| The Clinical Legal Education has been established for more than 10 years, adding new teaching method to law education in Chinese universities, as well as bringing new horizon to overall educational system. Nowadays, Legal Clinics exist in most of Chinese universities in many formats. For example, Civil Legal Clinics, Criminal Legal Clinics, Labor Legal Clinics, Administrative Legal Clinics, and Community Legal Clinics, etc. Originally, Clinical Legal Education is introduced by Chinese universities in 2000. After more than 10 years’ breaking-in, Legal Clinics are gradually accepted by schools and society. It frequently appears in public’s vision, and has positive effects on law education and social aids. It has significant meaning of helping “social vulnerable groups”, as well as fostering law school students’ legal skills, professional ethics and sense of social responsibility.Clinical Legal Education origins from United States of America, going through the primitive apprenticeship system to college system of “Lang dell’s program”, then to the model of Legal Clinics nowadays. It had been a lengthy transformation since Legal Clinics became the education model it is right now. During the transformation, the model of Legal Clinics fostered plentiful outstanding lawyers, judges for the US. Abraham Lincoln was one of the representatives. China took example from the result of the US Legal Clinics. Legal Clinics consists of teachers and students, and conducts teaching by semesters. Within one semester, the Clinics members are relatively fixed, which has the benefits of small-class teaching. The current Legal Clinics education in China is still following the teaching model of Legal Clinics in the US, and the “localizing reformation” of the model is conducted persistently at the same time. This combination produces a unique Legal Clinics educational model that contains the socialist system of laws with Chinese characteristics. However, the concept of “valuing theory, paying less attention to practice’ has made the education of Legal Clinics fall into difficulty. As far as it is right now, the difficulty of converting this educational concept is making Law Schools pay way less attention to practical education, and it is giving teachers and students partial understanding about Legal Clinics. The limited fund brings more troubles during the daily operation of Legal Clinics. Plus, the revision of < Civil Procedure Law of the People’s Republic of China > puts the status of student attorneys to an awkward position. All of these problems are restraining the improvement of Legal Clinics education. We have to solve the problems, break away from the restrains, so that we can improve Chinese Legal Clinics education consistently. The author of this essay will analyze the reason why difficulties are happening by looking into the practical process of Legal Clinics education. And will provide feasible solutions to the improvement of Legal Clinics education, in order to make Legal Clinics serve our legal education and public better. |
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