scholarly journals India’s Law School Legal Aid Clinics: The Gaps Between Aspiration and Practice

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 38-65
Author(s):  
K Rajashree ◽  
Sonika Bhardwaj
Keyword(s):  
Legal Education ◽  
Law School ◽  
Faculty Members ◽  
Legal Aid ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
The Us ◽  
Key Policy ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Teaching Learning

The law schools legal aid activities conducted through its clinics has come a long way in India especially since its inception in the early 1970’s. Its evolution has been gradual, intermittent and varied. Although The Bar Council of India (BCI) has mandated, establishing legal aid clinics as a pre-requisite for granting the necessary permissions before law schools start functioning, there are limited ideas of its purpose and objectives. An inherent lack of understanding its importance in terms of teaching, learning and research, the legal aid practices are largely left to the discretion of the individual law schools and interpretations of the individual faculty members. Combined with ideas heavily borrowed from the law schools in the US and individual experiences of the faculty members, legal aid practices in India are diversified. In the backdrop of this, the author intends to explore and map the aspiration of legal aid through an analysis of the key policy documents of legal education since India’s independence through an ontological framework. The ontology maps the aspirations of the legal aid clinics that was intended through these documents. Additionally, a case study of two important institutions have been taken as the case in point in order to verify whether the practices match such aspirations. Thereby, putting forth arguments that are critical for understanding the gaps between the aspiration and the state of reality. Key words: Legal aid Clinics, Law schools, Clinical, Legal education, Social justice

scholarly journals Responsible Solutions

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-245
Author(s):  
Jay Sterling Silver
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Task Force ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Economic Forces ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Conducting Research

At the end of Brian Tamanaha’s instant classic, Failing Law Schools, tracing the economic forces behind exorbitant law school tuition and graduate debt and unemployment, he lays out his plan to help resolve the crisis. He would eliminate tenure, dispense with the final year of law school, rely heavily on adjuncts and apprenticeships, and loosen the ABA accreditation standards mandating “one-size-fitsall” law schools to allow the marketplace to fashion more affordable models of legal education. Some schools would remain in the traditional, three-year mode, with faculty conducting research. Others would morph into, or spring up spontaneously as, the “law school parallel . . . of vocational colleges.” Very candidly, Tamanaha explained that the “two-year law schools . . . would be dumping grounds for the middle class and the poor . . . . Few children of the rich will end up in these law schools.” He calls the plan “‘differentiated’ legal education.” Others, including Paul Campos, founder of the Inside the Law School Scam web blog and author of Don’t Go To Law School (Unless), and the ABA Task Force (“Task Force”) on the Future of Legal Education, have endorsed Tamanaha’s prescription.

The Disastrous First Fund-Raising Campaign in Legal Education: The Harvard Law School Centennial, 1914–1920

2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 535-578
Author(s):  
Bruce A. Kimball
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fund Raising ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Students ◽  
New Venture ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
The Law ◽  
The University

Between 1915 and 1925, Harvard University conducted the first national public fund-raising campaign in higher education in the United States. At the same time, Harvard Law School attempted the first such effort in legal education. The law school organized its effort independently, in conjunction with its centennial in 1917. The university campaign succeeded magnificently by all accounts; the law school failed miserably. Though perfectly positioned for this new venture, Harvard Law School raised scarcely a quarter of its goal from merely 2 percent of its alumni. This essay presents the first account of this campaign and argues that its failure was rooted in longstanding cultural and professional objections that many of the school's alumni shared: law students and law schools neither need nor deserve benefactions, and such gifts worsen the overcrowding of the bar. Due to these objections, lethargy, apathy, and pessimism suffused the campaign. These factors weakened the leadership of the alumni association, the dean, and the president, leading to inept management, wasted time, and an unlikely strategy that was pursued ineffectively. All this doomed the campaign, particularly given the tragic interruptions of the dean's suicide and World War I, along with competition from the well-run campaigns for the University and for disaster relief due to the war.

scholarly journals Best Practices for the Law of the Horse: Teaching Cyberlaw and Illuminating Law Through Online Simulations

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ira Steven Nathenson
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Role Playing ◽  
School Curriculum ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Direct Response ◽  
Legal Doctrine ◽  
Online Simulations ◽  
The Law

In an influential 1996 article entitled Cyberspace and the Law of the Horse, Judge Frank Easterbrook mocked cyberlaw as a subject lacking in cohesion and therefore unworthy of inclusion in the law school curriculum. Responses to Easterbrook, most notably that of Lawrence Lessig in his 1999 article The Law of the Horse: What Cyberlaw Might Teach, have taken a theoretical approach. However, this Article — also appropriating the “Law of the Horse” moniker — concludes that Easterbrook’s challenge is primarily pedagogical, requiring a response keyed to whether cyberlaw ought to be taught in law schools. The Article concludes that despite Easterbrook’s concerns, cyberlaw presents a unique opportunity for legal educators to provide capstone learning experiences through role-playing simulations that unfold on the live Internet. In fact, cyberlaw is a subject particularly well-suited to learning through techniques that immerse students in the very technologies and networks that they are studying. In light of recommendations for educational reform contained in the recent studies Best Practices for Legal Education and the Carnegie Report, the Article examines the extent to which “Cybersimulations” are an ideal way for students to learn — in a holistic and immersive manner — legal doctrine, underlying theory, lawyering skills, and professional values. The Article further explains how the simulations were developed and provides guidance on how they can be created by others. The Article concludes with a direct response to Easterbrook, arguing that cyberlaw can indeed “illuminate” the entire law.

