Legal Clinics Program
Introduction
How to enhance the level of practical knowledge of law students and at the same time to use this knowledge for the society's needs? Legal clinics satisfy these two criteria and constitute the most efficient means of achieving the above mentioned goals.
In this study we will cover the following issues:
We also provide brief information on the activities of three most efficient and developed legal clinics in Ukraine as an example of the development of legal clinics in Ukraine.
The last chapter of this study will be devoted to the problems of establishment of legal clinics in Ukraine as well as of their financing. But first of all we will discuss what is "Legal clinic" and where the idea of its creation was first brought up.
Historical review
The idea of introduction at the law schools of the course that would allow students to practice the knowledge taught at the theoretical courses and at the same time to provide professional legal services to those people who are unable to pay for such services appeared about eighty years ago in the USA. This course was named legal clinics or pro bono. As time passed this course has become very popular not only among the universities, but also among the people. They began applying for legal services in different fields of the society's life. Now there are cases when cases, where students from the legal clinic represent one of the sides, are heard by the Court of Appeals. And theoretically such case may be heard by the Supreme Court of the United States. On the other hand, the legal clinics education has become popular among the students as well because it provides a lot of advantages in their educational process and increases their experience. Thus, nowadays there is virtually no law school in the USA that does not have a legal clinic. The idea of legal clinics education has later become popular throughout Europe. Universities compete in engaging the larger number of clients and better legal services provided, and the rate of establishment of legal clinics is very high. Within the Newly Independent States this process is slower than might be desired. And there are certain reasons for this. The problems of establishment of legal clinics in Ukraine will be analyzed later in this study.
The name of the legal clinic, definition, characteristics
First of all it is necessary to consider the problem of the name. It has been already pointed out that in the USA and other English speaking countries this course is called Legal clinics. In Europe this name was basically accepted as well. In the NIS this name has received its support over some period of time. Nevertheless, we should note that "legal clinic" is not the only possible variant of the name of this course. Thus, in Ukraine the following names are also widely used: "Legal help", "Pro bono" (which means "for the society's benefit"), "Legal practice", etc. The problem is that these organizations are directly connected with the people and therefore have to take account of the factor of people's reaction to this name. While in other countries this name is conventional and its meaning is clear for almost every one, it is not so in Ukraine. Firstly, the population does not always understand the purpose of the purpose of such institution and therefore is afraid that it is again some kind of fraud or swindling. Secondly, in our understanding the word "clinic" means the place where you get treatment. And although in front of the word "clinic" there is the word "legal" people still fail to understand its purpose. On the other hand, such a name completely corresponds to the essence of this phenomenon because, let say, the name "Legal practice" or "Pro bono" lead people to the totally different perception of the aim of the legal clinic - meaning something temporary and unprofessional.
Thus, before the new institution of this kind is created its founders should carefully consider the mentality and awareness of the region's population as well as conduct a lot of activities on explaining this phenomenon through the mass media. "Legal clinic" - is a conventional name in the whole world and we should follow it. But at the same time we would like to emphasize that a huge job must be done to get people accustomed to this name, including the activities through the mass media. The society should be prepared not only for understanding of the name "Legal clinic" but also to its purpose, methods of work and advantages it is giving to the society. Such a huge amount of work cannot always be handled by the clinics themselves, and therefore it should be done at the national level under the guidance and management of the student associations (for example, the Ukrainian Law Students Association (the ULSA)) and supported by different funds and public organizations (e.g. the International Renaissance Foundation and the ABA/CEELI plan to deliver a workshop on the legal education which the representatives from different universities will be invited to attend). In these matters the Informational Methodic Debate Center was actively involved, too. It supported dissemination of information on legal clinics in various regions of Ukraine, in regional centers and in the capital of Ukraine. The Debate center also had a number of meetings with the administration of different educational institutions, with the student associations, organized workshops and participated in conferences.
Thus, legal clinic - is a practical course at the law school which is aimed at enhancing the practical skills of law students through providing legal services to the people who need it but cannot afford to apply to the law firms due to the lack of funds.
It is clear that legal clinics have certain peculiar features that distinguish them from ordinary courses, form the common and well-known university practice (that was very much favored in the former USSR), as well as from charity non-profit organizations that provide legal services free of charge. First of all, legal clinic is a course, and thus requires the existence of such two components as the faculty and the students. Secondly, this course is introduced by the university that hires faculty members who practice law, and is officially incorporated into the university curriculum as a mandatory or optional course. Thirdly, legal clinic provides for rendering of legal services to people free of charge.
