By Megan Koerber
The New Hampshire Bar Association is exploring the addition of an experiential learning track to its required Practical Skills CLE course, aiming to better prepare new attorneys for the realities of practice.
A national report released in July 2025 by the Committee on Legal Education and Admissions Reform (CLEAR) calls on state supreme courts to place greater emphasis on practice readiness. As part of its eight recommendations, the CLEAR report specifically encourages expanding experiential learning, including opportunities that involve real client responsibilities.
New Hampshire’s Daniel Webster Scholar Honors Program (DWS) at the University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law was cited repeatedly in the CLEAR report for its exemplary innovation.
“The DWS program stands as a model of how you produce practice-ready lawyers,” says New Hampshire Supreme Court Chief Justice Gordon MacDonald. “It would be great to expand it, but there are limits on the law school’s ability to do so. One area we should look at is CLEs for new lawyers focused on experiential learning.”
NHBA Executive Director Sarah Blodgett says her own early experience with hands-on training underscores the value of this approach.
“I had the luxury of starting my legal career with a five-week training program led by Richard Guerriero, then Litigation Director at the New Hampshire Public Defender,” she says. “Richard guided us through everything from interviewing clients to mock closing arguments. After each exercise, we received feedback from some of the best trial attorneys in the state. I would like to see the NHBA create similar opportunities for new attorneys. The new experiential learning track at Practical Skills is our first step in this direction.”
NHBA leadership is exploring how experiential learning components could complement the course’s existing format. The Practical Skills course is required for active status attorneys within the first two years after admission to the New Hampshire Bar.
As part of that effort, the NHBA is already piloting an experiential component within the Practical Skills course.
“In response to the CLEAR report’s emphasis on practice readiness, we’re excited to offer this breakout session and grateful to Cathy Shanelaris and Sara Crisp for leading it,” says NHBA Director of Professional Development Vince O’Brien. “Their hands-on, scenario-based approach – using a fact pattern, core documents, and live advocacy exercises – will give newer lawyers a practical opportunity to build skills for temporary hearings.”
As noted in the CLEAR report, practicing lawyers routinely report that this form of learning is critical to their professional development and readiness to practice.
“We’re trying to think of ways to include more active participatory learning as opposed to simply being talked at,” says NHBA President-Elect Robert Lucic. “We already have a program where every new lawyer has to participate, so the question becomes, ‘how do we modify it to really help people become practice-ready?’”
The shift reflects a broader effort to strengthen practice readiness among new attorneys.
“Now you’ve got a set of tools that you’ve actually practiced with,” Lucic says. “You know how to deal with those situations because you’ve seen them play out and worked through them. The situation of how do you deal with a client that is problematic? How do you deal with a client that is not paying their bill? Or that has a complaint against you? These are the dilemmas you are inevitably going to face as you enter the practice of law.”
Experiential learning models usually include a structured reflection component, allowing participants to consider what worked, what didn’t, and how they might approach a similar situation differently in the future. Lucic notes that learning from mistakes can be especially powerful.
“Sometimes you go through an exercise and if it went well, you actually learn less than if it went badly,” he says. “You’re going to learn from that failure.”
Lucic emphasizes that although learning from failure can be difficult and requires humility, it also offers one of the most valuable opportunities for growth. And it isn’t something that can be taught in a lecture hall or classroom.
“Our ultimate goal,” Lucic says, “is for us all to become a counselor – a trusted advisor – not just somebody who can write a brief or draft a contract.”
Discussions about adding experiential learning to the Practical Skills CLE course are ongoing. However, the CLEAR report has provided an important framework for thinking about how training for new attorneys can evolve, and how bridging the gap from law school to Bar admission to being practice-ready in New Hampshire may increasingly be shaped by hands-on, experience-based learning.