Abstract
This article identifies two models now at work in the Netherlands, models that present potentially competing visions of practical training for law graduates seeking entry into the legal profession. The first is the Law Firm School, a new innovation in 2009, designed and funded by 14 major Amsterdam law firms, firms that make up part of what is often called Big Law. The Law Firm School model is embedded within the traditional apprenticeship training for all lawyers, but is available only to associates of the participating firms. The second model is clinical legal education, which ideally is offered as part of the course of study within the curriculum of formal legal education. The article presents four separate examples of clinical legal education now in operation in the Netherlands. These two models are examined within the broader context of public interest lawyering, a style of law practice common to the United States and almost non-existent in the domestic legal culture of the Netherlands outside of a broad program of legal aid. The further development of clinical legal education responds more fully, it is argued, to the call of public interest practice: the need for training of new lawyers for a legal profession that focuses on the values of justice, fairness and morality in everyday law practice.
Highlights
For the U.S public interest lawyer, there appears to be much to admire – to envy – in Dutch culture and in the Dutch legal system
Dutch government views on issues such as euthanasia, prisons, and the welfare state contribute to this vision; the Dutch legal aid system is to be envied for its broad coverage of the middle class and its relatively stable budget, assuring adequate payment to widely-participating legal aid lawyers
To borrow a phrase from the well-known MacCrate Report of the American Bar Association, published in 1992, all lawyers should be committed to the values of ‘promoting justice, fairness, and morality in one’s own daily practice,’ as well as enhancing ‘the capacity of law and legal institutions to do justice.’[1]. This article will begin with a brief and broad sketch, from an outsider’s perspective, of public interest law, as that term is understood in the United States
Summary
For the U.S public interest lawyer, there appears to be much to admire – to envy – in Dutch culture and in the Dutch legal system. While representatives were present from Latin America, Australia, Asia and Africa, not a single organization appeared from continental Europe; only England provided a report from the Society of Black Lawyers of England and Wales.[21] Another reason for the lack of domestic or local public interest law focus lies with legal education itself, as this article argues. One South African scholar, writing on the phenomenon of public interest law in that country, notes that the broadest definitions of public interest lawyering hearken not merely to court procedures, but to ‘a way of working with the law and an attitude towards the law.’[22] One organization devoted to the expansion of public interest lawyering in Central and Eastern Europe concludes that public interest law can be found in three central arenas: as access to justice, as law reform, and as political empowerment.[23] Where that cultural attitude is not cultivated as a formal aspect of legal training, as is largely true in the Netherlands, it is hard to inculcate later. Though, is that women have yet to ascend to the higher ranks of the judiciary in numbers[32] and that women are not generally numerous among partners in large, traditional law firms
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