Officially,
it is over. The ending we all feared for is benignly staring in our faces. From
the start we knew it was never going to last forever but for some reason we
allowed ourselves to be carried away. It’s hard to know what is real and what
is nostalgia. Each story is a brick in a monument, built slowly overtime. At
some point, it doesn’t matter what is real and what is imagined. An idea can be
immortal, as many of us who have had this experience will testify but we also knew
so well that one day we had to walk out and close the (boardroom) door behind
us.
For
beginners, Clinical Legal Education is a module one offers in their second
semester of third year at Makerere Law School. It is a cocktail of activities
and events that combines theoretical approach to legal education with a
practical and hands on approach. There are numerous activities that the student
can engage in under direct supervision or in self-directed activity. This might
include; legal research, fact-finding inquiry, assisting qualified lawyers,
interviewing clients and witnesses, drafting letters and other documents and
depending on applicable rules, engaging in negotiations and even advocacy
before courts and tribunals. The advantage of this is that the student gets to
acquire a vast number of skills while still at university and would therefore
have a smooth run in practice and at the bar. Much more than this is the
closeness and proximity you develop with the lecturers. A rapport with one or
two that you interface with on a daily, a camaraderie that you strike up with
those that you regularly bump into as you criss-cross the corridor trying to
beat a deadline all make this a worthwhile venture.
CLE
offers a practical approach that comes with learning through experimenting. It
is a notorious fact that students who participate in CLE receive basic training
on legal drafting, research, negotiating and oral advocacy from law teachers
and practitioners who volunteer to work on a part-time basis at the clinic. In
our university and many other law schools across the region, there is an
obsession and student enthusiasm for live cases. CLE gets to offer the student
an opportunity to interact with live cases which is a win-win situation for
both the student and the client who is helped. The client is in most cases a
member of the community that cannot afford the services of a practicing lawyer
but can benefit from the well of knowledge of the law student. From its inception,
CLE has targeted a variety of people ranging from the student community to the
entire legal regime and this is what has made it head and shoulders above the
rest of the teaching models. Legal clinics which were essentially put up to
conduct CLE were established by law students and law lecturers principally to
bridge the gap between imparting practical legal skills and theory. They were
established also in response to the growing need for basic legal service by
indigent populations in the region. The above shows that the benefits accruing
from CLE were not limited to students but would spread to the community too.
The
module has also created a difference in the employment world. A number of law
students, even those with high marks on graduation, far exceed the number of
job opportunities, meaning that academic success is no longer enough. Students
are expected to apply for jobs during the academic stage, yet employers are
increasingly looking for candidates who have life experience, preferably in
lawyering and people, skills together with a sense of commercial awareness-when
they apply for positions. CLE has been crucial in improving our student
employability. I can tell you for a fact that at the bar, students are
frequently tested on opinion-writing skills. In practice, these are very
similar to the letters which students draft to the clients. Having already done
the vast majority of the work, this would be a simple way for us to develop an
additional skill.
Also
very important is the fact that CLE grants the opportunities for connections
between organisations and the students. The difference between the successful
and the less successful in our world today are the connections that one strings
together. Among the many programs a CLE student interfaces with, internships
and externships top the pile. These involve students being attached to
organisations and getting involved in the work that they do. This is normally
organised such that the students are attached to a particular organisation of
their choice where they would be able to enjoy their stay and also benefit in
terms of knowledge and experience. This is highly advantageous, as employers
cite experience as a very important factor in modern day employment. Many more
benefits accrue from this because I for one and a few of my colleagues had the
benefit of doing externship at TASO-Mulago and the experience opened our eyes
to the reality of the deep rooted suffering, discrimination and marginalization
that our people constantly live with. I noticed that there is an embedded
stigma that is associated with people living with HIV. On our first day,
because none of us knew with precision the exact location of the TASO centre at
Mulago, we often stopped on the way to ask kind strangers for directions.
However, we were often greeted with grins and chuckles that were punctuated
with soft sarcastic laughs. The fact that we were two boys and two girls added
spice to the mix. When we finally got to the TASO centre, the stories were more
painful. Patients lamented about rejection by their families, property grabbed
from them, women chased by their husbands and so much untold suffering. Many of
them also confessed of how they were born with HIV and only grew up to discover
the ugly truth. Every Tuesday afternoon as we would be returning to University,
we often patted ourselves on the back for the contribution we had made, but
deep down the truth was biting, very little had been done to change the
multitude of lives that we had left behind us.
Like
all others, the CLE class of 2018 had its moments, it had its highs and lows,
we had our hall of fame and we had that of shame too. We sometimes laughed so
hard that we often forgot ourselves but we were also never short of
mind-blowing moments when deadlines were looming. There are not many bittersweet
memories in one’s lifetime that you sit back and reflect on with deep fondness,
nostalgia and gladness, ones that you wished should never have ended so
soon. Mario Puzo in his thriller ‘The
God Father’ said that the beauty about life is that it ends. The thread from
this book is that everything good will one day come to an end, and knowing that
there is an end date to anything is what makes it more beautiful.
CLE
was worth my every single minute!
