Abstract
The law schools legal aid activities conducted through its clinics has come a long way in India especially since its inception in the early 1970’s. Its evolution has been gradual, intermittent and varied. Although The Bar Council of India (BCI) has mandated, establishing legal aid clinics as a pre-requisite for granting the necessary permissions before law schools start functioning, there are limited ideas of its purpose and objectives. An inherent lack of understanding its importance in terms of teaching, learning and research, the legal aid practices are largely left to the discretion of the individual law schools and interpretations of the individual faculty members. Combined with ideas heavily borrowed from the law schools in the US and individual experiences of the faculty members, legal aid practices in India are diversified. In the backdrop of this, the author intends to explore and map the aspiration of legal aid through an analysis of the key policy documents of legal education since India’s independence through an ontological framework. The ontology maps the aspirations of the legal aid clinics that was intended through these documents. Additionally, a case study of two important institutions have been taken as the case in point in order to verify whether the practices match such aspirations. Thereby, putting forth arguments that are critical for understanding the gaps between the aspiration and the state of reality.
 Key words: Legal aid Clinics, Law schools, Clinical, Legal education, Social justice
Highlights
The Preamble of the Indian Constitution, guides its law makers to formulate avenues, structures and mechanisms, to ensure a society that is inclusive of the masses
Reviewed Article achieving social justice. It was with this intention, the lawmakers introduced the concept of providing legal aid at the law schools through their clinics.[2]
The following summarizes the ground level realties of legal aid that are found through the present case study approach: [Legal Aid] at [Under Graduate] level through [Extra-Curricular] Activity by/ with [students/faculty]
Summary
The Preamble of the Indian Constitution, guides its law makers to formulate avenues, structures and mechanisms, to ensure a society that is inclusive of the masses. 8. Reviewed Article value education and advance the goals of justice through legal aid in law schools, there were not many documented references to the involvement of students in legal aid clinical activities, except for Benares Hindu University and Delhi University between the said duration. These patterns are in the form of a hierarchy chart that depict the aspirations that have unfolded through the key Reviewed Article documents This map (Figure 2) sets the context to verify, through the case study approach in Part-III, to understand if institutional practices match the state of aspiration. U1 ensures achievement in academic excellence, and fosters scholarship through research and collaborations
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