Thus, we can single out the following major characteristics of legal clinic:
The following skills are the practical skills the students will acquire after taking this course:
It is the legal clinic where the students acquire certain skills of legal practice and understanding of what people need and how their rights can be protected basing on the law. Their work is, as a rule, supervised by the faculty who have a significant experience practicing law; they assist students in acquiring a practical experience, back them up, help in making competent and professional impression upon the clients. These teachers are specially hired by the educational institution and get paid certain salary. Furthermore, the students attend workshops where they study the legislation and procedures necessary for working in the law firm and presenting the client in court; it is there that they discuss ethical and practical matters arising in the course of their work in the legal clinic. The students receive assignments to read legal literature, including the current legislation, which is then discussed at the workshops. Thus, the students take active part in the direct representation of the client in the court and learn a lot while doing it.
Depending upon the educational purposes and the specifics of the law school as well as other factors, some legal clinics prefer specializing in certain narrow areas of law, for example, family law, housing law, criminal, civil or ecological law, etc. This gives the students a possibility to get prepared to work in a certain field of law while studying at the law school. Some legal clinics employ the combination approach, when within the framework of the clinic there exist several directions of work and the student gets to chose the one he likes most. In fact, we should note that the directions of work are always prospective and contemporary and therefore the division of students is quite equal in different directions.
Legal clinics in Ukraine
The first legal clinic in Ukraine was created in Donetsk in 1996. Since that time this phenomenon has become very popular and at the moment when this study is written among law schools of Ukraine there are 19 legal clinics in the territory of Ukraine. Legal clinics cover all the regions of Ukraine.
The list of 19 legal clinics of Ukraine is contained in:
Legal clinics in Ukraine are developing with their certain peculiarities. They are founded by the law students' organizations, as a rule, without any help on the part of the administration of the educational institution, and exist in the own account or thanks to grants from different organizations. And it is only then that they receive an official assistance of the university and become an organization within it becoming over a certain period of time a curriculum course (like in Donetsk). Nowadays the majority of legal clinics, having some support from the university, do not have the status of the official course there. We should recognize a significant role of the ABA/CEELI, the Ukrainian Law Students Association (ULSA), the ARD/CHECCI.
The Rule of Law Consortium and the Informational Methodic Debate Center in promoting the development and creating of legal clinics in Ukraine. These organizations render financial, technical, technological, consultative and organizational assistance to all the legal clinics in Ukraine and assist establishing new legal clinics in other law schools. Thus, the ABA/CEELI supported creation of legal clinics in Donetsk, Berdyansk and Lviv. The Rule of Law Consortium supported legal clinics in Donetsk and Uzhgorod. The Debate Center together with the ABA has conducted a number of educational workshops and programs, including the Legal clinics and the Street Law programs at the ULSA Annual Congress. And these are only some examples of such their activities conducted by the aforesaid organizations.
Within the ULSA framework a large number of law students' organizations has been created within the high educational institutions of Ukraine. All of them are the members of the ULSA and many of them have created legal clinics. Thus, we can see that in Ukraine this process is happening not through the universities and their administration, but rather through the students' organizations that handle this matter by themselves. This has its own positive and negative sides.
Firstly, as the practice of the legal clinics in the world shows, that legal clinics may be most efficient if this course is supported by the university. As we have already mentioned, legal clinic - is an educational course incorporated into the university curriculum. In Ukraine we have a paradoxical situation: the law schools are not willing, at least most of them, to establish such a course, because it presumably requires significant financial, organizational expenses and it will take a lot of time. Therefore, the students' organizations have to create clinics by themselves, and if they prove its viability and settle all the problems of its organization, only then the administration can support the idea of legal clinical education. Sometimes situations occur when administration is just opposed to the creation of the legal clinic because it does not favor the idea and the philosophy of legal clinical education in general. But the universities are established for the effective teaching students their future profession, and thus, should be the first to implement new trends in their practice! Unfortunately, it is not done so.
Secondly, another problem arises that is tightly connected to the first one. As we know, the permanent supervision and assistance on the part of the supervisor of the legal clinic achieve the efficiency of the legal clinic. This condition is not always satisfied in the legal clinics in Ukraine. There are also a number of reasons and explanations to it. Among them, we can find a problem of salary for this job, the problem of professionals to work in clinic (practicing lawyers are not willing to do this because such job earns far less; this is so in Ukraine while in the USA it is considered prestigious to work as a professor at the law school!). And this is quite understandable, especially for Kyiv. While in other cities of Ukraine attorneys and solicitors receive about US$30 per hour, in Kyiv this rate increases to US$100-150 per hour. And thus, there is no sense for a practicing lawyer to work at the legal clinic.
