Clinical Legal Education—A Robust Instrument for Attainment of Justice: An Indian Perspective

Abstract

Legal education is to serve the purpose of creating well-versed and proficient professionals who can render the best legal service to the people and help them get justice. Moreover, it is also to produce law-abiding and well-informed citizens who can carry out their duties in their professional life (irrespective of the nature of profession) for maintaining the rule of law. Along with a very strong foundation of substantive law, law students must also be oriented to the application of law during their undergraduate programme. This goal is to be realized through clinical legal education (CLE), which was introduced with an aim of combining the theory with practice. It also helps inculcate a sense of social justice in law students, as they closely see the application of law in a real life situation; they realize how law benefits people; they get closely connected to the society; they learn professional ethics; they develop problem solving approach; they get immeasurable satisfaction and confidence in the power of law; and more particularly, they comprehend that law is the real robust instrument to ensure and secure inclusive justice in the society. CLE, thus, makes the legal education all-inclusive and wholesome by making law students the agents of social change and champions of justice. This research article argues that CLE is indispensable for the attainment of inclusive justice. It also gauges the state of CLE in India from this perspective. Lastly, the article offers a few convincing suggestions which need to be incorporated in the legal education framework of India in order to ensure the higher goal of attainment of inclusive justice in India.