Intensive Interviewing and Role-Playing Skills for Criminal Defense Practice

• Semester: Spring 2020
• Course ID: 179P
• Credit Hours: 1
• Unique: 28660

Description

In this intensive short course, students will learn the basic building blocks of a competent bio-psychosocial history investigation, and its role in the accurate assessment of a client’s mental, emotional and medical condition.  They will receive substantial instruction and training in mental health techniques for establishing rapport and conducting interviews with psychiatrically, cognitively or emotionally compromised individuals.

This course aims to train students to identify subtle signs of cognitive, psychiatric or emotional impairment, build effective working rapport with such clients and witnesses, overcome barriers to disclosure of important sensitive life and family history information, and work collaboratively with mental health experts to build a complete, reliable and humanizing case for the client.  These are skills that mental health professionals are expected to develop through several years of education and experience; however, in a week-long intensive course we can familiarize law students with the challenges presented by investigating mental health issues and developing narratives in which mental or emotional impairment is an important part of the greater context of the case or the individual.  Heavy emphasis will be placed on the importance of working with a multidisciplinary and culturally diverse team, essential to providing competent representation to varying and diverse client populations.