Expanding and Sustaining Clinical Legal Education in Developing Countries: What We Can Learn From South Africa
FORDHAMINTERNATIONAL LAWJOURNAL
Fordham International Law Journal
Peggy Maisel
-
2006
Article 6
Copyright c 2006 by the authors. Fordham International Law Journal is produced by The
Berkeley Electronic Press (bepress). http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/ilj
Can Learn From South Africa
Peggy Maisel
This Article reviews the development of clinical education in South Africa and the valuable
lessons such an analysis provides for those seeking to promote clinical education elsewhere. This
Article reviews the obstacles faced in South Africa and the creative ways clinicians have attempted
to overcome them, some much more successful than others.
EXPANDING AND SUSTAINING CLINICAL
LEGAL EDUCATION IN DEVELOPING
COUNTRIES: WHAT WE CAN LEARN
FROM SOUTH AFRICA
Peggy Maisel*
INTRODUCTION
Spurred by desires to make the law school experience more
educational and relevant for students and to promote equal
justice and the rule of law, scholars have devoted considerable
attention and resources to creating or expanding clinical legal
education in developing countries in the last twenty years. 1 The
introduction of more skills training into the curriculum has
been related to this growth. One key country in which this type
of growth has occurred is South Africa, where both the number
and size of law school clinics have greatly expanded since the
country's first democratic elections in 1994.2 This movement
has been part of South Africa's broad-based transformation away
from the oppressive and segregated conditions under
apartheid.'
* Associate Professor and founding Director of the Clinical Program, Florida
International University College of Law.
1. See RichardJ. Wilson, TrainingforJustice: The Global Reach of ClinicalLegalEduca
tion, 22 PENN ST. INT'L L. REv. 421, 422 (2004); see also Peggy Maisel,
InternationalCross
Cultural Collaborationin ClinicalEducation: The Role of U.S. Cliniciansin Developing Coun
tries, http://www.law.ucla.edu/docs/maisel-peggy -- role-of.us clinicians.pdf (last
visited Dec. 27, 2006). This Article uses data on clinicians working abroad. See Roy T.
Stuckey, Compilation of ClinicalLaw Teachers with InternationalTeaching or ConsultingExpe
rience, http://www.law.sc.edu/clinic/docs/internationalsurvey2005.pdf (last visited
Dec. 27, 2006).
2. Law clinics now exist at each university in South Africa and, since apartheid,
have grown in size as discussed later in this Article. See generally Symposium, An Overview
of Civil Legal Services Delivery Models, 24 FORDHAM INT'L LJ. 225, 237 (2000).
3. The first democratically elected government in 1994 was faced with the
enormous task of transforming every State institution, each of which had been shaped by
apartheid. In the legal sphere, this required transformation of the courts, the criminal
justice system, the judiciary, the Legal Aid Board ("LAB"), the legal profession, and
legal education. In addition, new legislation needed to be enacted to both implement
provisions of the new Constitution, Act 109 of 1996, and remove laws which violate it.
In the twelve years since the end of apartheid in South Africa, the transformation of
legal education began with the significant change in the student demographics. At
historically white universities, there are now a majority or sizeable minority of black
students that better reflect the population demographics in South Africa. Further, the
Those who support the expansion of clinical legal
education in South Africa and elsewhere have sought to achieve up to
five different objectives, three related to improving legal
education for students and two related to providing assistance to
disadvantaged groups. Education is enhanced first by having the law
school experience better reflect the realities of the citizens
within a country, such as South Africa where a majority of the
people are economically disadvantaged.4 Thus, clinics instigate
the introduction of poverty and development law issues into a
curriculum that has traditionally ignored these subjects in favor
of those related to commercial and middle class interests.5
Second, the creation of clinics and clinical courses helps to promote
values important to the new order such as the need to provide
equal justice to even the most disadvantaged in society, not just
to those who, in the past, have been able to pay for legal services.
The third way clinics improve legal education is to provide
an opportunity for students to actually practice such lawyering
skills as interviewing, negotiating, and analyzing cases, and to
confront ethical issues that arise in real cases.6 These topics had
previously been absent from the traditional law school
curriculum in developing countries that overwhelmingly utilized either
a lecture and/or seminar discussion format to teach substantive
law.7 Thus, law students from those institutions used to graduate
government has mandated the merger of some universities to try to overcome the
legacy of inequality between historically black (...truncated)