Legal Clinic

In pursuit of promoting community partnership, providing legal advisory services to society, and putting in practice the academic knowledge delivered by the BA and MA programmes in law, the Faculty of Law and Public Administration at Birzeit University (BZU) created the Legal Clinic. In reference of Article 49(b) of the University Statute, the Legal Clinic was established by a decision made by the BZU President on 10 May 2022. Accordingly, the Legal Clinic is tasked to apply clinical legal education programmes, improve students’ personal and professional skills, and provide legal aid to vulnerable groups. To this end, the Legal Clinic operates in cooperation with human rights institutions as well as with relevant BZU programmes and units.

Currently, the Legal Clinic is implementing a project funded by Sawasya II of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to support institutionalisation and ensure sustainable functions of the clinic. Starting on 1 April 2022, the project activities are scheduled to run until 31 March 2023. The project supports the constituent goals and activities of the Legal Clinic and engages students in themes initiated jointly with partners.

The Legal Clinic of the BZU Faculty of Law and Public Administration seeks to promote its role in debating real-life community issues by providing student contributions in key areas. These have a focus on legal cases of the university community and community needs of vulnerable groups, including women and child’s rights. This pursuit is in tandem with the BZU attention to the continued support of Palestinian society with students with distinctive knowledge and skills. This background helps students to engage in, and fulfil, society needs in different aspects along the lines of BZU values and identity, which uphold the principles of freedoms, equality, pluralism, and social justice.

A Palestinian society that consolidates the values of freedom, equality and dignity and is grounded in the principles of social justice. The BZU community from across spectrum plays a key role in realising these values by engaging students in cases and initiatives based on the effective promotion of human rights and rule of law.

The Legal Clinic of the BZU Faculty of Law and Public Administration aims at achieving the following objectives:

1. Integrate students in real-life community issues, ensuring the graduation of students who are more capable of engaging and interacting with community issues on grounds of the principles of human rights and social justice.

2. Provide legal contributions to vulnerable social groups, enabling access to services and justice.

3. Enhance legal education and culture of the rule of law through BZU academic staff interaction with real community issues. While interaction is reflected in the academic process on campus, critical contributions are made, upholding common values and promoting the rule of law.

To achieve these objectives, the Legal Clinic puts in place working mechanisms and strategies, which engage graduate and postgraduate students in relevant activities. Additionally, the Faculty of Law and Public Administration has offered the Legal Clinic course, starting in the academic year 2021/2022. In this course, students carry out the Legal Clinic activities and goals, either directly or through community institutions whose work intersects with that of the Legal Clinic

Presently, activities of the Legal Clinic cover two main areas:

1. Institutionalising and sustaining the Legal Clinic

After it was established by a decision of the BZU University President, the Legal Clinic of the Faculty of Law and Public Administration has implemented a set of activities aimed for institutionalisation and sustainability. Of these, the Legal Clinic Regulation has been developed with a view to governing the working relationship between the Legal Clinic and the Faculty units and sections, BZU components, community institutions with crosscutting functions, and government bodies with similar operations. To do so, the Legal Clinic is developing working mechanisms with various agencies both within the faculty and on campus. Memorandums of understanding (MoUs) are also concluded with external bodies. These mechanisms and MoUs lay the foundation for the Legal Clinics’ work and serve as an umbrella for implementing activities and achieving goals on a sustainable basis.

The Legal Clinic is developing an in-house electronic system to monitor activities and document cases. By this system, the Legal Clinic aims to computerise and archive cases. These can be classified, categorised, and retrieved to feed into the reports on, and statistics of, activities at various levels. The e-system will also be used to develop and follow up on student initiatives,

which are run by the Legal Clinic in partnership with BZU units and community institutions with similar activities.

2. Legal Clinic activities

Activities of the Legal Clinic are carried out on three levels. Frist, individual cases to be addressed are identified. These are later documented in line with the mechanisms and forms adopted by the faculty. Second, initiatives are launched by students based on the individual cases which are documented at the Legal Clinic. Third, other disciplines intersecting with law are integraed, taking into account the nature of cases handled by students at the Legal Clinic.

In the first phase, emphasis is placed on the cases of women, children, and right to education. Serving as a nucleus to be built on in the future, cases will tackle other legal and community issues. Activities will also rely on grassroots institutions and legal organisations with particular specialisations or with a general interest in the rule of law