Legal Clinic Activities

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.