With the very spirit of humanism and commitment to the tenets of justice and rule of law, “Vivekananda Law College” established the Legal Aid Clinic which is extremely instrumental in sensitizing the students to the cause of the indigent thereby inculcating a spirit of social responsibility within them. The Clinic strives to ensure that the constitutional pledge is fulfilled in the letter and spirit and equal justice is made available to the poor, downtrodden and weaker sections of the society.
The Clinic works closely with the District Legal Service Authority in providing them the services of the students and staff. It provides the students exposure to settlement of cases, holding Lok Adalats and training them as para Legal volunteers. The service of the faculty are also provided as members of the judge panel during the Maha Lok Adalat held by the District Legal Service Authority and also as Resource Persons in their training Programmes.
The Legal Aid Clinic is manned by Para Legal Volunteers (Law Students) with sense of commitment, sensibility and sensitiveness to the problems of the common people who are being selected by the Faculty-in-charge of the Clinic.
The Legal Aid Clinic is more effectively functioning in outreach programmes. The Clinic is proved to be one of the best methods of learning experience by transmitting the theoretical knowledge from lab to land. The Clinic is a dynamic tool of learning, through which, the students learn the techniques of interviewing, interaction, eliciting the relevant information from the Client and to suggest possible remedies and the alternatives. The Clinic also enables the students to learn drafting notices, complaints, petitions and in turn it helps the students to be socially responsive and committed.
Objectives –
1. To provide legal services to the poor and weaker sections of the Society.
2. To provide inexpensive local machinery for handling legal services of basic nature like legal advices, drafting petitions, notices, replies and other documents of legal importance.
3. To resolve disputes of local people through meditation and conciliation and thereby preventing the disputes from reaching Courts.
4. To conduct surveys on contemporary socio legal issues.
5. To impart clinical education as part of practical training and also to imbibe the students to commit to social service to help the weaker sections of the society.
The Clinic organizes various outreach programmes such as legal aid camps, legal literacy programmes, gender sensitization programmes, human rights awareness programmes, Jail Visit, Lok Adalat Visit, Workshop in Collaboration with District Legal Service Authorities etc.
We take pride in proclaiming that the institution has conducted good number of Seminars, Workshops and Conferences at Local, Regional, State and National levels. Contemporary issues of Socio-Legal significance particularly matters related to Human Rights, Gender issues, contemporary trends in teaching methodology are the main topics opted for seminars.