Institutionalizing a Social Justice Mission for Clinical Legal Education: Cross-National Currents from India and the United States Papers Presented at the UCLA/IALS Conference on Enriching Clinical Education 13 Clinical Law Review 2006-2007

13 Clinical L. Rev. 165 (2006-2007)
Institutionalizing a Social Justice Mission for Clinical Legal Education: Cross-National Currents from India and the United States

handle is hein.journals/clinic13 and id is 169 raw text is: INSTITUTIONALIZING A SOCIAL
JUSTICE MISSION FOR
CLINICAL LEGAL EDUCATION:
CROSS-NATIONAL CURRENTS FROM
INDIA AND THE UNITED STATES
FRANK S. BLOCH* AND M. R. K. PRASAD**
Clinical law teachers around the world have been debating the future
of a social justice mission for clinical legal education at the same time
that many clinical programs have increased their emphasis on profes-
sional skills training. This article examines a unique opportunity in
India today to merge these sometimes competing goals through a set
of four Practical Papers that the Bar Council of India has man-
dated for all Indian law schools. These papers require the teaching of
a variety of lawyering skills and a certain level of legal aid work,
which can serve to institutionalize social justice-based clinical legal
education in India. The article also traces certain influences the US
clinical movement has had on this development, including the fact
that the Law Commission of India recently endorsed the idea of in-
troducing a professional skills curriculum by drawing on the Ameri-
can Bar Association's MacCrate Report. It suggests that professional
values appropriate for Indian lawyers and the professional skills
needed to secure these values in India may be different from those set
out in the MacCrate Report, and offers some examples of current
clinical projects in India that demonstrate how the papers mandated
by the Bar Council can be used to instill in law students, and thus in
new lawyers, those fundamental values and skills needed to transform
the legal profession in India.
INTRODUCTION
Clinical legal education is in the midst of an exciting period of
growth and development, prompting clinicians around the world to
reflect on what clinical education's remarkable successes over the past
* Professor of Law, Vanderbilt University Law School (USA).
** Lecturer in Law, V. M. Salgaocar College of Law (India).
Portions of this article were drawn from M. R. K. Prasad's LL.M. thesis, Legal Education
in India: Role of Clinical Legal Education in Developing, Institutionalizing and Implement-
ing a Social Justice Mission in Law Schools, written during academic year 2004-05 while he
was a Vanderbilt-Fulbright Fellow in Clinical Legal Education at Vanderbilt Law School.
Frank S. Bloch served as his thesis advisor. The authors would like to thank Susan Brooks,
Ajay Pandey, and Sachindra Upadhyay for their thoughtful comments on an earlier draft
of this paper.

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