About BOST Law Clinic

We have envisioned the role of Bost University Law Clinic as leading and integral to the promotion and protection of equal access to justice and the elimination of violence against women and minority groups in Helmand province.

Provide Clinical Legal Education and pro bono legal aid in the interest of access to justice. Support social justice by providing much needed legal aid to vulnerable individuals and marginalized groups. Inform policy through legal research and analysis.

Access to Justice is the “ability of people to seek and obtain a remedy through formal or informal institutions of justice, and in conformity with human rights standards” (UNDP 2005: 5).

Context: our aim is to provide practical legal experience for law students and to offer a thorough, accurate and reliable service to clients with legal difficulties. The Law Clinic serves the marginalized and vulnerable parts of the local community where there is a unmet legal need. We work collaboratively with all stakeholders to ensure a commitment to quality legal education, legal services excellence and access to justice.

Improve access to justice through quality legal education, legal practice and legal aid. Enhance clinical legal education through an integrated approach to the learning and practice of law.

1.      Augment the Clinical Legal Education Component of Law Faculty: the law clinic is the right vehicles through which our law students are exposed to legal action and practice. The distance between theoretical legal education and legal practice is reduced through real life and simulated legal action: The law clinic is a legal lab where our students can apply their theoretical legal knowledge and see firsthand the relation between legal education and legal practice.

2.      Provide Legal Aid: Our students provide legal advice, mediation, defense, and representation to clients suffering from lack of access to justice; this empowers clients to gain access to justice and the information and tools to assert their rights. Our students are trained to help clients overcome all forms of barrier against access to justice.

3.      Develop the Practical Legal Skills of Law Students: Our students are trained in legal research, analysis, critical thinking, legal writing, mediation, representation, interviewing, case reading and client engagement and management skills. The pre-clinic courses and law clinic activities are designed to test and develop students’ capacity in these critical areas of legal competence. The law clinic is a center for practical learning experience that enables law students refine their legal skills. By working with real-life and simulated cases, our students gain invaluable insight into the demands of the legal profession.

4.      Improve Students’ Employability and Professional Capacity: We seek to facilitate our students’ access to job markets. We focus on providing our students with knowledge and skill sets that will turn them into lawyers that are fit for practice and action. We focus on empowering and building our students' spirit to meet the demands of the profession. Participation in the law clinic pro bono activities gives law students an opportunity to develop professional skills that enhance their employability.

5.      Strengthen Students Engagement with Community Issues: We develop students’ attitude toward pro bono activities, the role of lawyer and professional legal ethics. We focus on access to justice issues, for women in particular, the violence against women, extreme gender segregation issues, barrier against access to justice and other social issues of critical concern. Our students develop understanding and appreciation of law’s fundamental purpose of improving access to justice.

6.      Develop Social Justice Ethos of our Students: We instill a sense of social responsibility among our law students. We repeatedly promote the concept of access to justice, basic human rights and legal empowerment. We fostering professionalism and a Sense of public service among our law clinic participants. We promote public interest, social responsibility of legal profession and the establishment of pro bono practices among lawyers.

7.      Strengthening Access to Justice and the Rule of Law: We promote the rule of law through advocacy. We defend communities against violations of rights.

The Clinic started in 2012 as a clinical legal education program only. It was embedded in the last year of law faculty curricula; the original aim was to equip our law students with the right legal knowledge and practical skills. In 2016, we discovered that the program could do much more than simulate legal practices. After lengthy internal and external consultations, the university decided to establish a fully operational and dedicated pro bono Law Clinic that provides law students with real-life work experience, provides legal aid, develops law students’ professional capacity, assists the protection of human rights and facilitates access to justice.

Bost University Law Clinic (BULC) trains law students to become professional lawyers and provides much needed legal aid. While learning law, our students also provide legal aid to the poor and marginalized clients in a supervised context. Practicing lawyers, legal experts and academics work together to fully engage students by exposing them to problems faced by vulnerable clients, especially women from rural areas. Pre-clinic courses and practical legal activities are designed in a manner that incorporates professional responsibility, ethos, commitment to supporting the rule of law, human rights, and social justice.

The Law Clinic is a provider of pro bono legal services to the vulnerable and marginalized. The clinic provides independent and confidential legal service to the public who are in need of legal advice or assistance. Students work on real civil law cases under the supervision of qualified lawyers, from the first interview with the client and the preparation of the legal briefing; students are given in supervised leading role. Participation in the program gives law students an insight into the pressures and demands of the legal profession. Students develop a real sense of legal realities. The program is a real social service opportunity to that also develop student’s professional legal competence and self-confidence.