N. R. Madhava Menon: A Global Justice Educator’s Approach to Training Clinical Law Teachers
| Date | 01 January 2020 |
| Published date | 01 January 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/2322005819886385 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
N. R. Madhava Menon: A Global
Justice Educator’s Approach to
Training Clinical Law Teachers
Frank S. Bloch1
Abstract
This article describes one aspect of Dr N. R. Madhava Menon’s lifelong commitment to bringing ‘socially
relevant legal education’ to India and around the world, whereby lawyers would be trained not just in
the rules of law but also in the social and ethical responsibilities of lawyers to the society at large. Over
the course of more than 25 years, the author collaborated with Dr Menon in training of law teachers in
clinical methods and, in particular, in the incorporation of social justice into law school clinical and legal
aid programs. A key element of their collaboration was the development of the concept of a clinical
method for training clinical law teachers that could be used in training-of-trainers (TOT) workshops
throughout the world, including those run by national, regional, and international clinical organizations.
The result was a model for the training of clinical law teachers based on what the author and Dr
Menon described elsewhere as three defining qualities of the global clinical movement: Its professional
educational mission, its methodology, and its commitment to reforming legal education by reorienting
it toward educating lawyers for social justice. The article concludes with a description of their model
that emphasizes the setting for the training, preparing the trainee teachers for the training, the use
of training by doing, and the importance of reflection and critique in the successful generalization of
students’ clinical learning.
Introduction
During the 1960s and 1970s, major changes were taking place in the USA with respect to both legal aid
and legal education, with the introduction of a national network of federally funded community-based
legal services programmes and the recognition that law schools had failed to train future lawyers in legal
ethics and lawyering skills. Similar shifts took place in India over the same period, with the rise of
national support for legal aid and calls to orient the law school curriculum towards preparing future
lawyers for the actual practice of law.2 Together, those two shifts propelled the expansion of clinical legal
As noted also in the article itself, much of the text on training clinical law teachers comes from papers the author prepared in
collaboration with Dr Menon.
1
Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA.
2 See generally Frank S. Bloch & Iqbal S. Ishar, Legal Aid, Public Service and Clinical Legal Education: Future Directions from
India and the United States, 12 MICH. J. INTL L. 92 (1990).
Asian Journal of Legal Education
7(1) 7–16, 2020
© 2019 The West Bengal National
University of Juridical Sciences
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DOI: 10.1177/2322005819886385
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Corresponding author:
Frank S. Bloch, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA.
E-mail: frank.bloch@vanderbilt.edu
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