Adoption and Implementation of Clinical Legal Education Programmes in the Indonesian Legal Education System

Abstract

Legal education in Indonesia has followed a traditional model, focusing on the rote transfer of legal doctrine. Students are taught legal theories and sources of law but not how to critically apply the law in concrete real-world scenarios. Consequently, law graduates tend to be unprepared for the workforce, which is a regular complaint of employers. To overcome this impediment, some law faculties in Indonesia adopted clinical legal education (CLE) as a ‘new method’ in the legal education system, whereby students not just learn theory but also gain practical legal experience. This article analyses the adoption of the model and methods of applying CLE to legal education in Indonesia. This study uses the doctrinal research method with a qualitative approach. It is found that the adoption of CLE in Indonesia is diverse; some programmes include it in the core curriculum, while others make it an extracurricular activity. CLE programmes generally use three of six methods, namely street law, advocacy and internship. The differences in the three methods of CLE directly influence their success, exposing participants to interaction with live clients, public speaking and networking. This article recommends that in order to achieve the optimal implementation of CLE, uniformity of the CLE adoption model in Indonesia’s legal education curriculum is needed.