Taking the Next Steps in the
Development of Irish Clinical
Legal Education
Lawrence Donnelly
Lecturer & Director of Clinical Legal Education
School of Law
National University of Ireland, Galway
larry.donnelly@nuigalway.ie
Irish Association of Law Teachers Annual Conference
Killiney, Co. Dublin – 17 November 2012
Clinical Legal Education: A Global
Phenomenon
 came to prominence in the mid-twentieth
century in the US
 rapid advances in last two decades – the
“global clinical movement”
 supported in developing countries by major
philanthropists
 widely regarded as the single most
important innovation in the pedagogy of
legal education in the last hundred years
 Western Europe: “the last holdout”
Defining Clinical Legal Education
 an oft-posed – and difficult to answer
succinctly – question
 skills training vis a vis clinical legal
education
 “live clinic” now regarded as the
touchstone, but clinical legal education can
encompass a number of different activities
 my own tri-partite definition of optimal Irish
clinical legal education
Legal Education in Ireland - Past
 emphasis on black letter law and
legal theory
 little diversity in means of assessing
students
 relatively small numbers of students,
most of whom entered the
professions
 practical skills training left largely to
the professional law schools
Legal Education in Ireland - Present
 significant expansion of number of students
(undergraduate and postgraduate), more
law schools, varied course offerings
(interdisciplinary, law + language, etc.)
 wide-ranging career paths for graduates
 pedagogical innovation
 but. . .a frightening vista (less
opportunities in professions, cash-strapped
third-level sector, Legal Services
(Regulation) Bill 2011, future of law
schools)
Clinical Legal Education in Ireland
(1)
 despite difficult context and uncertain
future, clinical legal education is
gathering momentum here
 two well-established programmes
 a number of burgeoning programmes
and exciting initiatives
 next steps?
Clinical Legal Education in Ireland
(2)
 Irish law schools late to the game,
but this presents opportunities
 pro-active involvement of the Public
Interest Law Alliance (PILA)
 need to ensure that Irish clinical legal
education mirrors global successes
 need for room to discuss and debate
how it should develop here
An Irish Clinical Legal Education
Association (ICLEA?)
 similar organisations exist in other
jurisdictions (e.g., CLEA in US, CLEO in UK,
ACCLE in Canada)
 to advance clinical legal education in
Ireland through different channels and by
different means
 roundtable meeting at UCC in October
 PILA-funded, first-ever conference on Irish
clinical legal education in April
 “ICLEA” needs you!
Why Prioritise Clinical Legal
Education Now?
 “It is the commitment to developing,
testing, adapting, comprehending, and
explaining a practical conception of justice
in action, teaching law students that the
privileged class of lawyers possess the
responsibility to facilitate a just society.
The law schools, the legal profession, and
the judiciary all need to be confronted by
models that continually examine what they
do in the light of standards of practical
justice.”
Bibliography
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Lawrence Donnelly, “Developing Irish Clinical Legal Education” in (Thomas Mohr
and Jennifer Schweppe, Eds.), Thirty Years of Irish Legal Scholarship 359 (Round
Hall, 2011).
Frank Bloch (Ed.), The Global Clinical Movement: Educating Lawyers for Social
Justice (Oxford University Press, 2010).
Lawrence Donnelly, “Clinical Legal Education in Ireland: Some Transatlantic
Musings,” 4 Phoenix Law Review 7 (2010).
Lawrence Donnelly and Marie-Luce Paris, “Legal Education in Ireland: A Paradigm
Shift to the Practical?,” 11 German Law Journal 1067 (2010).
Richard Wilson, “Western Europe: Last Holdout in the Worldwide Acceptance of
Clinical Legal Education,” 10 German Law Journal 823 (2009).
Lawrence Donnelly, “Irish Clinical Legal Education Ab Initio: Challenges and
Opportunities,” (2008/2009) 13 International Journal of Clinical Legal Education
56.
Richard Wilson, “Training for Justice: The Global Reach of Clinical Legal
Education,” 22 Penn. State International Law Review 421 (2004).
David Barnhizer, “The University Ideal and Clinical Legal Education,” 35 New York
Law School Law Review 87 (1990).