Aiding Clinical Education Abroad: What Can Be Gained and The Learning Curve on How to Do So Effectively

Abstract

The author advocates donor support for clinical education projects abroad and outlines the minimal requisites that she would have for such projects - direct experience with disadvantaged clients, faculty involvement, and sincerity and integrity of organizers. She cautions against funders and consultants pressing new clinics to fit American clinical models. She provides sample reporting questions that would require projects to reflect on goals sought and results achieved. She draws lessons for efforts to assist clinics abroad from critiques of the law and development movement (LDM), the last major international initiative in legal education reform; more recent efforts termed the New LDM; and studies of democracy assistance and rule-of-law projects, the rubrics under which many of today's current legal education initiatives have been funded.