AALS Panel – Global Legal Education – Maximizing the Internationalization of U.S. Students’ Legal Education: Ideas for Making the Most of Your Resources

2004 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-334
Author(s):  
Jennifer D'arcy Maher
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Union Member ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
European Union Member State ◽  
Law School ◽  
Faculty Members ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Law Faculty ◽  
School Faculty

My colleagues on this panel address the need for more internationalization in U.S. law schools and describe some of the difficulties in internationalizing instruction at a law school in a new European Union member state. As they acknowledge, internationalizing legal education can be expensive, competing with other budgetary demands on U.S. law schools. My remarks today will suggest methods to maximize internationalization less expensively, by using existing programs or by setting up new ones more effectively. Although composed for an audience of U.S. law school faculty members and administrators, these remarks, with some adaptation, may be useful for law faculty outside the United States.

scholarly journals De-Secularizing Legal Education in Indonesian Non-Islamic Law School: Examining The �Intorduction to Jurisprudence� Textbooks on The �Norm Classification� Chapter

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fajri Matahati Muhammadin ◽  
Hanindito Danusatya
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Literature Study ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
The Law ◽  
Undergraduate Programs

The Indonesian legal system is not secular, but the legal education in non-Islamic universities are secular. This article will highlight the �Introduction to Jurisprudence� course (ITJ) at law undergraduate programs. More specifically, one chapter will be analyzed i.e. �Classification of Norms� because it is an early fundamental chapter in ITJ which shapes the jurisprudential reasoning of the law students. This article uses a literature study to observe the most used textbooks for the (ITJ) course in the top law schools in Indonesia. It will be found that the approached used by these textbooks are secular and incompatible with the Indonesian non-secular legal system. Islamization of knowledge is needed to �de-secularize� this �Classification of Norms� chapter.

scholarly journals Pericles Should Learn to Fix a Leaky Pipe – Why Trial Advocacy Should Become Part of the LLB Curriculum (Part 1)

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Willem Hendrik Gravett
Keyword(s):  
Professional Competence ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Law ◽  
Trial Advocacy ◽  
The University

It is a sad fact that at most university law schools in South Africa, a student can graduate without ever having set foot in a courtroom, and without ever having spoken to, or on behalf of, a person in need of advice or counsel. The past several years have witnessed a swelling chorus of complaints that the current LLB curriculum produces law graduates who were "out of their depth" in practice. My purpose is to make a case for the inclusion in the LLB curriculum of a course in trial advocacy. This endeavour of necessity invokes the broader debate over the educational objectives of a university law school – a debate memorably framed by William Twining as the two polar images of "Pericles and the plumber". My thesis is that the education of practising lawyers should be the primary mission of the university law school. The first part of this contribution is a response to those legal academics who hold that the role of the law school is to educate law students in the theories and substance of the law; that it is not to function as a trade school or a nursery school for legal practice. With reference to the development of legal education in the United States, I argue that the "education/training" dichotomy has been exposed as a red herring. This so-called antithesis is false, because it assumes that a vocational approach is necessarily incompatible with such values as free inquiry, intellectual rigour, independence of thought, and breadth of perspective. The modern American law school has shown that such so-called incompatibility is the product of intellectual snobbery and devoid of any substance. It is also often said that the raison d'être of a university legal education is to develop in the law student the ability "to think like a lawyer". However, what legal academics usually mean by "thinking like a lawyer" is the development of a limited subset of the skills that are of crucial importance in practising law: one fundamental cognitive skill – analysis – and one fundamental applied skill – legal research. We are not preparing our students for other, equally crucial lawyering tasks – negotiating, client counselling, witness interviewing and trial advocacy. Thinking like a lawyer is a much richer and more intricate process than merely collecting and manipulating doctrine. We cannot say that we are fulfilling our goal to teach students to "think like lawyers", because the complete lawyer "thinks" about doctrine and about trial strategy and about negotiation and about counselling. We cannot teach students to "think like lawyers" without simultaneously teaching them what lawyers do. An LLB curriculum that only produces graduates who can "think like lawyers" in the narrow sense ill-serves them, the profession and the public. If the profession is to improve the quality of the services it provides to the public, it is necessary for the law schools to recognise that their students must receive the skills needed to put into practice the knowledge and analytical abilities they learn in the substantive courses. We have an obligation to balance the LLB curriculum with courses in professional competence, including trial advocacy – courses that expose our students to what actually occurs in lawyer-client relationships and in courtrooms. The skills our law students would acquire in these courses are essential to graduating minimally-competent lawyers whom we can hand over to practice to complete their training. The university law school must help students form the habits and skills that will carry over to a lifetime of practice. Nothing could be more absurd than to neglect in education those practical matters that are necessary for a person's future calling.

