Legal aid clinics to provide free family law assistance

Representatives from 13 universities from across Indonesia, PEKKA, PUSKAPA UI and Komisi Yudisial met in Jakarta in May to explore strategies to support and strengthen legal aid clinics provided by universities and civil society organisations.

These clinics are staffed by students and community paralegals, supervised by law lecturers. They help enhance the university students’ experience and increase access to justice for the poor and vulnerable. The meeting delegates decided to target the right to legal identity, especially for women, the underprivileged and people living in remote areas. University legal aid clinics set goals for delivering services in 2015-2016. 

Participants heard from Komisi Yudisial on its new ethics clinic initiative, how to apply for legal aid accreditation and how to use interactive packages designed within AIPJ by communications firm LOWE to support legal identity community events. PEKKA shared its experiences on the successful legal aid clinic (KLIK) that assists more than 1,000 justice seekers a month and discussed collaborations with the universities.

AIPJ and Monash University aims to support the work of university legal aid clinics by delivering Training-of-Trainer (TOT) workshops in the upcoming months. Each university met with AIPJ to discuss its direction, challenges and needs and this information will be used to inform the training. The workshops will enable legal aid clinic managers, lecturers and senior law students to prepare unit guides, lesson plans and set up file and data collection systems with the support of AIPJ’s ICT Adviser. Managers and lecturers will discuss models for supervising and teaching practical legal skills to students and paralegals. The TOT materials will be made available to participants and partners online.

Following the Jakarta meeting, a number of participants attended the first Indonesian Clinical Legal Education Conference (INCLE) hosted by Universitas Indonesia in Depok. This was an opportunity for participants to interact with the INCLE network and exchange ideas and experiences. Participants also attended the INCLE TOT session.