Promoting a Public Service Ethic in the Legal Profession in Kenya: The Imperative Role of Clinical Legal Education

2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-198
Author(s):  
Lynette Osiemo ◽  
Anton Kok
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Legal Profession ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Service Work ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Pro Bono

AbstractThe taskforce appointed in 2016 to undertake a review of the legal sector in Kenya highlighted a decline in public service and pro bono work as one of the challenges facing the legal profession in the country. In its report, the taskforce made several proposals to tackle the problem, all directed at qualified lawyers. This article seeks to contribute to the deliberations anticipated from the findings of the taskforce, by suggesting instead that the problem of a declining public service ethic be addressed by targeting law students. Bringing students face to face with real clients and their needs can play an important role in broadening their horizons and shaping their beliefs about, and attitudes towards, the different possible careers they can pursue with their education. The article specifically recommends clinical legal education as a practical and comprehensive means by which students can be encouraged from early on to have an interest in pro bono and public service work.

Role of Clinical Legal Education in Social Justice in Nigeria

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-98
Author(s):  
Olanike S. Adelakun-Odewale
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Education System ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Legal Profession ◽  
Law Students ◽  
The Public ◽  
Education Training ◽  
The Impact

Very few faculties of law in Nigerian universities that offer law programme have established law clinics that offer live-client services to the public as part of their legal education training. Across the border, clinical legal education is gaining more popularity by the day as a tool to imbibe the necessary skills in students to become sound legal practitioners. This article assesses the impact of law clinics on the skills of law students to enable them handle effectively the demands of the legal profession. The article analyses the correlation between law clinics that provide services to live clients and the skills acquired vis-à-vis the performance of student clinicians. The article recommends the need to integrate live-client law clinics into the mainstream legal education system in Nigeria.

scholarly journals Reclaiming the Role of Lawyers as Community Connectors

Daedalus ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 148 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-36
Author(s):  
David F. Levi ◽  
Dana Remus ◽  
Abigail Frisch
Keyword(s):  
Low Income ◽  
Legal Profession ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Innovative Solutions ◽  
Pro Bono ◽  
Do So ◽  
The Way ◽  
Justice Gap

With the prospect of nonlawyers stepping in to do low-fee legal work, how should the legal profession conceive of its relationship to that work and ensure that nonlawyers bolster rather than undermine the value that lawyers add to society? Lawyers should reclaim their role as connectors in their communities: interstitial figures with the knowledge, skill, and trust to help resolve disputes, move beyond stalemates, dispel tensions, and otherwise bring people and resources together in productive solutions. They should do so, at least in part, through pro bono work for poor and low-income clients. It would be a mistake to stand in the way of innovative solutions to the justice gap. But it would also be a mistake, and a deep loss, if lawyers–particularly those who do not normally represent poor and low-income clients– turned their backs on the poor and low-income segments of our society.

The First Decade of Namibian Law

1999 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-291
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Present State ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Legal Profession ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Concise Overview

AbstractThe article provides a concise overview of Namibian legal developments since the country became independent in 1990. It presents the constitutional framework of Namibian law, the principle of continued application of pre-independence rules, the history and future of the Roman-Dutch law inherited from South Africa, the role of customary law, and the present state of legal education and the legal profession in the country.

Much Obliged: Volunteering, Normative Activities, and Willingness to Serve on Juries

2015 ◽  
Vol 40 (02) ◽  
pp. 433-460 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc A. Musick ◽  
Mary R. Rose ◽  
Sarah Dury ◽  
Roger P. Rose
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
Service Work ◽  
Personal Resources ◽  
Voluntary Activity ◽  
The Public ◽  
Willingness To Serve ◽  
Jury Service ◽  
Jury Duty ◽  
Prosocial Attitudes

Although compulsory, many people treat jury duty as voluntary. This article examines the conceptual and empirical links between participating in voluntary activity and stated willingness to serve on a jury. We also consider the role of engaging in other normative behaviors. Analysis of 1,304 US citizens in the Survey of Texas Adults showed an initial relationship between volunteering and willingness to serve, net of personal resources, prior jury service, and prosocial attitudes. However, indicators of normative activities (voting, contacting elected officials, keeping up with medical appointments, and avoiding bars) largely eliminated this relationship. People who volunteered some, but not too much, were more willing; an analysis of domains of volunteering showed that engaging in public service work predicted willingness. Results suggest that the public service and duty‐based nature of jury participation should be emphasized to understand willingness to serve and to consider novel ways to increase summons responses.

scholarly journals LEGAL EDUCATION IN INDIA: PROBLEMS AND CHALLENGES

2012 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
B. C. Nirmal
Keyword(s):  
Education Reform ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Learning Needs ◽  
Legal Service ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Service Market ◽  
Education In India ◽  
Induced Changes

