N. R. Madhava Menon: A Global Justice Educator’s Approach to Training Clinical Law Teachers

Abstract

This article describes one aspect of Dr N. R. Madhava Menon’s lifelong commitment to bringing ‘socially relevant legal education’ to India and around the world, whereby lawyers would be trained not just in the rules of law but also in the social and ethical responsibilities of lawyers to the society at large. Over the course of more than 25 years, the author collaborated with Dr Menon in training of law teachers in clinical methods and, in particular, in the incorporation of social justice into law school clinical and legal aid programs. A key element of their collaboration was the development of the concept of a clinical method for training clinical law teachers that could be used in training-of-trainers (TOT) workshops throughout the world, including those run by national, regional, and international clinical organizations. The result was a model for the training of clinical law teachers based on what the author and Dr Menon described elsewhere as three defining qualities of the global clinical movement: Its professional educational mission, its methodology, and its commitment to reforming legal education by reorienting it toward educating lawyers for social justice. The article concludes with a description of their model that emphasizes the setting for the training, preparing the trainee teachers for the training, the use of training by doing, and the importance of reflection and critique in the successful generalization of students’ clinical learning.