Legal Development Network strengthens capacity to provide legal services in five regions of Ukraine

Publication date: April 28, 2025

Author: Yuliia Bilyk, LDN Communications Manager

In March 2025, the Legal Development Network launched the project “Strengthening the capacity of legal clinics for people’s access to legal services in Ukrainian communities”. The project is being implemented within the framework of the international technical assistance project “Enhancing Civic Engagement to Improve Community Security, Strengthen Social Fabric and Enhance Stability in War-Affected Areas in Ukraine” with the assistance of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Ukraine and the support of the Government of Denmark. Read on to find out what activities will take place and what changes they will bring to the communities.

The goal of the project is to engage civil society organizations and informal associations of students at legal clinics of higher education institutions as full-fledged players in the community-based access to justice ecosystem. The focus is on providing quality legal assistance to veterans, their families, internally displaced persons, and other vulnerable groups during martial law and after the war, taking into account the current legal needs of communities.

In the photo: Olga Nastina, project manager, executive director of the Legal Development Network

“Working systematically in communities, in particular, in the de-occupied communities of the South, among a number of challenges and problems we have seen the inability of local governments to meet the legal needs of veterans and their families, displaced persons, and socially vulnerable groups on their own. This problem is exacerbated by the weak interaction between various local legal aid providers: legal clinics, lawyers of specialized CSOs, local authorities and the state system of free legal aid. Seeing great potential in developing the legal capacity of legal clinics, we are launching our project and we believe that very soon the clinic teams will become competitive in the market and will take on some of the requests of citizens,” says Olga Nastina, project manager, executive director of the Legal Development Network.

Project Duration And Dissemination 

The project is being implemented until November 2025 on the basis of CSOs and local initiatives created at legal clinics or in cooperation with them in five regions of Ukraine: Sumy, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv, and Kherson.

If a higher education institution has moved to another territory (from Luhansk, Donetsk, or Kherson oblasts) due to hostilities, the project area will be determined by the place of its actual location.

Project Activities

The project includes two stages:

• stage of developing the organizational capacity of NGOs operating on the basis of legal clinics;
• stage of implementing the curriculum and mentoring (with the development of the capacity to identify the legal needs of legal aid recipients).

At the first stage, representatives of pre-selected NGOs and informal associations of students working at or cooperating with higher education institutions will complete the distance learning program. The training will strengthen their ability to provide legal aid and implement client-oriented services. 

Teams of 2 to 4 people who meet the following criteria are invited to participate in the training and mentoring programs:

• operate at higher education institutions in the target areas of the project; 
• understand the national context in the field of internally displaced persons, veterans and their families;
• have experience in providing free legal aid;
• are ready to register a non-governmental organization on the basis of a legal clinic in case of its absence; 
• have a formed motivation to participate in the training and mentoring programs.

Each participant will receive at least 27 hours of training. In addition to legal aid provision and development of legal services, participants will learn:

• organization management,
• strategic thinking,
• data-driven management,
• legal needs identification, etc.

Representatives of the FLA system and legal service provider organizations will be involved in the training activities, which will help to establish interaction between them and legal clinics as legal service providers.

To enhance the effect of the training component, the participating organizations will receive mentoring support in parallel with the training.  Mentors — engaged experts and experienced representatives of reputable human rights organizations — will study the needs of CSOs, develop individual mentoring plans, and provide mentoring support through the implementation and monitoring of the relevant plans. An innovative feature of this component of the project will be the organization of remote events to exchange experience between legal clinics.

The project will also conduct a study of the legal needs of female and male veterans and their families and/or IDPs, as well as their level of satisfaction with the services provided by legal service providers in several communities where legal clinics operate. The data obtained will allow us to better understand the structure and prevalence of legal problems, the number of beneficiaries who have sought legal aid, which providers, how many did not apply and why. It will also be possible to understand the real need of beneficiaries for legal information and their preferred channels of receiving such information.

Project Impact

In the photo: Iryna Chaika, coordinator of the project’s training component, director of organizational development at the Legal Development Network

“In response to the existential challenges of war and future post-war recovery, the project will enable NGOs operating at university legal clinics to provide a range of quality legal services. Moreover, they will be able to maintain their effectiveness regardless of changes in the social context in the country,” emphasizes Iryna Chaika, Director of Organizational Development at the Legal Development Network.

In addition to the fact that the participating organizations will increase their professional training and organizational capacity, and the research will allow them to study the real needs of people who have been most negatively affected by the war, the project will implement an information campaign that will reach more than 40,000 people.

“First of all, the project’s information campaign is aimed at improving the understanding of veterans, their families, and IDPs of their rights, and what they need to do to ensure that these rights are respected and not restricted. Citizens should be able to navigate the list of free legal services providers, including the possibility of applying to legal clinics. On the other hand, the project will help the FLA system and local authorities to once again pay attention to the legal needs of people and possibly think about ways to improve services for more effective assistance,” says Iryna Chaika.

The initiative “Strengthening the capacity of legal clinics to provide people with access to legal services in Ukrainian communities” is being implemented by the Legal Development Network with the assistance of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Ukraine and financial support from the Government of Denmark.

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