Pro Bono Develops Pericles and Plumbers

The roles of clinical legal education in contemporary European law schools

Abstract

Legal education is often thought of as divided between the ‘clinical’/‘functional’/‘vocational’ and the ‘liberal’/‘holistic’, or even ‘formalist’/‘positivist’. Drawing on original data from students participating in pro bono work in a fairly typical European law clinic, we show that students do not appear to think such distinctions are particularly significant to their university learning journeys or their future career aspirations. Such distinctions may make sense at an institutional level, but at the level of an individual student and their learning experience, clinical/functional/vocational elements are not perceived as distinct from curricular learning in a liberal/holistic or even formalist/positivist mode.