Open Society Justice Initiative Announces the Second African Clinical Teachers Training Workshop

BUDAPEST—The Open Society Justice Initiative, in cooperation with the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, today announces the Second African Clinical Teachers Training Workshop to take place on October 11-15, 2005, at the University campus in Durban, South Africa.

The workshop is part in a series of trainings that Justice Initiative has organized since 2004 to promote clinical legal education methodology among law teachers in Africa. The four-day event focuses on introductory concepts and techniques used by clinical teachers in skills development programs for law students. This year's participants come from Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Somaliland, Uganda, and Zambia.

The workshop will cover both substantive and methodological aspects of teaching skills such as interviewing and counseling, legal writing, cases analysis and trial preparation, and alternative dispute resolution-negotiation and mediation. In addition, group exercises will allow participants to discuss and experiment with "interactivity"—the cornerstone of the clinical legal education methodology—as they design and demonstrate a skills development lesson.

Since 2003, the Justice Initiative has been working to promote clinical legal education methodology in Africa by providing technical assistance and capacity-building support to new university-based clinical programs, and through continent-wide skills development trainings and support for educators' assistance in networking and advocating for clinical legal education methodology and programs in law schools.