1 Karen Barton (karen.barton@strath.ac.uk ) is Senior Lecturer in Legal Practice at the Centre for Professional Legal Studies, University of Strathclyde Law School, Glasgow. Her primary background and training is in information management and teaching methodology. Clark D. Cunningham ( cdcunningham@gsu.edu) is the W. Lee Burge Professor of Law & Ethics at the Georgia State University College of Law, Atlanta; the Director of the Effective Lawyer-Client Communication Project; and the Director of the National Institute for Teaching Ethics and Professionalism. Gregory Todd Jones ( gtjones@gsu.edu ) is Director of Research & Editor-in-Chief of the CNCR Press at the Consortium on Negotiation and Conflict Resolution and Faculty Research Fellow & Adjunct Professor of Law at the Georgia State University College of Law, Atlanta, where he teaches law and statistics. In addition to a law degree, he has a Ph.D. and M.B.A. in Decision Sciences and an M.P.A. in Policy Analysis and Evaluation. Paul Maharg (paul.maharg@strath.ac.uk) is Professor of Law in the Glasgow Graduate School of Law and Co-Director of Professional Practice Courses. He holds a Ph.D. in literature, philosophy & aesthetics and a diploma in education as well as a law degree. Although she does not appear as a co-author, Dr. Jean S. Ker ( j.s.ker@dundee.ac.uk ), Director of the Clinical Skills Centre, Ninewells Hospital and Medical School, University of Dundee, Scotland, is a key research collaborator on this project. Another important member of the project team is Fiona Westwood, Senior Lecturer in Legal Practice at the Glasgow Graduate School of Law, who has more than 20 years of experience as a practicing solicitor and is a widely published expert on the management of professional service organizations. Also consulting on the project are Mike Graham, Director-Business Law at MacRoberts, a UK law firm, who is also Scotland’s representative to the International Client Counseling Competition, and Leo Martin, Co-Director of the Diploma in Legal Practice at the Glasgow Graduate School of Law and partner of the law firm of Sinclair McCormick & Giusti Martin. This project receives financial support from the Burge Endowment for Law & Ethics at Georgia State University, the Clark Foundation for Legal Education (Scotland) and the College of Law of England and Wales and has benefited from consultations with Scott Slorach and Gemma Shield from the College of Law. Earlier versions of this article were presented at the Learning in Law Initiative (LILI) Conference held at Warwick University in January 2005, sponsored by the UK Centre for Legal Education, and at the 6 th International Clinical Conference held at the UCLA Lake Arrowhead Conference Center in October 2005 and sponsored by the UCLA School of Law and the Institute for Advanced Legal Studies, University of London. DO WE VALUE WHAT CLIENTS THINK ABOUT THEIR LAWYERS? IF SO, WHY DON’T WE MEASURE IT? To appear in ____ Clinical Law Review (2006) Karen Barton, Clark D. Cunningham, Gregory Todd Jones & Paul Maharg 1 An international and interdisciplinary team from the Glasgow Graduate School of Law (GGSL) and the Dundee Medical School - in Scotland - and the Georgia State University College of Law (GSU) - in the U.S. - has undertaken an ambitious project to change the way lawyer-client communication skills are taught and assessed. Medical education in both the US and the UK has been transformed by a new methodology for assessing competence in patient communication: the use of intensively-trained lay persons who present standardized patient scenarios to medical candidates and then assess the candidates’ performance. GGSL is the site for a series of pilot projects testing whether a similar methodology using standardized clients (SCs) would be more valid, reliable and cost-effective than the current GGSL approach, which is widely used by many law schools, of having client roles played by students with assessment based on law teacher review of the interview videotape. These projects culminated in January 2006 with a graded interviewing exercise that GGSL students must pass in order eventually to be eligible for a law license. Over 250 GGSL students conducted this exercise with SCs, and the SC assessments were analyzed and compared with law teachers’ evaluations of the interview videotapes. The