothenburg Law Clinic and the use of Threshold Concepts in Clinical Legal Education

Abstract

In 2014, the Department of Law at the University of Gothenburg launched the Gothenburg Law Clinic, or Rättspraktiken, to offer students a way to gain increased practical experience through applied studies rooted in the tradition of clinical legal education (CLE). The core pedagogical element of CLE can be described as anchoring teaching in grassroots legal realities as a means of enhancing student reflection on the complex interplay between black-letter law and law in practice. In one of the courses offered at the clinic, the welfare law course, the CLE approach was combined with the use of threshold concepts (Meyer and Land 2003). In this article, we present these two pedagogical ideas, describe their implementation in curricula, and discuss potential developments based on students’ experiences. Our aim is to describe the ways in which using a CLE approach in combination with Meyer and Land’s notion of threshold concepts has enabled students to obtain advanced-level learning of welfare law.