Why Not a Clinical Law School with Socially Relevant Legal Education?

This article examines the future direction of clinical legal education in India, where it can be positioned to promote socially relevant legal education so that the pervasive justice gap can be bridged. First, this article traces the development of Indian legal education in four phases, starting from colonial foundations to contemporary times in the globalized era. Second, this article analyses how clinical legal education has transformed the legal training in India from the perspective of pedagogical reforms, legal aid movements, as well as constitutional mandates. Then the article examines the effectiveness of the clinical legal education in India and how it has failed to address the legal needs of poor and marginalized communities in India. The article explores some institutional barriers such as limited faculty training, funding and inadequate policy support. This article also highlights the lack of meaningful integration of clinical legal education in mainstream legal academia. The article concludes by arguing that an urgent reform is needed so that transformative pedagogy can be employed to make clinical legal education rooted in systemic reform, reducing the justice gap, ethical lawyering and community engagement. This way, socially relevant lawyers can be produced by strengthening clinical legal education.