Civic Engagement in the Community: Undergraduate Clinical Legal Education

摘要

The Community Legal Information Center (CLIC) of California State University, Chico, provides a unique civic engagement program designed to serve the legal service needs of Northern California. Founded in 1969, CLIC is now a 12-program, on-campus law clinic staffed by up to 125 undergraduate students each semester and is the most extensive undergraduate legal clinic in the nation. Although free legal clinics are not unusual at law schools, they are very rare at the undergraduate level. We discuss how CLIC successfully provides students with the opportunity to serve the legal needs of their community while also applying what they have learned through traditional classroom learning. Research on successful undergraduate civic engagement programs is significant because civic engagement and service-learning are often perceived as lacking educational quality and merit. Further, legitimate questions surrounding civic engagement programs, such as the proper educational methodology to be used in such programs, still exist. We explore how CLIC serves as a framework from which other academic programs can model their own civic engagement programs such that they integrate traditional academic exercises with community service.View full textDownload full textKeywordscivic engagement, undergraduate legal clinicRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15512169.2012.641393