scholarly journals Preparing for Service: A Template for 21st Century Legal Education

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J Madison
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Business Models ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
The Face ◽  
Individual Faculty Member ◽  
Multiple Challenges ◽  
The Individual

Legal educators today grapple with the changing dynamics of legal employment markets; the evolution of technologies and business models driving changes to the legal profession; and the economics of operating – and attending – a law school. Accrediting organizations and practitioners pressure law schools to prepare new lawyers both to be ready to practice and to be ready for an ever-fluid career path. From the standpoint of law schools in general and any one law school in particular, constraints and limitations surround us. Adaptation through innovation is the order of the day.How, when, and in what direction should innovation take place? Who should lead, guide, and participate? These are questions often asked in both legal education in particular and in higher education in general. Rarely are answers accompanied by specific examples, strategies, or programs. This paper offers precisely that specificity. It documents one institution’s process and output, beginning with the concept of innovation in the face of multiple challenges and proposing one set of concrete, actionable strategies, tactics, and programs. These range from school-wide interventions to ideas for use at the level of the individual faculty member and course.The purpose of making the paper available is to note merely that if innovation is a hill to be climbed, then it can be climbed. The process and results may be more valuable if they are shared with others, even if the particular route documented here is not the only one available and may not the best for all times and places.

The Legal Profession: The Training and Literature of Law

2019 ◽  
pp. 591-616
Author(s):  
Lawrence M. Friedman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Legal Profession ◽  
Law School ◽  
College Degree ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
The Law ◽  
Law Degree ◽  
College Or University

This chapter discusses changes in the legal profession in the second half of the nineteenth century, covering the rise of the law school, the literature of the law, and legal periodicals and casebooks. No state in the nineteenth century made a law degree, or a college degree, a prerequisite for admission to the bar. Many lawyers, however, even in the 1850s, did go to college, and more and more students who could afford it chose law school as well. Indeed, by 1900 it was quite clear that the law schools would come to dominate legal education. After the Civil War, an increasing number of law schools formed some sort of tie with a college or university. More than three-quarters of the schools open and running in the 1890s were of this type.

Reconciling Anthropology and Law

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-108
Author(s):  
Lawrence Rosen
Keyword(s):  
Legal Education ◽  
Law School ◽  
The Other ◽  
Insufficient Evidence ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Self Image ◽  
Advanced Study ◽  
The Law ◽  
The University

When I was thinking of going to law school, I went to speak with a law professor at the university where I had done my PhD. ‘Well, Mr. Rosen,’ he said, ‘the thing about law school is it will teach you how to think.’ I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop: think about law, think like a lawyer. No, he meant think – period. With all due humility, I was at that time coming from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, and should like to imagine that I had actually learned a few things while doing my doctorate at his own university. In the forty years since, while serving as an adjunct professor of law and visiting professor at several such institutions, I have also encountered the occasional law scholar who, in a moment of academic noblesse oblige, has regarded my anthropology credentials as quaint but insufficient evidence that one has the tough-minded capacity that flows from a legal education. The lawyers may pay some attention to a few other disciplines, but, even though they may have given in to the allure of economics and bolstered their intellectual self-image with the odd philosopher or historian, the question remains why the law schools still tend to regard anthropology as almost entirely irrelevant.

LL.M. Programs: The Frosting on the Cake of Legal Education?

2003 ◽  
Vol 4 (7) ◽  
pp. 735-746 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helmut Kohl
Keyword(s):  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Law School ◽  
Professional Organization ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Administrative Services ◽  
The Law ◽  
Almost All ◽  
University Degree

It is the primary task of Law Schools around the world to educate young promising adults who choose the responsible profession of a lawyer, be it in the role of an attorney, a lawyer in administrative services, in industry, or a judge. Apparently, in almost all countries, admission to these important professional roles is highly regulated, be it by law, be it by professional tradition or be it by a mixture of both of these factors. It generally requires a university degree and/or the successful passing of an examination administered by the State or a professional organization. For a law school, which feels any responsibility towards its students, legal education must first of all aim to equip them with the methodological, theoretical and practical knowledge, insights and basic skills necessary to fulfill the requirements for these degrees and exams, hoping at the same time that these requirements are those that enable the former students to properly, conscientiously and ethically perform their important roles in their respective national societies. Accordingly, the law of my home state requires that “the aim of legal education is the enlightened lawyer who thinks critically and acts rationally and is aware of his or her responsibility as a guardian of a free, democratic, social state, governed by the rule of law, and is able to recognize his or her obligation to further develop the law.”

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