About Legal Clinic
July 25, 2017, 1:33 p.m.

Legal Clinic which established according to the decision of ministry of higher education No. 18047 in Sep 17, 2014, and university decision No. 6934 in Sep 23, 2014 as well.  The main goals of the Legal Clinic are:

 

  1.    Provision free legal services for vulnerable group with legal consultation and legal representation.
  2.    It links between theory and practice.
  3.    It teaches students for lawyer arts and case submission.

The legal Clinic arose -by the current form- with the (Justice Program) funded by the USAID, based on the Agreement numbered 106-2014-04 dated 06.25.2014 between the Faculty of Law and Political Science and the mentioned program. The agreement period was 11 months which starts from 01/06/2014 up to 05/31/2015. After the start working in the mentioned agreement; the Dean has submitted a request to the presidency of the University of Duhok for the purpose of setting up a Legal Unit to be called (Legal Clinic) and to be one of the administrative units of the College. Then the presidency of the University of Duhok sent the request to the Ministry of Higher Education and Ministry issued its letter No. 1804712 dated 09/17/2014 to set the Legal Clinic and be regarded as an independent unit belonging to the college.

The services provided by the clinic are as follow:

First: legal representation before the courts and do all the legal procedures after making a procuration to the clinic's lawyer. This representation is limited to vulnerable groups and those with limited income.

Second: providing legal advice to the clinic auditors’ and enlightening them with and legal procedure to be followed in the courts.

Third: awareness campaigns by conducting seminars or offer programs through media such as radio and television or publishing advertisements through newspapers.

Fourth: Training students of the Faculty of Law with the legal procedures to be followed in the courts, and the methodology of training is as follows:

1- Theoretical approach: where it is currently giving to students - fourth stage - and by 15 lectures a year to explaining the approach of the clinic and its work.

2- Students from the fourth stage are trained each year through giving them lectures by the clinic's lawyer and display cases that come to the clinic and discuss it with the students and provide solutions.

3- Taking the students to the court to know the procedures to be followed practically in in the court and how to plead.

After the contract period with the program comes to end; the clinic remained operate and exercise its functions and mission despite the financial crisis and the modest means of the college, as an independent unit. The legal advices reached to 10 legal advices from 06/01/2015 up to 09/31/2015, and the number of the legal representations for the same period was 9, although the period in question was part of the summer vacation of the university.

Finally, the insistence of the Dean of the College and the support of the president of the university were the main reasons for the success of the clinic.