Office of the Vice Dean of Clinical Legal Education

At Jindal Global Law School (JGLS), our Clinical Legal Education (CLE) program is rooted in a commitment to advancing social justice through a community-centered, reflexive, and ethically grounded framework. Our clinics are not merely sites of skill-building for students but spaces for critical engagement, where lawyering is understood as a practice deeply embedded in social realities, power structures, and the lived experiences of marginalized communities

Core Principles

Centering Communities & Collaborative Lawyering

Our clinics prioritize the needs, voices, and agency of the communities we work with. We approach legal education as a collaborative process where students, faculty, legal aid lawyers and communities co-create knowledge and legal strategies that challenge systemic injustices rather than reinforce dominant legal paradigms.

Reflexive Pedagogy & Positionality

Lawyering is not a neutral act—it is shaped by our own social locations, privileges, and biases. Our clinics emphasize self-reflexivity and critical pedagogy, encouraging students to interrogate their own positionality as legal practitioners and the ethical responsibilities that come with it. Through structured reflection, students develop a nuanced understanding of the law’s role in both oppression and liberation.

Ethical and Transformative Practice

Legal education must go beyond technical training to foster an unwavering commitment to justice. Our clinics instill a strong ethical framework, ensuring that students engage with communities with care, respect, and accountability. Confidentiality, non-extractive research, and the prioritization of long-term and systemic impact over short-term legal victories guide our practice.

Reimagining the Role of Lawyers in Society

The clinics challenge traditional notions of legal expertise by recognizing that justice work is not about speaking for communities but amplifying their voices. We encourage students to rethink their role as lawyers—not as saviors, but as facilitators, allies, and advocates who stand in solidarity with those challenging oppressive structures.

Practical Skills Development Through Legal Interventions

Our clinics provide students with hands-on experience in lawyering by engaging directly with legal interventions. Through casework, client interactions, drafting petitions, policy briefs, and legal opinions, engagement with movements and communities through consultations, students develop essential practical skills that prepare them for socially engaged legal practice. Clinics serve as dynamic spaces where students not only learn the mechanics of law but also understand its real-world implications, ensuring they graduate with both technical expertise and a deep commitment to justice-oriented legal work.

Structure & Impact

The Clinical Legal Education office at JGLS was established in August 2020 to institutionalize this vision. Our clinics work on a range of critical social justice issues, including child rights, environmental justice, prison reforms, trans rights, reproductive justice, and climate change. Each clinic operates with a specific focus while remaining committed to the overarching mission of legal empowerment and systemic change. Additionally, the Justice Krishna Iyer Centre is primarily dedicated to ensuring meaningful access to routine legal aid, with a particular focus on Sonipat and a broader commitment to Haryana. Recognizing the systemic barriers that marginalized communities face in accessing justice, the Centre actively intervenes to bridge the gap between legal rights and their enforcement. Through case interventions, legal counseling, assistance with documentation, representation, and community outreach, we aim to make legal aid more accessible and effective.

By centering community needs, bottoms up approach, fostering reflexivity, and reimagining legal education as a tool for care, solidarity and justice, our clinical program at JGLS seeks to shape a generation of lawyers who are critically engaged, ethically grounded, and committed to transformative legal practice.

Clinics

The clinics at JGLS have always adhered to the values of mutual respect and trust as well as the ethics of confidentiality while dealing with power asymmetries in communities and society. They create opportunities for students to associate themselves with lawyers and social workers who have championed the causes of social justice. At JGLS, we believe that community outreach is the responsibility of lawyers and consequently, the clinics are designed to enable students to imbibe the values required from socially responsible legal practitioners.