What Clinical Legal Education Is
Chapter Forty-Nine
Syllabus topic 4, "Clinical Legal Education - Legal aid, Legal Literacy, Legal survey and Law reform"
Pages 174 to 176 of 543
In one line
Clinical legal education is teaching law by having the student do legal work under supervision, and the four things MU's label names are connected because the clinic is where a law student meets a poor client, teaches them their rights, finds out how the law is working, and produces the evidence that changes it.
In the wording a student can write in an exam: clinical legal education is the method of legal instruction in which a student, under the supervision of a teacher or a practising advocate, performs the tasks of a lawyer, whether for a real client in a legal aid clinic or on simulated facts, and reflects on the performance; the topic joins it to legal aid, legal literacy, legal survey and law reform because the clinic is at once a teaching institution, a delivery point for statutory legal services, a means of spreading legal awareness, and a source of the empirical material on which law reform depends.
Reading MU's label
The label is one topic with four things after a dash, and a candidate who treats them as four unrelated topics will write four disconnected answers.
The connection is the clinic itself. A law college legal aid clinic does all four: it teaches the student, it delivers legal aid, it runs legal literacy work in its area, and its records are a legal survey of what is happening to people in that area.
And the fourth follows from the third. A survey that shows a rule is not working is what a law reform proposal is built on. Chapter 740 closes that loop.
So the module has a shape: what the clinic is, chapters 460 to 520; the legal aid it delivers, 530 to 640; the literacy it spreads, 650 to 670; the survey it makes possible, 680 to 700; and the reform that follows, 710 to 750.
What the words mean
Clinical. Borrowed from medicine, and the borrowing is the argument. A doctor is not taught medicine only from books; they are taught in a clinic, on patients, under supervision. The claim is that law is a practising discipline in the same sense.
Legal education. Not legal aid. The clinic exists to teach; the service it renders is real, and it is also the means of instruction.
Under supervision. This is what separates a clinic from unqualified practice. A student is not an advocate, may not appear except as section 32 of the Advocates Act allows, and works under a supervising advocate or teacher.
And a vocabulary the rest of the module uses. A legal services clinic is the statutory institution recognised by the NALSA (Legal Services Clinics) Regulations 2011; a para-legal volunteer is a trained person who is not a lawyer and who staffs a clinic under those regulations; and a panel lawyer is an advocate on a legal services institution's panel, paid to conduct an aided case.
What Clinical Legal Education Is
The two claims clinical legal education makes
The educational claim. A student who has done the work can do the work, and a student who has only read about it cannot. Chapter 280 sets out the evidence for that as a teaching method.
The social claim. Legal services are scarce and law students are numerous, so a supervised student can deliver real help that would otherwise not exist.
They can conflict, and an honest answer says so. Teaching wants the student to make mistakes and learn from them; service wants the client not to be harmed. Every clinic in the world manages that tension by supervision, by taking work of a kind where the risk is contained, and by being honest with the client about who is doing the work.
What it is not
It is not an internship. An internship places a student in somebody else's office to observe and assist. A clinic is the college's own institution with the college's own supervision, and the college is responsible for the work.
It is not legal aid with students attached. The purpose is instruction, and a clinic that uses students as unpaid labour without teaching them is not a clinic.
It is not only a live client clinic. Simulation, street law and externship are all clinical, chapter 490.
And it is not optional in India. Papers 21 to 24 of Schedule II are compulsory clinical courses, and regulation 24 of the 2011 Regulations recognises the law college clinic as part of the national legal aid machinery.
A worked example
A woman comes to the legal aid clinic of a law college in Mumbai. Her husband has died and she cannot obtain the death certificate she needs to claim a bank balance.
The educational event. Two students take her facts under a supervising advocate. They discover that her problem is not legal at all in the first instance: it is administrative, and the route is an application to the municipal authority. They draft it, and they learn that most problems that arrive at a clinic are like this.
The service event. She gets the certificate and the money. Without the clinic she would have paid a tout or given up.
The literacy event. The students realise that nobody in her building knows the procedure, and they run a session on it. Chapter 670.
The survey event. The clinic's register now shows eleven similar cases in six months, which is a finding: the certificate procedure is failing a whole category of people in one area.
What Clinical Legal Education Is
And the reform event. That finding, written up, is a proposal to the authority or to a legal services authority. Chapter 740.
One client, four topics, in the order MU printed them. That is why the module is one label and not four.
Quick revision
Clinical legal education is instruction by supervised performance of lawyering tasks, on real clients or on simulated facts, followed by reflection.
MU's four items are connected by the clinic: it teaches, it delivers legal aid, it spreads legal literacy, its records are a legal survey, and the survey feeds law reform.
Vocabulary: legal services clinic; para-legal volunteer; panel lawyer; supervision, which is what separates a clinic from unqualified practice.
Two claims: the educational, that doing produces capacity; and the social, that supervised students can deliver help that would not otherwise exist. They conflict, and supervision is how the conflict is managed.
Not: an internship; legal aid with students attached; only a live client clinic; or optional, since Schedule II papers 21 to 24 are compulsory.
Test yourself
1. Define clinical legal education in exam wording. The method of legal instruction in which a student, under the supervision of a teacher or a practising advocate, performs the tasks of a lawyer, whether for a real client in a legal aid clinic or on simulated facts, and reflects on that performance.
2. Explain how the four items in MU's topic label are connected. Through the clinic. A law college legal aid clinic teaches the student, delivers statutory legal services, runs legal literacy work in its area, and produces records which are a legal survey of what is happening to people there; a survey showing that a rule is not working is what a law reform proposal is built on.
3. What tension does a live client clinic contain, and how is it managed? Teaching wants the student to make mistakes and learn from them, while service requires that the client not be harmed. It is managed by supervision, by taking work of a kind where the risk is contained, and by being honest with the client about who is doing the work.
4. Distinguish a clinic from an internship. An internship places the student in another person's office to observe and assist, and the office is responsible for the work. A clinic is the college's own institution, with the college's own supervision, and the college is responsible for the work done in it.
The rest of this subject
These notes are cut from the University's printed syllabus. Open the syllabus itself, or the past papers, for the same subject.