India's first Virtual Law School Clinic,brought about by the Virtual Law School, will be inaugurated this Sunday i.e August 2.
Supreme Court judge, Justice Vineet Saran is the Chief Guest for the event.
The inaugural ceremony will also see the participation of former Supreme Court judge, Justice (retd.) AK Sikri and Justice Anand Pathak of the Madhya Pradesh High Court as Guests of honour.
Prof (Dr) David Tushaus, Missouri Western State University, USA and Nupur Sinha, Managing Trustee, Centre for Social Justice, Ahmedabad will be the Guest Speakers for the event.
Earlier, Dr. Nachiketa Mittal had established the Virtual Law School, which is running on par with any standard law school by organizing law classes when most of the law schools are shut and not every law college of more than 1,500 law colleges recognized by the Bar Council of India (BCI) is able to provide online legal education.
Since legal education necessarily involves training the young law students beyond teaching them legal doctrines, legal aid and legal counselling of clients has always been an integral part of law school learning. This is part of the clinical legal education which is a mandatory course as per the guidelines of the BCI.
In keeping with the same, Dr Mittal is now establishing Virtual Legal Aid Clinic (VLAC) which will automatically become India’s first Virtual Law School Clinic.
VLAC will be run with the help of lawyers from across the country. In these times of COVID-19, it is not possible to take the law students to the courts or to the neighbourhoods to provide them the practical experience of client counselling, client interviewing and providing legal aid under the supervision of a lawyer.
VLAC will fill this gap and provide the same kind of training online to the law students with the help of several lawyers from different parts of the country.
As part of VLAC’s activities, a google form has already been circulated among the lawyers across the country to donate their pro bono (free of cost) legal aid counselling hours.
Lawyers are donating to VLAC their pro bono hours on a monthly basis. These pro bono hours of the lawyers will be released in the form of Pro Bono Law Hours Bank on August 2 at the time of the inauguration of VLAC.
A portal will be made by which anyone who qualifies for free legal aid will contact VLAC. Then VLAC’s student team will respond and connect the concerned aggrieved person with the lawyer in its vicinity who would have donated pro bono legal aid hours with the VLAC. Law students will be attending throughout the entire of legal counselling and learn this art electronically.
This will also expose the law students to multiple kinds of legal issues and arising in different parts of the States and cities in India. There will be a lawyers and law professors monitoring body to supervise the work of the VLAC.
This will not only help in strengthening the legal aid work in the times of pandemic but will also enhance the level of clinical legal education as part of BCI’s mandate for legal education.
Many more ideas are welcome on board in this new journey and initiative of the Virtual Law School.
Event number: 166 355 6334
Event password: VLAC2020