Legal Clinic - Types of Activity

Types of Activity

The clinics may include variety of activity:

• Legal Aid Clinic is traditionally the most common type of Clinical education. Students under supervision of lectors provide pro bono legal aid to general public (usually to those, who can't otherwise afford it).

Lewis further distinguishes:

• Simulations – students can learn from a variety of simulations of what happens in legal practice. For example, moot courts are commonplace. They have traditionally formed part of law school activity and introduce students to the intricacies of advocacy, at least before appellate courts. More ambitiously, some use mock trials, sometimes with professional actors, to convey the difficulties of, for example, introducing evidence and establishing facts in what may be the rapidly changing environment of a first instance tribunal. Other simulations can range from
  • negotiation exercises—whereby opposing groups of students learning the art of negotiation, rather than trial court litigation, by being given realistic case files and asked to resolve them in as economic and fair manner as possible
  • client interviewing exercises
  • transaction exercises-between groups of students such as buying and selling property or with individual students in e.g. drafting a will
  • legal drafting and writing programmes

Although of exceptional value in teaching law, these simulations can lack the complexity of real client work, and the role play may not create the same demands that exist upon the legal practitioner.

• Placements – students can be sent out to work with practising lawyers for short periods to encounter real problems, clients, and courts. They are then expected to bring back their experience to the law school and reflect upon it, using it to inform the remainder of their time spent in academic establishment. They are particularly attractive to some law schools, because that they can be arranged at little cost. On the other hand, the student's experience can vary greatly, and it is especially difficult for teachers to monitor what has happened in order to make use of it, and provide effective feedback. It is difficult to assess the student's progress.

Many clinics combine all the before mentioned activities. For example, at the beginning of the clinical program the students are thoroughly taught some area of law that the general program may teach only briefly—for example immigration and asylum laws. Later they go through simulations to strengthen their practical knowledge. In the third part, they come to contact with real clients and solve legal issues (this can also be done via placements, for example in NGOs related to the area).