Next week the Legal Clinic of our Faculty will begin its journey, once the selection process of the students who will carry out their practices in it during this academic year has been completed.  

The Legal Clinic is the first of the University Social Clinics to open its doors. The Social Clinics, dependent on the Office of the Vice President for University Extension, aim to improve of student learning and the promotion of "a university culture of solidarity, cooperation and social commitment, raising awareness among students through the provision of free advice to people or groups in a situation of social vulnerability and to the organizations that represent them", promoting the transfer of knowledge and collaboration with institutions outside the University.

With the creation of the Legal Clinic, the URJC joins the more than twenty universities that currently make up the Network of Legal Clinics of Spanish Universities, which, in turn, is part of the European Network for Clinical Education (ENCLE). The Legal Clinic will provide free legal advice to individuals or groups at risk of social exclusion or in a situation of vulnerability, through the preparation of reports, opinions, etc. 

The requests for advice may come from the collaborating entities of the legal clinic or from people who individually come to the Legal Clinic to request our services. 

Our Faculty develops its teaching and research activity in four campuses located in the southeastern part of our Community, where some of the most economically depressed municipalities of the same are located and in which the demand for assistance, advice and legal training of civil society It can hardly be adequately met given the scarcity of resources to address its cost, especially when it comes to people or groups at risk of social exclusion. This demand is increased at times of particular economic crisis, such as the one that Spain is going through as a result of the pandemic (the first Legal Clinics emerged, in fact, in the United States as a result of the Great Crisis of 29). The legal clinic will channel, in this way, the commitment of our Faculty with the real improvement of the living conditions of the citizens of its immediate environment, especially relevant in the current socioeconomic situation. 

The legal advice will be provided by the students, duly advised by clinical mentors, who may be both professors from our Faculty who are experts in the subject that the students must address, as well as practical jurists who collaborate with the Pro Bono Legal Clinic, through the agreements signed for this purpose with the ICAM Center for Social Responsibility of Lawyers and with the Probono Foundation. 

Students who carry out their internships at the Legal Clinic will also follow a training program that includes training in "soft" skills essential for the development of legal professions (communication, negotiation, regulation of emotions), simulation of trials, deepening in specific matters related to the issues that are being carried out, etc. They will also develop legal literacy activities within the StreetLaw program. We will present the proposals of the projects programmed within the framework of the Legal Clinic under the ApS methodology to the corresponding calls of the Service Learning Office of our University, so that the professors and students involved can accredit their participation in our projects as a merit curriculum.