This article makes some observations about legal education in India by locating it within a wider context of legal education reform that is taking place in Law Schools across the world in the wake of globalizationled and globalization-induced changes in the nature and needs of legal profession. For being both intellectually challenging and professionally relevant, legal education should be more responsible than ever before to the legal needs of the community national as well as international , and the learning needs of students to become professionally competent to play their role in an increasingly transnationalized legal service market. Any effort to restructure and reorient legal education to attain these goals will be an uphill task for any school. This article begins with exploring the implications of globalization for legal education and then turns to nature, aims and objectives of legal education. The article then looks at the possible changes required to be made in the existing curriculum for undergraduate law students in order to make the legal education more relevant and meaningful for its consumers. The focus then shifts to issues concerning methods of teaching, clinical experience and assessment of students. This article then considers issues arising from the proposal of the Bar Council of India to reduce the period of Masters programme and then builds a strong case for strengthening a research tradition in Law Schools. The focus then shifts to measures that are necessary to attract and retain better faculty and also to the regulatory role of the Bar Council of India in the field of legal education. The article concludes with some reflections on the promise of a different vision of legal education.

scholarly journals A comparative study into legal education and graduate employability skills in law students through pro bono law clinics

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Francina Cantatore ◽  
David McQuoid-Mason ◽  
Valeska Geldres-Weiss ◽  
Juan Carlos Guajardo-Puga
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Employability Skills ◽  
Graduate Employability ◽  
Pro Bono

Minority Graduates from Michigan Law School: Differently Successful

2000 ◽  
Vol 25 (02) ◽  
pp. 521-526 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert L. Nelson ◽  
Monique R. Payne
Keyword(s):  
Affirmative Action ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Legal Profession ◽  
Law School ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Empirical Results ◽  
Admissions Policies ◽  
And Gender ◽  
White Graduates

Lempert, Chambers, and Adams (2000; hereafter LCA) make an important contribution to both the debate on affirmative action in legal education and the sociology of the legal profession. We find their empirical results credible and agree with their interpretations of the data related to arguments about the role of affirmative action in Michigan's admissions policies. Yet, in crafting an analysis to demonstrate the similarities in the career outcomes of minority and white graduates, they have minimized evidence that points to substantial continuing patterns of inequality by race and gender within the legal profession. Moreover, LCA only begin to illuminate the mechanisms that produce the career patterns they document. Of particular importance is the question of how race, class, and gender interact to shape lawyers' careers-a topic LCA largely reserve for future analyses.

scholarly journals The Status of Shari’ah in the Nigerian Legal Education: An Appraisal of the Role of Madaris

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ibrahim Abikan Abdulqadir ◽  
Hussein Ahmad Folorunsho
Keyword(s):  
Social Services ◽  
Basic Education ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Degree Programs ◽  
Admission Requirements ◽  
The Status ◽  
Level Of Training

The stiff competition between the English Common Law and the Shari'ah (Islamic Law) throughout the colonial administration in Nigeria to date, has created a gap between the need for expertise in Shari'ah in the nation’s social and judicio-legal environment and the level of training provided by the Nigerian legal education system. This article studies the gap and contends that the Shari'ah content of the curriculum of the institutions offering Common and Islamic Law in particular, is not sufficient to enable its graduates to suitably handle the legion of Islamic legal matters in all levels of courts and other social services in the country. The madaris (Islamic Basic Schools) that should provide basic education to the LL.B Shari'ah or LL.B Common and Islamic law students are disintegrated from the mainstream of the admission requirements for the undergraduate degree programs. It concludes that unless the string between the madÉris and the degree awarding institutions is connected, great disservice will continue to be done not only to the Islamic legal and judicial system but also to the cause of justice.

scholarly journals Measuring Law Students’ Attitudes Towards and Experiences of Clinical Legal Education at The University of Hong Kong

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-100
Author(s):  
Claudia Man-yiu Tam
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Educational Models ◽  
Public Interest Law ◽  
Passive Learning ◽  
Pro Bono ◽  
Students Attitudes ◽  
Survey Responses ◽  
The University

As law schools in Hong Kong begin to integrate experiential learning into their educational models, clinical legal education (CLE) has symbiotically gained traction as an effective way for students to apply their legal knowledge in a skills-based and client-centered environment. This empirical study is the first of its kind to evaluate the impacts of CLE at The University of Hong Kong (HKU) over the past ten years, by analyzing the survey responses provided by 125 law students regarding their attitudes towards and experiences of CLE. The article traces the birth and development of CLE at HKU, turning first to its theoretical basis to make the case for its importance, and placing emphasis on the ability of CLE’s teaching-service pedagogy to alleviate the public interest law deficit and supplement passive learning as an engaging instructional method in the Hong Kong context. The survey results are then discussed in light of the doctrinal analysis to illustrate that clinic and non-clinic students alike are generally satisfied that HKU’s CLE program has achieved its skills, cognitive, and civic aims, and notably, that clinic students had a statistically significant higher intention to participate in pro bono work after graduation than non-clinic students or students engaged in volunteering.         

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