TIRANA, ALBANIA—Today, USAID and the University of Tirana celebrated with law students the 1st anniversary of the Legal Clinic. The University of Tirana Law Faculty (UTLF) Legal Clinic is one of the activities supported by USAID to improve legal education in Albania. In today’s ceremony, the Minister of Justice, Mr. Nasip Naço, USAID/Albania Director, Mr. Marcus Johnson, UT Rector, Mr. Dhori Kule, and UTLF Dean, Mr. Altin Shegani, congratulated the students on their achievements.

In the last year, USAID has completed work to build and furnish a students’ laboratory with IT equipment and modern furnishings to facilitate instruction, a reception area to welcome clients needing free legal aid, and a mock courtroom where over 80 law students have benefited from trial advocacy training and mock-trial simulations under a learning-by-doing methodology.

Improving legal education has been an important pillar of USAID’s assistance to Albania’s justice sector. Legal education is one of three components of USAID’s justice sector strengthening project (JuST). In addition to establishing the UTLF Legal Clinic, the project has also introduced curricula instruction based more on everyday legal practice and has been successful in providing students to career-enhancing internships. Starting this month, Clinical Legal Education courses will be offered as yearlong courses under the Masters’ Program of the UTLF’s Public Law, Criminal Law, and Civil Law departments.

USAID JuST is a five-year project, begun in October 2010, to increase court transparency, fairness and efficiency; bolster watchdog and anticorruption roles of civil society organizations and media; and strengthen the legal profession and education in Albania.