NASHVILLE, Tenn. ñA new Fulbright program just announced by Vanderbilt University Law School will provide future law teachers from India the opportunity to study various approaches to clinical legal education in the United States.
One Indian law graduate each year will be selected to participate in the master’s of law (LL.M.) program at Vanderbilt under the new Fulbright-Vanderbilt Fellowship in Clinical Legal Education. Program participants will have an express ambition of becoming a clinical law teacher in India and will have two or three years’ experience in an organization that provides legal aid to the poor.
"India has been trying to figure out how to get its law students more practical experience," said Jane Schukoske, a 1977 Vanderbilt Law School graduate and executive director of the U.S. Educational Foundation in India (USEFI), Vanderbilt’s partner in the new program. "Legal education in India has been theoretical. But there is a nascent clinical legal education movement that is bringing about significant change in India."
At Vanderbilt, as at many U.S. law schools, clinical legal education involves three components, which together both teach students the valuable skills they need to represent clients and provide them the opportunity to reflect on the interplay of legal doctrine and practice, said Susan L. Kay, associate dean for clinical affairs and clinical professor of law. "The centerpiece of Vanderbilt’s clinical legal education program is an in-house live-client clinic, where students and faculty act as co-counsel for clients in need of legal aid. Vanderbilt also has an externship program, in which students work for judges or in a public-interest law office, for instance, and a simulation program, in which students learn through mock litigation."
The yearly fellowships are funded by the Fulbright Program and administered by USEFI. Vanderbilt is the first U.S. institute with which USEFI has joined for such an initiative. The program is funded for three years and may be renewed after that.
"For the past two years, we have worked toward establishing a Fulbright program that would fund the education of an Indian lawyer in our master’ of laws program for international students," said Kent Syverud, dean and Garner Anthony Professor of Law. "Frank Bloch and Sue Kay have been successful in getting this program approved and underway. This will be a valuable contribution to the school’s LL.M. program and to the clinical education program, and it will most certainly benefit the legal education system in India when these students return to India as professors starting clinical programs in law schools there."
Selection process is currently underway for the program’s first participant. Approval will be complete by the spring of 2004, and the student will begin the academic year at Vanderbilt in the fall of 2004.Under the LL.M., program, the student will devote some of his or her course work and all of his or her thesis to clinical education issues.
Schukoske explained that, unlike in the United States, neither full-time law faculty nor law students in India can practice law in the Indian courts. For that reason, the clinical work that is being done in India is strictly out-of-court work, often students working in "lok adalats," or dispute resolution venues. Indian law schools may bring in a practicing attorney to lecture students about the practical realities of law practice; however, they have little opportunity to benefit from the clinical methodology that has been developed in American law schools over the last 25 years.
"The Fulbright Program at Vanderbilt will raise awareness of clinical legal education in India. This and other programs like this will provide a clinical outlet to India," Schukoske said.
Although this program sends just one Indian lawyer per year to the United States, the existence of the fellowship will fuel the clinical education movement in India, she explained. "It will train others to think about the skills that could be learned so that either individuals or law schools will send more people to the United States to gather these skills.
"When the program participants return to India, they may become clinical law teachers or they may implement what they learned in another way, perhaps by starting some other programs that promote community-based education for law students," Schukoske added.
The connection between Vanderbilt Law School and India is well established. Bloch, professor of law and former director of Vanderbilt’s clinical education program, taught as a Fulbright professor at Delhi University in 1986 and still makes frequent visits to India. Susan Brooks, clinical professor of law at Vanderbilt, was a visiting faculty member at the National Law School of India in 1997, and two Indian law professors have worked in the Law School’s clinical program while spending a semester at Vanderbilt as visiting scholars.
Schukoske also worked together with Bloch, Kay and Brooks on the Global Alliance for Justice Education, an international organization committed to achieving justice through clinical education and other forms of socially relevant legal education.
"Vanderbilt is in a unique position to attract top Indian clinicians to our LL.M. program," Bloch said. "With our substantial cross-national clinical experience, we are also particularly well suited both to supervise and support our Indian students and to benefit ourselves from the exchange."
Media contact: Susanne Loftis, 615-322-NEWS, susanne.loftis@vanderbilt.edu