Expanding and Sustaining Clinical Legal Education in Developing Countries: What We Can Learn From South Africa

Fordham International Law Journal, Dec 2006

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.

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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)


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Peggy Maisel. Expanding and Sustaining Clinical Legal Education in Developing Countries: What We Can Learn From South Africa, Fordham International Law Journal, 2006, Volume 30, Issue 2,