How civil society strengthens the work of legal clinics

Publication date: June 24, 2025

Author: Yulia Bilyk, communications manager of the Legal Development Network

Over the course of nine months in 2025, teams from 13 legal clinics will receive mentoring and training to strengthen their capacities as part of the project “Strengthening the Capacity of Legal Clinics to Provide People with Access to Legal Services in Ukrainian Communities.” The project is being implemented by the Legal Development Network with the assistance of the United Nations Development Program in Ukraine and support from the Government of Denmark.  Clinics that decide to establish a non-governmental organization to expand access to resources will be supported during registration. The challenges and potential for the development of legal clinics as legal aid providers are described in the following examples.

Training is first and foremost

Compared to international practice, the institution of legal clinics has emerged in independent Ukraine recently. In the 1990s, the first initiative groups began to appear, which in 1997 united into the Association of Legal Clinics. For a long time, clinics at higher education institutions functioned informally. It was only in 2006 that their activities were formalized at the legislative level — by the Order of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine “On Approval of the Model Regulations on the Legal Clinic of a Higher Education Institution of Ukraine”. According to this document, clinics should operate in all higher education institutions (hereinafter — HEIs) that teach legal specialties.

The primary purpose of legal clinics is to prepare law students for professional practice by providing free legal aid and disseminating legal education. For many students, working in a clinic is perhaps the only way to see their profession as it is, to test their theoretical knowledge in practice.

“Legal education in Ukraine is very theoretical. There are lectures and practical classes, but in practical classes, students actually do nothing more than recite what they heard in lectures. We also know how often internships take place: students are sent to court where they sew cases together. That is why a legal clinic is a unique opportunity to learn, gain skills in working with clients, master the basic rules of counseling, interviewing, and preparing various types of documents,” says Yulia Lomzhets, head of the Association of Legal Clinics of Ukraine.

Legal clinics pay special attention to developing students’ soft skills. We are talking about skills without which a lawyer cannot work at all. For example, the ability to communicate with a very talkative client, to conduct a consultation in a limited time. During legal education events, students learn public speaking skills, how to hold the attention of different types of audiences, and how to convey complex information in simple words.

“For most university students, working in a legal clinic is a guarantee of fast and high-quality professional employment immediately after or even during their studies at the university. We don’t keep any separate statistics, but I can say about the legal clinic I managed: the vast majority of our consultants found good and desirable jobs, and employers’ feedback about them is mostly very positive,” says Maria Tsypiashchuk, a human rights activist, member of the Board of the Association of Legal Clinics in 2017-2024, and former head of the Pro Bono Legal Clinic at the National University of Ostroh Academy.

The Association of Legal Clinics insists that clinics are not public reception centers or non-governmental organizations. Their goal is educational, and it is for the sake of achieving this goal that free legal advice and legal education are provided to citizens.

“Even if the clinic has many clients, such as the legal clinic of the Leonid Yuzkov Khmelnytsky University of Management and Law, which is located in the city center, we emphasize teaching students and checking their work. This particular clinic is an example of how to successfully educate students through counseling,” says Yulia Lomzhets.

Partnerships with NGOs

Legal clinics are very different in their formats and approaches to their work. Although their place is clearly defined by the education system, clinics are also actively involved in the life of their communities and neighborhoods.

In general, legal clinics can be divided into:

• those that work for a specific or wide range of beneficiaries;
• those that work with real cases or model typical situations;
• with open or limited access to the premises where the clinic operates;
• those that have a director and a supervisor or one director who combines the functions of a director and a supervisor;
• those that cooperate with NGOs / have their own NGOs or do not yet have such experience.

Some legal clinics have created and are developing their own NGOs. This allows them to legally participate in grant competitions and attract additional resources for development. In addition, the presence of an NGO can expand the clinic’s field of activity – to hold events outside the university, enter into partnerships, and organize community-based legal education campaigns.

“As for the cooperation of legal clinics with NGOs in the format of partnership, it primarily opens up access to experience, methodological materials and supervision from practitioners, which strengthens the educational component of the clinic. A formalized partnership allows a legal clinic to work not only as an educational platform, but also as a real participant in the human rights ecosystem. An NGO can help with administrative issues of legal clinics: signing contracts with clinic beneficiaries, providing logistics for events, and engaging additional expertise. Universities cannot afford this,” explains Olga Nastina, executive director of the Legal Development Network.

For example, the legal clinic of Sumy State University cooperates with the Northern Human Rights Protection Group, a member of the Legal Development Network. This NGO, together with the clinic, organizes educational events and provides internships for student clinicians in its office. Natalia Yesina, the organization’s executive director, has been a member of the monitoring group that evaluated the clinic’s activities for several years.