Thirdly, for the productive and professional operation of the legal clinic there should be constant workshops held, which is again not always followed in the legal clinics in Ukraine due to the existence of the previous two reasons. Thus, these constitute the major problems of the legal clinical education in Ukraine. Nevertheless, some leading legal clinics observe all the requirements for the efficient work of the clinic and have achieved good results.
As to the positive sides of the Ukrainian approach, most important is the fact that students independently and quite successfully work, find financing for their clinics and their legal clinics continue to operate. This is in a way a "life school", but unfortunately, it is not the basic purpose of the legal clinic in its essence. In general it is worth mentioning that legal clinics in Ukraine develop very effectively and have all the chances for a success. The legal clinics engage more and more students to work, receive grants, their reps attend workshops and even start to draft methodic and methodological instructions on organization and operation of legal clinics in Ukraine (e.g. Donetsk legal clinic staff). The need for the legal clinics in Ukraine is enormous. Today the majority of people in our state is poor and often requires legal assistance, which they obviously cannot get due to the lack of money. And legal clinics as professional organizations can provide such assistance and help in completing all the necessary things. On the other hand, students and faculties are interested in legal clinics for it is legal clinics that provide a real opportunity to acquire practical knowledge, which ordinary students cannot always acquire while studying the theoretical courses. But after the graduation and when getting hired the graduates are required to have practical knowledge and skills and sometimes some work experience that they usually do not have. Legal clinics provide all this stuff. Moreover, the professors and the administration usually understand that by creating a legal clinic they start to train future assistants for them and in future these students will replace them at work, and therefore in many national universities the idea of legal clinical education has gained a strong support on the part of the university's administration. An important role in making legal clinics in Ukraine work efficiently and in persuading the administration of universities that legal clinics are necessary played such organizations as the ABA/CEELI, the Information Methodic Debate Center, the Rule of Law Consortium etc.
Furthermore, legal clinics are a great success and very popular in Donetsk, Lviv and Uzhgorod. And the interest of people in legal clinics does not emerge by itself. It is a consequence of a planned activities and advertisement of them. Thus, for instance, in Lviv advertisement of legal clinics is done in mass media and often companies publish the same kind of advertisements free of charge in the newspapers, magazines, broadcast it on radio, etc. In Donetsk the courts often advise visitors to consult legal clinics on their problems. We can single out the following groups of people that receive legal services provided by legal clinics:
Financing of legal clinics in Ukraine
Taking account of that fact that universities are not willing to participate in creating such courses the problem of supporting the student initiative arises. Student organizations require financial support to establish an office for a legal clinic, to purchase equipment, mounting legal data bases, installing Internet, as well as to cover office expenses and (if possible) to pay salaries or at least consultations to the supervisor(s) of legal clinics, who should be lawyers with a significant experience in practicing law.
In Ukraine there exists practice of receiving grants from various organizations (see above), and such cooperation must develop.
Certainly, a clear mechanism of receiving grants for legal clinics must be elaborated, and it should be disseminated in all the law schools of Ukraine. At the present moment there is a custom that a grant can be received by a legal clinic that exists for a certain period of time and has been success. Such an approach seems to be quite reasonable but it should not be an absolute because sometimes it is difficult for a legal clinic to prove its efficiency without certain funds and minimum amount of equipment. Thus, it should be possible that a grant can be given for the creation of a legal clinic, perhaps, if guaranteed by the administration of the law school (if it is possible at all) or by other organization or on the basis of the contract of hire.
Organizations financing this field should pay attention to the other ways of support for legal clinics in Ukraine, and in particular should spend their funds on the following activities:
Organization and the structure of legal clinics
When founding a legal clinic law schools should decide such questions as: its place within the law school's structure; who will manage it; what is its structure; students of what year of study will work in it; requirements to the its management; the matters of recognizing of the work and studying at the legal clinic as a course and including it into the diploma. For the legal clinic it is necessary to create good relations and links with the community, courts and bar associations (see above).
On the other hand organizations financing legal clinics should require satisfying certain criteria, such as:
The Legal Clinics Program is being realized in Ukraine by the Information Methodic Debate Center thanks to financial support of the International Renaissance Foundation and the Constitutional and Legal Policy Institute (COLPI)
Go to the common information about the Information Methodic Debate Center
The page was created by the YIEC "Nadija"
