Clinical Legal Education in V4 Countries
Assistant Professor, Institute of Public Law, University of Szeged Faculty of Law and Political Sciences
Clinical legal education is not a new methodology in legal training at law schools. Even though its “mother country” is the US, yet, every Visegrad country operates a legal clinic program. The first clinic was established at Palacky University (Czech Republic), and its clinical methodology is an example to follow, for instance by Comenius University (Slovakia). The Polish legal clinic system represents a “gold standard” of European legal clinics since it has the most institutionalized clinical legal education. In Hungary, 4 out of 8 law faculties operate legal clinic programs, but unfortunately, this educational method is not so popular as in Poland or the Czech Republic due to some hindering factors, such as lack of human and financial resources, textualized education. Nowadays, we experience the global clinical movement; the sign of this globalization is the creation of GAJE and ENCLE.
