The Growth of Legal Clinics in Europe – Faith and Hope, or Evidence and Hard Work?

Abstract

Clinical legal education is a quickly growing and developing concept. Even in countries with traditionally conservative approaches to legal education and within very traditional institutions, we can observe significant growth of legal clinics. Throughout the Western Europe, which was considered to be the last holdout in the worldwide acceptance of clinical legal education,many new legal clinics are being founded, changing the traditionally theoretical approach to legal education. Does it mean that the global environment of legal education is changing? What are the sources of this unprecedented spread of legal clinics? And what will be the consequences of this trend for legal education in a broader sense? I will endeavor to answer these questions mostly from the Czech and European perspective with a goal to bring some inspiration in a global context. In the end, I would like to share the surprising insights about clinical legal education I have gained at the conference dedicated to judicial independence and accountability.