Clinical Legal Education—A Bare Necessity in the Scientific Era

Abstract

This is an attempt by the authors to justify the necessity of clinical legal education with a humanistic approach in this scientific era so as to enhance human sensibility. As law is considered as the most flexible instrument of social order that not only influences, but also regulates almost all activities of human being, thus in order to provide social justice in true sense, there is a need for imparting value-based pragmatic legal education so as to make them competent enough to identify social problems in their future properly and to find solutions for eradicating social evils like corruption, injustice, nepotism and poverty etc. Legal education, like medical education, also needs to be imparted as a clinical method so as to cope with modern-day complexities of society. The objective of clinical legal education is to develop the perception, the attitudes, the responsibility and the skills to become a lawyer after completion of the course from law schools. Acquiring knowledge in non-clinical subjects like language, history, economics, political science, sociology, philosophy etc., would motivate a student of law to undertake the responsibility to face complicated problems and to analyze facts with the help of studies in literature, arts, science, economics, commerce and other relevant subjects. Clinical legal education not only requires students to take active part in the learning process, but also assume a degree of control over their own education and analyze law in real-life context.