Abstract

The issue concerning Clinical Legal Education (CLE) and Third Mission must be framed through a discourse that recognizes the eminently political nature of law departments. It is not possible to disregard, in the study of legal education, the fact that courses of study, teaching activities and Universities’ missions have nothing merely technical and neutral about them; they are practices and tools that are functional in placing students within social hierarchies proper to the legal world that awaits them. Every aspect of legal education is functional to hierarchical reproduction, from teaching methods to practices of knowledge sharing within social communities. The goal of critical study is to question legal education, expose the ideology behind it and propose different solutions. In this sense, CLE can be conceived of as an alternative that eschews hierarchical reproduction, if it is configured as a transformative practice that aims to protect general interests through collective conceived access to courts.