good day fellow workers in the vineyard of legal education welcome to module 2. in this session we are expected to learn about the benefits of having clinical legal education program in our law curriculum i have entitled this sharing the two-in-one benefits of clinical legal education because here we are expected to see that with cleb our students get to learn the law while serving the community as a preliminary question if somebody comes to you and asks you what to you is access to justice i think that question can best be answered if we present you with
the scenario think of having everyone in the room being given one crumpled piece of paper each for each to place in a basket placed in the center while everyone has a shot at the basket being equipped with one crumpled piece of paper each the truth is the one nearest to the basket has the higher chance of getting one crumpled paper in such is the concept of access to justice in our country not everyone is indeed born equal and for the many justice is truly an elusive thing and so in the 2020 world justice project rule
flow index the philippines ranked 91st out of 128 countries globally in terms of accessibility and affordability of justice in the area of civil justice when scrutinized and rated on the basis of for instance regulatory enforcement civil justice and criminal justice philippines ranked 13th out of 15 countries in the region and 91st out of 128 countries globally this has to be so if the realities in this country are the following as of june 2018 the pending cases in the first and second level courts nationwide numbered to 783 4223 while the inflow of new cases per year
for the past 10 years averaged about 800 000 cases around 75 of these pending cases are criminal actions mostly involving litigants belonging to the marginalized sectors as of may 31 2018 around 141 798 pre-trial detention prisoners were in need of legal assistance in 2018 the public assistance office or pow which is the main legal aid service provider in the country only has a little more than 2 000 pow lawyers catering to the legal needs of 110 million filipinos that translates to one out of every 52 000 filipinos to public attorney ratio a paul lawyer handles
an average of 6366 clients or a total of 465 cases such is the scenario of our access to justice on the other hand and in the classroom here is one sharing of a student i appreciate the learning activities she gives us because these learning activities give us a slice of the application of the law profession this is to be so because in the book teaching law by design it was said that students learn when their opportunities to construct understandings are authentic such as when their learning is anchored in a realistic context so law professors who
situate parts of their doctrinal courses in law practice problems whether simulations or actual client issues provide the students the authenticity that they need to construct meaningful understandings educators call this active learning where students and teachers go beyond passive method of learning and go to participatory teaching methods such as for instance group discussion practice or application or experiential learning as well as giving the students the opportunity to teach others in the united states there was this observation that some faculty members believe that the more bar courses that students are required to take the better the bar
passage rates will be however the reality is that empirical data showed that students who participate in clinics scored an average of 18 points higher on the bar examination students believe that participating in experiential learning such as apprenticeships gave them significant advantage over their peers in terms of their ability to conceptualize and their ability to retain better what they were learning in the classroom this was indicated in the book reforming legal education this is i think an affirmation actually of what we have been seeing especially when we took the classes outside of the traditional classrooms and
into the virtual world we have seen how our students our law students are indeed adult learners adult learners who want to be engaged in their learning who want to be actively involved in the process of understanding and constructing their knowledge they require law schools to make classroom meaningful so that teaching methods must provide opportunities for students to apply their knowledge and to work with others and so what is the context facing law schools today on the one hand the community cries for access to justice and in the classroom we have students clamoring for active learning
so that they will become practice ready lawyers so what better way to respond to that call than integrating clinical legal education program into our law curriculum because with clep our students get to learn the law while at the same time serve the community and so with gleb we will be learning the law while serving the community thereby getting what we would realize to be two-in-one benefits hitting two birds with one stone clep coming soon to all philippine law schools you
