For students, by students

​​​​​Law faculties across the globe have developed a diverse array of experiential learning and clinical legal education opportunities for students, including a few interdisciplinary options. Each of the opportunities aims to equip students with the skills necessary to provide high-quality legal services to underserved communities. These services include legal research and drafting, direct client assistance and community legal education, among others.

 

While each of the diverse learning opportunities focuses on its own unique subject matter and often serves its own unique sector of the community, the fundamental lawyering skills that the law students need to provide hiqh-quality service remain the same and most of the upfront skills training that instructors and community partners provide is duplicative. Furthermore, as new courses are developed or instructors seek to add experiential learning components to their traditionally lecture-based courses, substantial time and effort is lost trying to find existing best-practice materials or creating new (often duplicative) skills training workshops.

 

This Portal provides a consolidated “resource library” and e-learning curriculum for front loading legal skills training that can be used across all the Faculty of Law’s clinical legal education and experiential learning courses as well as by colleagues in other Faculties and by legal clinics at other universities globally.

 

We have identified existing best-practices resources used for upfront skills training and create new digital content where gaps in resources are identified. The resource library includes videos, literature, teaching guides and other online resources to support the development of professional legal skills and ensure students are prepared to provide high-quality legal services to the community.

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​​​​​​Preliminarily identified skills training e-learning materials will include (but are not limited to):

• Client interviewing

• Research and drafting

• Working with an interpreter

• Interviewing vulnerable clients

• Conducting open source investigations/evidence gathering

• Making submissions to international bodies (UN bodies) Templates for best practices in document drafting

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We will continue to add new resources on the Portal.