Legal clinics strengthen capacity to respond to legal needs in communities

Publication date: August 27, 2025

Author: Yulia Bilyk, Communications Manager, Legal Development Network

Thirteen legal clinics participating in the project “Strengthening the Capacity of Legal Clinics to Provide Access to Legal Services in Communities in Ukraine“, implemented by the Legal Development Network, have completed the first module of the training program. During webinars and workshops, clinic teams learned about approaches to access to justice in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals, deepened their knowledge in the field of sociological research, and applied the results in practice. As a result, they now have concepts for their own research and questionnaires to identify the most common legal problems in their communities.

“As part of the first training module, we worked closely with legal clinic teams to explore the topic of justice, identify the differences between access to justice and access to court, looked at how the global community works with the legal needs and problems of people, how the circle of empowerment works, and how to determine the level of access to justice,” says Iryna Chaika, coordinator of the project’s training component and director of organizational development at the Legal Development Network.

In particular, representatives of legal clinics learned about the system of measuring access to justice and why civil society organizations, including legal clinics, need to take it into account in their work.

The first dimension — the prevalence and structure of legal problems — reveals pain points: the problems people encounter in their daily lives. The second dimension — people’s legal capacity — indicates how knowledgeable people are about their rights and how to protect them. The third dimension — the effectiveness of justice institutions — shows how well the “legal hospitals” work: courts, prosecutors, lawyers, etc. And the fourth dimension — the alignment of procedures with the interests of society — shows whether the justice system works in such a way that people trust it and get fair results.

“If people are unaware of their rights — the second dimension — they do not turn to institutions — the third dimension. If institutions perform poorly — again, the third dimension — people lose trust in them — the fourth dimension. If procedures are unclear — the fourth dimension — then legal problems accumulate — this is already the first dimension. By understanding these dimensions, we can better plan our work, know where to focus on legal education and where to focus on advocating for change in the system, i.e., which mechanisms to choose for our activities to be as effective as possible,” explains Yevhen Poltenko, expert of the training component of the project.

Kateryna Yeroshenko, project coordinator at the Ukrainian Legal Aid Foundation and expert on access to justice, says that as part of the practical part of the training, trainers focused the attention of legal clinics on developing practical skills for developing tools and conducting field research.

According to the expert, legal clinics receive not only knowledge, but also a proven methodology that has already demonstrated its effectiveness. After all, the experience of the educational and practical program “Legally Empowered Community” is applied in working with legal clinics. This program was implemented by the Legal Development Network at the Ukrainian School of Practical Knowledge on Access to Justice during 2019-2021. Over three years, it covered 17 communities from 12 regions, which researched their legal needs.

“When we started in 2019 with the “Legally Empowered Community” program, the prevailing paradigm was that outside experts would come to communities, conduct research, and make recommendations. The results often lay dead on the shelves because they did not take into account the real possibilities and specifics of the communities. We managed to turn this pyramid upside down. Instead of external experts, the residents of the communities themselves became researchers through initiative groups. This is not just a change of roles, it is a fundamentally different approach to understanding expertise. In our work with legal clinics, we use the same principle of participatory research. Methodologically, we use the entire model: from developing the research concept to creating roadmaps,” says Kateryna Yeroshenko.

The expert emphasizes that applying this experience in working with legal clinics helps to shape a new generation of lawyers — those who perfectly understand the social context of legal issues and possess participatory research and advocacy skills.

“All legal clinic teams, in one way or another, build their work around the people who come to them — whether in person or online. Therefore, at the end of the first module, understanding how important it is to use data about their beneficiaries, their legal needs, and how they can use the available mechanisms to protect their rights, the teams immersed themselves in sociology. For most of them, this is their first experience of defining a target audience, choosing research methods, formulating questions for questionnaires, and conducting an in-depth analysis of the environment in which they work,” notes Iryna Chaika.

The legal clinic at Sumy State University took on this research direction for the first time. The clinic’s director, Lyudmila Rudenko, says that their clinic is specialized and provides assistance on issues related to the war. With this in mind, the clinic team decided to investigate the legal needs of Sumy community residents regarding compensation for destroyed and damaged property.

“Having worked in this field for two and a half years, we have identified a number of problems. Often, people do not understand that effective digital tools can be used at all. There are also many problems due to the fact that legislation is still being developed,“ notes Lyudmila Rudenko.

Workshops held as part of the training module helped to refine the research questions that the clinic team will ask their respondents.

“What are the main problems that residents face when recording damage and submitting applications for destroyed/damaged housing to local authorities and law enforcement agencies? Are the victims aware of state and local compensation mechanisms? What barriers prevent them from entering their housing into the state register of property rights — we plan to ask our respondents about this. Our sample consists of 250 people — residents of the Sumy community. Among them are many internally displaced persons. We will also conduct 16 in-depth interviews,” Lyudmila Rudenko shares her findings.

The opportunity to improve research skills through participation in sociological research is one of the main advantages of participating in the project “Strengthening the Capacity of Legal Clinics for People’s Access to Legal Services in Communities of Ukraine” for students, according to the coordinator of the PRO BONO legal laboratory of clinical teaching methods, dean of the Faculty of Law, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Volodymyr Dahl East Ukrainian National University Olena Arsentieva.

“A series of webinars on access to justice and promoting people’s access to legal services in communities in Ukraine, workshops on organizing sociological research, and the actual development of a research concept in collaboration with a partner NGO provide an opportunity to directly involve higher education students in practical and research work, promote the development of sustainable teamwork skills, communication with partners and clients,” notes Olena Arsentieva.

In the next training modules, legal clinic teams will learn about procedures for providing legal aid and developing legal services, as well as general management of the organization and team. The sociological research of three legal clinics will be supported by project experts.

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 Programme (UNDP) in Ukraine and with the financial support from the Government of Denmark.

The mauin photo: https://depositphotos.com/ua

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