Learning to Fly Solo

The Health Advocacy Clinic offers a new experience every day. I’ve been working with a client since I’ve been at the clinic. I was there for the initial interview. I’ve requested medical records on the client’s behalf. I’ve charted most of the client’s medical records. I’ve even had the client stop in a few times to sign releases or answer a few questions. However, all of these experiences have been shared with the clinic’s legal team. Even though I’ve been a student in the clinic for a while, I had yet to meet with a client on my own. The clinic is set up so we students don’t typically see clients solo, but given the busy nature of the clinic on one particular Friday, I met with client by myself.

Going back to my second day at the clinic, and prior to meeting this client for first time, I had been told generally how this client handles meetings, along with some specific anecdotes. The tales weren’t the greatest. Being my second day, I was curious as to how the intake interview would go. As I was frantically scribbling notes while the HAC director conducted the interview, I was feeling more pressure to write down as much as I could instead of worrying about how the client would react. Some questions were asked that brought out certain emotions from the client. When a question made the client become sad, I didn’t think about it as it unfolded. The interview progressed smoothly. I didn’t have to think about any preconceived notions I had of the client. As far as gaining practical experience at the clinic, this interview was all I wanted because it gave me a chance to be a part of interviewing a real-life client with a real-life legal problem, an experience not gained through typical law school courses.

Fast forwarding through my time at the HAC, I had met with the client sporadically for the aforementioned reasons: signing releases, asking questions, etc. None of these subsequent meetings took longer than ten minutes (and the one that was ten minutes was only because I couldn’t get the copier to work). When I learned I had a meeting with this client that could take multiple hours, I was worried. Even in some of these short meetings, I didn’t sense patience was the client’s most notable virtue, and that’s not to mention the tedious nature of the task in front of us (filling out paperwork).

Combining the length of the meeting with the thought of having to fly solo for the first time in a client meeting at the HAC was a little daunting. I was anxious to begin. The day of that meeting I didn’t have much time to prepare and didn’t really want to either. I just wanted to get the interview started. And so, we did. It went well. No problems arose during the two-and-a-half-hour meeting. The best part of it was, though just one meeting, that it felt like what I had learned at the clinic and in law school came together. I had to: ask the forms’ questions; ask my own questions to get at the heart of what the form was asking; write the client’s answers as the client stated them; and more. It was a fantastic clinic experience. Despite my tentativeness, everything was copacetic. Even though I had known the client for a while, I was concerned that such a long meeting would wear us both out given what I had otherwise heard.

Overall, the clinic afforded me a great learning opportunity in the form of this meeting. It was just one meeting, and I’m sure it wasn’t perfect, but it was the exact type of experience I was hoping to have at the clinic. This type of practical experience is something that typical classes don’t provide, and it makes participating in a clinical experience worth it.