Natalia Yesina explains: “Since 2023, SumDu’s legal clinic has been a specialized clinic on war-related issues, which has become especially relevant for Sumy oblast as a border oblast. Since then, the clinic’s activities have included researching the legal aspects of compensation for losses and reparations, supporting compensation cases, and participating in the creation of legal mechanisms at the national and international levels. The work is coordinated by the Dean of the Law School, the Head of the Law Department, and the Head of the Clinic. Student counselors work directly with clients under the supervision of faculty members. There is also a student coordinator who ensures organizational interaction within the team. Both students and professionals with practical experience, including practicing attorneys, are involved in the clinic’s activities.”

Although this is required by the model regulation on a legal clinic, the EBA’s monitoring data shows that only 50% of clinics are separate structural units of higher education institutions with their own staff.

“The main needs of legal clinics are, first and foremost, sustainable support for their activities and support from the university administration. High-quality management of all processes in a legal clinic requires considerable time, effort, and involvement. Therefore, the model of co-engagement of teachers who have a large primary workload in addition to coordinating a legal clinic often significantly slows down or even makes it impossible to achieve the goals of legal clinical education,” emphasizes Maria Tsypiashchuk.

For legal clinics, it is always an urgent task to ensure sustainable operation and support from the administration of the higher education institutions in which they operate. After the full-scale invasion, many of them had to relocate, establish remote work, organize safe conditions, ensure confidentiality for clients, master military law, international humanitarian law, international criminal law, etc. NGOs help to support the sustainable and active work of legal clinics between changes in their leaders, university leaders, and outside the educational process.

“A legal clinic can engage practicing lawyers, attorneys, various specialists, and experts through a non-governmental organization to provide mentoring, coaching, and legal aid. With the official status of an NGO, a legal clinic has more opportunities for mobility: community outreach, participation in forums, and study tours. The partnership with the NGO ensures that the clinic meets modern standards of beneficiary protection, in particular through the implementation of confidentiality policies, PSEA (protection from sexual exploitation and abuse) and humanitarian principles,” emphasizes Olga Nastina.

Moreover, this expansion of functions does not negate the educational goal of the clinic, but rather helps to better prepare students for the realities of professional human rights protection in specific communities.

Humanitarian aid 

Most often, people learn about the possibility of applying to legal clinics from NGOs, social media, during legal education events, and from each other. According to the Association, every year the network of legal clinics processes more than 10,000 requests for legal aid and conducts 1,200-1,300 legal education events.

“It is important that the legal clinic offers not only free assistance, but also an individualized, humane approach. In addition, the cooperation of legal clinics with governmental and non-governmental structures and, as a result, the possibility of redirecting requests allows us to respond promptly to clients’ requests and direct them to the right institutions,” notes Natalia Yesina.

The quality of legal aid provided by legal clinics is confirmed by both the facts of resolved issues and beneficiaries’ positive feedback.

Maria Tsypiashchuk gives an example: “After one of the Street Law Festivals (a student competition for legal education developments), the lyceum where we held the final and tested the teams’ developments with schoolchildren in a ”live mode” invited the participants to return to them with the same classes, because the teachers were impressed by the effectiveness of such educational methods and approaches to teaching. And in general, those who participate in the legal education events of legal clinics are usually really satisfied with the format of the training.”

In today’s unstable environment, the institute of legal clinics not only finds opportunities to continue working, but also to develop by introducing new technologies, automating processes, and updating internal policies and procedures. For the Legal Development Network, partnership with legal clinics is a strategic opportunity to increase access to justice in communities through young professionals and expand the geography of free legal services. After all, student clinicians are future lawyers. After all, student clinicians are future lawyers with practical skills focused on human rights values, which is fully in line with the LDN’s mission.

“Legal clinics help our member organizations implement legal education campaigns, prepare adapted materials for young people, the elderly, and IDPs, which expands our influence. That is why we believe that involving students in joint initiatives with the Network’s member organizations stimulates the development of new leaders in the public sector. Finally, legal clinics contribute to the renewal of approaches to the provision of free legal aid through innovations and digital tools, which are often tested by students,” concludes Olga Nastina.

The material was prepared within the framework of the initiative “Strengthening the capacity of legal clinics for people’s access to legal services in Ukrainian communities”, implemented by the NGO “Legal Development Network” with the assistance of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Ukraine and financial support from the Government of Denmark.

If you have notices an error on the web-site, please, highlight the text and press ctrl-enter.