The Student Law Office (SLO) at Northumbria University has recently incorporated a Policy Clinic (PC) into its existing, and well established, clinical legal education (CLE) programme. This innovative PC model was introduced in order to broaden the reach of the CLE programme, appealing to those students who want to focus on law reform and/or who are unsure about whether they wish to enter the legal profession. This teaching method aims to deepen a student’s understanding of the law as they learn not just about the legal framework but also how laws are actually made and influenced.

This article provides an authentic, student-centred account of how law students develop their commercial awareness on their journey to graduate employment. Drawing on data collected from a two year research study involving law students going through the graduate interview process, this article presents the first detailed empirical findings on how, when and why law students develop their commercial awareness. This data is important because law students have a wide range of available career options and commercial awareness is required across a range of graduate professions, including the legal sector. The findings of this study indicate that the law school played a part in developing law students’ commercial awareness but that its role was limited due to a lack of explicit guidance on what commercial awareness meant and how teaching and learning activities supported development. Students identified development much more frequently and explicitly through their own independent developmental activities. As well as providing valuable insight into law student perceptions of the role of the law school and the law student in developing commercial awareness, this article makes recommendations for legal educators on how to support students in developing their commercial awareness.

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This article examines the role of clinical legal education in developing commercial awareness, a key employability skill. Using data collected from a mixed-methods research study involving a visual data collection tool (a diamond), this research contributes to understanding of whether, and how, clinical legal education develops law students’ commercial awareness. This study provides the first detailed empirical evidence of the importance of commercial awareness to those teaching and learning in clinic, the teaching activities that supervisors use and that students identify as developing commercial awareness, and the impact of those activities in a graduate recruitment context. This data is important because commercial awareness is required across a range of graduate sectors, including the legal profession, and law students have a variety of available career options. The results indicate that whilst students and supervisors deem commercial awareness very important, there are differences between the two groups in terms of their understanding of what it means, and the type of clinic activities identified as developing commercial awareness. The results suggest that there is a genuine, but yet not fully realised, opportunity for students to develop commercial awareness in clinic. As well as providing a unique insight into the role of clinical legal education in developing commercial awareness, the author makes recommendations for clinicians on how best to support students in developing their commercial awareness. Key words: Commercial Awareness, Clinical Legal Education, Graduate Employability; Diamond Ranking, Law Students

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