Legal clinics, a challenge for the teaching of law

Abstract

The teaching of law has experienced new challenges, especially with globalisation and the changes introduced by the Bologna process. However, it has been difficult to implement them before the insistence of the traditional methodology of expository lessons, deeply rooted in the cycles of law. One of the current challenging methodologies is the legal clinics, as a dynamic and providing tool for active learning and facilitating the acquisition of practical competences. The legal clinics offer the possibility of a teaching based on life cases, allowing students to observe the effective or simulated representation of legal cases, developing skills, also appealing to the values and ethics that are imposed on a future jurist, be a lawyer or a magistrate. The purpose of our study is to raise awareness of the paradigm shift in the teaching of law, especially in Portuguese schools. The legal clinics will raise awareness of civil society, instilling reliability in the legal services.