Cultivating a Community of Practice at the UPV/EHU Gipuzkoa Campus: the Case of the Legal Clinic for Social Justice

Abstract

In this article, after briefly approaching to the notions of communities of practice (CoP) and clinical legal education, and to their theoretical bases, we describe a recent initiative launched at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) —the Legal Clinic for Social Justice of the Faculty of Law (LCSJ)— and we analyse the characteristics that allow it to be understood as a working CoP. In effect, for the observer of its activity, the LCSJ is made up of a group of people, both university staff and students, who continuously interact and who share a concern regarding the need for the renewal of legal and criminological teachings, of the legal culture and of the hegemonic jurist model in the Faculties of Law at our environment.