Enabling Law Beyond Law School

By Gatha GB and Rohit Sharma

The need for clinical education for law students was recognised early-on from the 1940s, and the focus remained largely on enhancing the professional capabilities of students through reforming legal education (1). The legal aid movement gained momentum in the 1970s and influenced this understanding  to also acknowledge that law schools are potential sites for transforming the access to justice landscape in the country through legal aid cells (report on Legal Aid through Law Schools). This vision, recognised by multiple expert committee reports (2), led to the first legal instrument to formalise law colleges-based legal aid clinics (LACs) in the country - the Legal Services Authorities Act of 1987. In the next two decades, there were numerous expert committee reports elaborating on the role of LACs (3), litigation (4) and formal legal instruments aimed at further concretising and institutionalising its function (5). 

To encourage universities to establish LACs, incentives in the form of National Assessment and Accreditation Council and National Education Policy were also provided. However, there has been little to no incentives created for students and faculty members. Additionally, insufficient funding, and minimal hand-holding for the work undertaken further hinder the effectiveness of the work undertaken by the LACs. There is also a narrow understanding of the scope of LACs, leading to a lack of collaboration with government and non-governmental organisations, or legal practitioners. 

Thus, these committees continue to fall short in both the letter and spirit of the vision they were meant to fulfil.

Cultivating student community to set up LACs: Our experiences

The onus to ensure functional LACs has been put on students by peddling a narrative that they are simply “not motivated enough” to engage in legal aid work, and instead focus on extracurricular activities such as mooting or pursuing corporate careers. 

However, a decade of our experience in having worked with law students in rights-based spaces taught us that while many students are willing to engage in justice work through LACs, they face institutional apathy and a lack of incentive for doing so. When combined with the decreasing number of people pursuing careers in the justice space and the limited visibility of those who do, the result is a handful of students engaged in this work. 

The potential and commitment of students to meaningfully contribute to the justice space is reflected through the work undertaken by student groups in various LACs (6), as well as through independent initiatives such as Increasing Diversity by Increasing Access to Legal Education, Parichay, Outlawed and so on. During the initial brainstorming for Pahal (our initiative which aims to celebrate the untold stories of folks who work in the law and justice space – students, young lawyers, and grassroots changemakers), there were a committed bunch of law students and young legal professionals from colleges across India (7) who recognized that the potential of LACs in their respective universities was not being fully realised despite students’ interest. These discussions and the success stories of the aforementioned organisations demonstrate the strength of student leadership in rights-focused work and legal aid activities. 

This journey has also re-iterated that sustained student involvement in legal aid work necessarily requires a community united by a common vision and enabled by systemic processes within the university. This can only come from an environment that prioritises justice work undertaken by students through tangible incentives such as granting academic credits and attendance exemption for field work, formal acknowledgement for grassroot work and celebration of such work within the college - just as much as they celebrate students who win moot courts or debate competitions.

In the last few months, the importance of such a supportive environment was evident when we assisted several team members of Pahal with their independent initiatives. Ishita Dutta, a final year law student (who, after gaining experiences with prominent organisations such as youth for climate, Haiyaa, Green Peace) is now building a climate justice organisation named Varta Varan, which focuses on building a community of climate-conscious legal professionals and informed citizens. Similarly, Sushant, a 2024 graduate and a person with visual impairment, is enquiring the question as to how more persons with disability can find representation in law schools and legal fraternity through the initiative Samavesh. In both initiatives, one of the key reasons these ideas have continued to flourish regardless of university involvement is consistent support from a community, including fellow law students and professionals.

Therefore, it is extremely important to build a vibrant community of law students and young legal professionals who are equipped with necessary support and resources through this community. We hope that such communities can push for fully functional LACs in colleges which do not have them or have them only on paper (which is the primary focus of our initiative). 

Additionally, it is equally important to bring all stakeholders together to ensure functional LACs. Pahal focuses on these important aspects and works through experiential learning programmes such as Justice Innovation 101. Through this program, we collaborate with colleges and their faculty to understand the condition of their LAC, meet interested students and faculty, and start a conversation with all stakeholders. 

Our journey and learnings from this programme are outlined below.

Starting a dialogue:

To the question of cultivating empathy and sensitivity to colleges where LAC or an allied rights-based group has never been constituted, our experience of the Justice Innovation 101 workshop (JI 101) conducted recently shows that a collaborative approach can bring college administration, faculty and students together for a dialogue. 

A photo from JI 101 field visit with Dean, faculty, students of UPSIFS Lucknow, Pahal team and villagers

Sensitising on grassroots issues:

The graph below (based on our JI 101 workshop) also shows that interactive pedagogical workshops with law students can deepen sensitivity to socio-legal issues in the society - for example, field visits in nearby villages open up space for deeper connections with grassroots issues.

 Graph 1: Before and After Justice Innovation 101: Level of sensitivity in law students on the topic of citizen’s issues (Total: 47)

While acknowledging the limited nature of self-reported data collected post-workshop, the shift in participants' perceived sensitivity towards citizens' issues is striking. Initially, only about 32% of participants considered themselves highly sensitised. However following the workshop, this figure dramatically surged to 90%, suggesting a significant increase in awareness as reported by the participants. 

A potential reason for this increase could also be attributed to first-time open discussions on gender, sexual orientation, caste dynamics within the classroom and in the field. Additionally, a lot of students who rarely get a chance to participate in regular classrooms had the opportunity to express their diverse points of view.  This inclusive environment allowed for the sharing of diverse perspectives on these themes, fostering enhanced peer-to-peer understanding of socio-economic issues and diverse identities.

