Skills Transfers In Academia : A Renewed Strategy Enhancing legal clinics in the European Union Erasmus Project

Project Title

Skills Transfers In Academia : A Renewed Strategy
Enhancing legal clinics in the European Union

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Quality Assurance; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

STARS

SKILLS TRANSFERS IN ACADEMIA: A RENEWED STRATEGY.
ENHANCING LEGAL CLINICS IN THE EUROPEAN UNION.

The STARS project presented by the Universities of Luxembourg, Brescia (Italy), Olomouc (Czech Republic), Roma 3 (Italy) and Romanian-American University (Romania) inserts itself in the Key Action 2 of the Erasmus + programme as a consortium of Strategic Partnerships supporting innovation.

The STARS project intends to renew teaching strategies within law schools by developing innovative outputs in the field of clinical legal education and formalizing existing teaching methods and to engage into intensive dissemination and exploitation activities of clinical legal education and more specifically of innovative practices in legal teaching through Europe. Clinical legal education driven through legal clinics is a legal teaching method based on experiential learning, which fosters the growth of knowledge, personal skills and values as well as promoting social justice at the same time. As a broad term, it encompasses varieties of formal, non-formal and informal educational programs and projects, which use practical-oriented, student-centred, problem and community-based, interactive learning methods, including, but not limited to, the practical work of students on real cases and social issues supervised by academics and professionals. These educational activities aim to develop professional attitudes and foster the growth of the practical skills of students with regard to the modern understanding of the role of the socially oriented professional in promoting the rule of law, providing access to justice and peaceful conflict resolutions, and solving social and community problems.

The main two objectives of the STARS project are:

– to elaborate innovative pedagogical schemes in the field of legal education through the enhancement of legal teaching by developing new methods of legal teaching such as street law programmes where students inform different vulnerable groups as to their rights in their community/environment, running helpdesks (open offices for citizens aiming at informing them about their rights and located in law schools) and organizing training sessions in each partner university. Such activities will help the creation of specific guidelines to evaluate legal teaching, which do not exist yet.

– to disseminate these schemes among European law faculties through conferences, summer schools, open electronic platforms – such as Moodle –, social media pages: Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin –, on-line publications on training material and databases on clinical cases.

These actions are highly innovative because:
– such pedagogical schemes are not yet formalised.
– a European platform dedicated to clinical teaching.
– databases on cases dealt with by clinics do not exist.
Combined with the other activities proposed, the project this will lead in major innovations both in the field of legal education. The projects participants will ensure the dissemination of these innovative actions and outputs by an effective communication of the intermediate and final outcomes obtained during the project through a structured strategy of communication.

The STARS project matches both the horizontal and field specific priorities. In fact, it aims at developing relevant and high quality skills and competences by providing students with professional skills transferred in the frame of academic programmes (legal clinics that are involving both academic lecturers and researchers and practitioners such as lawyers and judges). It ensures education and research are mutually reinforcing, incentivising and rewarding good teaching.

Students work in small groups under the supervision of professors and practitioners. They develop key competences in legal reasoning, practical approaches of cases and digital skills since students work through electronic platforms and are taught how to create database. Besides clinical educational activities develop professional attitudes and foster the growth of skills of students with regard to the modern understanding of the role of the socially oriented professional in promoting the rule of law, providing access to justice and peaceful conflict resolutions, and solving social and community problems. Students who have participated in legal clinics are highly appreciated on the job market as they have practical skills such as clients interviewing, drafting of memoranda on cases. Legal clinics also cooperate with experts coming from other social science disciplines (e. g. psychology, sociology, history) and therefore demonstrate that it is possible to conduct community-based research in any academic context. Clinics participating to the project work hand in hand with psychologists. By doing so, they address pedagogical issues from a trans-disciplinary standpoint which is a highly innovative approach in the the field of legal education.

Project Website

http://www.lawstars.eu/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 153717,05 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSITE DU LUXEMBOURG & Country: LU

Project Partners

• UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI BRESCIA
• UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI ROMA TRE
• UNIVERZITA PALACKEHO V OLOMOUCI
• UNIVERSITATEA ROMANO AMERICANA ASOCIATIE