Legal Clinics in Turkey

Abstract

Turkey has a classic two-stage legal education to prepare lawyers for practice as an avukat. The academic stage at the university was heavily influenced by the German legal tradition, and is reputed to be theory heavy, with little practical application of the law.¹ This climate of legal education is one reason why it is taking a while for the value of experiential learning, as reflected in the law clinic experience, to take hold in Turkish law faculties, which are not involved in the second stage of vocational training of lawyers. Another issue, discussed below, is that the bar associations are suspicious of the new legal clinics and consider that they breach the monopoly of The avukat in providing legal advice.² However, one can point to the 2007 Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE) Recommendation on Training Outcomes for European Lawyers,³ which sets out the legal and practical skills that lawyers should have, without specifying at which stage of legal education they should be attained, as being supportive of legal clinics.⁴