Structure followed in JI 101workshops

Models for effective legal aid through LACs

From our interactions with many law students and colleges over time, we have observed that they often understand legal aid for the community as necessarily engaging in hard core litigation in court. This idea restricts many LACs and colleges from engaging in legal aid work since law students and faculty cannot appear in court. Any strategy to collaborate with practitioners seems to be beyond their imagination. Therefore, many LACs do not explore their potential because they pre-empt a legal problem which may not exist. 

However, this presumption maybe wrong. What a community’s primary legal need is or required method of resolution is could differ from community to community. For example: A community’s immediate need might be wage payment or blocks in the social security schemes which may be resolved with the help of the Right to Information Act, accessing administrative departments and processes and so on. Similarly, they could prefer mediation over litigation. All this work can be done by students within the confines of their universities. Therefore, the understanding of what constitutes legal aid should expand from its existing limited definitions and cover legal awareness, facilitation of government schemes, and many other basic legal challenges.

Identifying these needs would require an LAC to work with the community at the grassroots. In fact, the National Legal Services Authority (Legal Services Clinics) Regulations, 2011 has actually pioneered such an approach by directing law school clinics to adopt a village and undertake activities such as legal aid camps, surveys to identify legal problems faced by the community and exploring possible ways to resolve these concerns. It is also inspiring that the 2024 Report on legal aid cells (by the Supreme Court Centre for Research and Planning) highlights several LACs working with their respective villages on resolving disputes and legal issues across different thematic areas such as domestic violence, land disputes etc. They have even handled cases considered to be sensitive in nature such as sexual abuse against children, caste atrocities and so on. 

Field work with a community need not always mean that they need to travel to a rural, far-away place. It could also include working with the closest basti to one’s college, working with the migrant labourers in a construction site at or near college, figuring out Right to Education entitlements for children in/around the campus, working with the house-keeping staff of the college on labour or other issues and so on. It is time to think of law students as paralegals themselves in the access to justice sector. We can then work on building their capacities for the same with LAC as the institutional framework for supporting and overseeing such work. 

Designing thematic interventions

A guide on how LACs may conduct outreach programmes, along with separate thematic frameworks for outreach on various topics, ranging from social security issues to caste-based violence, are some tools which could be helpful, and we are currently working towards creating them. A student-led group can easily learn the laws on the get-go through the research repositories and subject-specific faculty at their disposal. The need of the hour is to have an understanding of how-to-do rather than what-to-do when students end up encountering legal issues. 

Another effective way for students to address legal challenges is by strengthening collaborations with local legal organisations and litigating lawyers in the area where the college is situated. The likelihood of college alumni continuing to litigate or engage in other work in the same location is high, and such collaborations can be formalised through the administrative channels of the university, creating lasting partnerships.

Further, the presence of a student community that embraces an ecosystem-approach to justice, and one which is grounded in compassion and collaboration, can act as a platform to share experiences, foster mutual growth, and deepen thematic understanding. At the same time, this community must promote an understanding of each individual’s role as part of a larger, interconnected landscape, identifying synergy between diverse stakeholders to collectively advance the vision of Article 39A of the Constitution of India.

Endnotes: 

(1) Report of the Legal Education Committee, Bombay Legal Education Committee (1949); 14th Report on Reforms of Judicial Administration, Law Commission of India (1958).

(2) Ibid; Margaret Martin Barry, Clinical Legal Education in the Law University: Goals and Challenges, 11 International Journal of Clinical Legal Education (2007); Expert Committee on Legal Aid (1973); Processual Justice to the People: Report of the Expert Committee on Legal Aid, Ministry of Law, Justice and Company Affairs, Government of India (1973); Equal Justice-Social Justice: Report of the Juridicare Committee, Ministry of Law, Justice and Company Affairs, Government of India (1977).

(3) Justice P. N. Bhagwati, Report of Committee for Implementing Legal Aid Schemes (1981); Frank Bloch and Ishar Iqbal, Legal Aid, Public Service and Clinical Legal Education: Future Directions from India and the United States, 12(1) Michigan Journal of International Law 92-120 (1990); 184th Report on Legal Education & Professional Training and Proposals for amendments to the Advocates Act, 1961 and the University Grants Commission Act, 1956, Law Commission of India (2002).

(4) Bar Council of India v. Bonnie FOI Law College (2017) 11 SCC 185.

(5) Bar Council of India, Resolution No. 04/1997; Legal Education Rules, 2008; National Legal Services Authority (Legal Services Clinics) Regulations, 2011; the National Legal Services Authority (Legal Services Clinics in Universities/ Colleges and Other Institutions) Scheme, 2013.

(6) Supra note 2.

(7) Representatives included current/previous legal aid members from Amity University Chhattisgarh, V. M. Salgaocar College Of Law, GLC Mumbai, NUJS Kolkata, JGLS, Sonepat, NLU Nagpur, NLU Odisha, Manipal Bangalore.

(Gatha and Rohit are lawyers and alumni of WBNUJS. During law school, both were actively involved with Increasing Diversity by Increasing Access (IDIA) and legal aid initiatives.

Gatha worked with the Centre for Social Justice for 5 years, where she worked on strengthening legal aid systems for marginalised communities, legal empowerment of lawyers & paralegals, field-based policy design, and community-rooted systemic reforms. She is now part of the Pahal team at Awaaz Leadership Labs.

Rohit is an experienced educator specialising in experiential learning. He has worked on issues of legal aid with migrant workers, domestic violence survivors, children, and law students. He currently teaches 'Justice Innovation 101' in collaboration with Awaaz Leadership Labs.

Views expressed by the authors in this blog are their own and do not represent the views of Justice Adda.)