October 2015—Alban Koçi was teaching a classroom-based legal clinic course for years at the University of Tirana’s Law Faculty, and yet he says his students time and again expressed the desire to improve their skills and knowledge with hands-on experience—a desire he too shared. In fact, legal education in Albania is characterized as based on overly theoretical curricula and rote learning. As a result, law school graduates come out of schools and join the legal profession with little or no practical skills.
In 2012, the university partnered with USAID to transform its teaching methods and curricula, moving away from strictly theoretical learning and incorporating more hands-on experiences for students. Over the course of the next year, USAID supported the construction of a mock trial room and legal clinic lab, sent faculty on study tours to European universities, and trained them in clinical education.
Koçi was one of the first to embrace the change, leading the university’s first group of students to offer free legal aid to vulnerable groups as well as street law activities. Such activities teach practical law to grassroots audiences on, for example, their legal rights and duties, human and civil rights, or employment and family law. Koçi applied modern teaching methods through trial advocacy trainings, networked with more experienced European clinicians, and simultaneously completed his doctorate on clinical education.
“We, as academics, have been given a dedicated space, which we are now using for the best interest of our students,” said Koçi. “Now students can get the taste of what it means to do a trial, be useful by providing legal advice to vulnerable people, and deepen their knowledge on clinical law through academic research.”
Since opening in 2014, the live legal clinic at the University of Tirana Law Faculty has provided free legal aid to 52 persons who could not afford the services of lawyers, and provided 131 students with hands-on experience. To date, more than 530 law students have enrolled in the legal clinic as an elective course in the Master's programs of three Law Faculty departments: public law, civil law and criminal law.
Legal education is one of three components of USAID’s Justice Sector Strengthening Project 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. The project runs from 2010 to 2015.
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