Abstract

This article addresses the issue of access to justice from the vantage point of clinical legal education, which here is considered both as an alternative teaching methodology to more traditional, systematic and hierarchical approaches to law and as a public engagement activity. In the last two decades clinical teaching has become a global movement characterized by a degree of ambivalence. On the one side, it carries with it social justice discourses and practices, on the other side, it also adapts well to the neoliberal commodification of knowledge. Notwithstanding this ambivalence, the authors argue for the possibility of conceiving legal clinics as commons that pursue both the redistribution of knowledge and access to justice.