Who are we?

Legal clinics: improved learning and knowledge transfer

A legal clinic is a space for theoretical and practical training that provides a community service, working to find the solution to problems that affect people at risk of social exclusion and defend the public interest.

Despite their varied nature, the main goals of legal clinics, which are well known in the university systems of Anglo-American countries, include:

•   Enabling students’ direct contact with real cases, with the aid of a professional and under the supervision of university teaching staff (hence the expression “clinic”, as it is reminiscent of the training system in the medical profession).
• Returning to society part of the investment made in public higher education, having a real and direct impact on solving problems.
• Providing answers to groups that at any given time may be most vulnerable and have the least chances of accessing legal support.
• Working in a university context on social problems that tend to be marginalised.

These three goals characterize the different Legal Clinics that are integrated in the University of Barcelona’s “dret al Dret” (“Right to Law”) Project. In the specific case of the Legal Clinic on Property Law and Residential Mediation, its distinguishing features are:

• The teaching staff’s training background in private law.
• The interest in private law of the students following the clinic’s training program.
• The practical experience of the ProHabitatge Association, which has been working closely on residential issues and attending to vulnerable groups with the Clinic since its inception.
• Its collaboration with other institutions involved in the residential field.
• The knowledge and input provided by collaborators who are especially highly skilled and fully involved in the project.
• The resulting ability to formulate proposals and offer alternatives in residential conflict situations, which are especially frequent at present.

Origins of the Legal Clinic in Property Law and Residential Mediation

When the graduate law studies were implemented during the 2009-2010 academic year, six professors from the Civil Law department of the University of Barcelona’s Faculty of Law, in charge of their own groups in the civil law course on personal rights, proposed a different approach to that which had been traditionally formulated in case studies in our field. The goal sought was clear: both professors and students had to get out of their respective “comfort zones”, where answers are almost always right or wrong. Reality is, obviously, a range of greys, and there is no reason to think that first-year graduate students should not start their university studies with this premise firmly in mind. The proposal was acknowledged as a Teaching Innovation Project (2009-PID-UB/39) under the title “Grounds for a Legal Clinic on Private Law” (Fonaments per a una clínica legal en Dret privat).

As its title reflects, the idea was to start to prepare students so that in later graduate course years they will be able to deal with real problems, from and with the support of the Faculty, as in the legal clinics in Anglo-American countries, which provide students with the chance to receive supervised, high-quality practical training, while at the same time addressing social issues that are unlikely to be handled through other channels.

These basic goals, together with a shared view on the social involvement expected of public universities, led to the establishment of strong ties in the 2009-2010 academic year with the “dret al Dret” project, which had already been in place for three years, basically driven by professors from the public law area, who are traditionally more sensitive to the issues dealt with by the law clinics. The result of this initial cooperation was the birth of the Legal Clinic in Property Law and Residential Mediation.

Collaborating Institutions

The Legal Clinic in Property Law and Residential Mediation carries out its activities thanks to the initiative of the teaching staff involved in the project, who place their knowledge at the disposal of the project’s goals, of students who choose to benefit from a hands on approach to learning, of collaborators who help us with their drive and their experience, but also thanks to the support of the ProHabitatge Association, of Alter – Serveis Integrals de Mediació, of the Registrars of Catalonia, and the collaboration of the Catalan Housing Agency.

The Clinic also works with third sector entities and has signed agreements to this effect; this is the case, for instance, with Fundació Ser.Gi or Casal dels Infants.