Legal education through practical clinics in the third world: A thesis

Robert M. Pirsig might not have thought he was writing a text about jurisprudence when he wrote Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.   However, there is much in the structure of his book which is of interest to legal practitioners.  Pirsig doesn’t think you can learn practical skills from a textbook.

Ligertwood, in his landmark book, Australian Evidence, takes a similar approach.   He proceeds on the basis that juries and magistrates are intuitively equipped to determine the strength of competing hypotheses of facts.  He then suggests that such intuition is borne out of experience and information.  Even judgments as to what is more probable and what is less so are borne of such experience and information.  He decries book learning alone : a book does not provide definitive answers.

Ligertwood describes the process of the trial as a method although he doesn’t actually draw flow-charts to demonstrate it.  He posits the production of evidence as mathematical, and describes the way in which an advocate demonstrates to the court that a certain set of postulated facts are more likely than not to have happened as an exercise of probability theory.

Pirsig attempts to unify the theoretical and practical limbs of knowledge by means of a descriptive novel.  “Zen” became the classic modern book on the philosophy of learning.   I use it as the basis of my doctoral thesis, and I am thrilled to  announce today that my brilliant publishers have decided to host my thesis on their website.

Click here to view my thesis, Practical courses for Students which benefit others in the community: Real life cross cultural work done by Australian Students with a group of south Indian village women organised into textile co-operatives in 2008 and 2009, builds on an experiment in legal aid provision to small business people carried out in Australia between 1998 and 2000.

In exactly the same way as Pirsig is able to say what his motorcycle does for him, and what he wants it to do, a lawyer who reads his book ought to be able to understand from his description what a legal problem means for the client, and what outcome the client wants.  A lawyer ought to be able to break complex concepts down into bite-size chunks and draw every possible legal problem as a flow-chart: these are the facts, these are the legal principles, this is the way the contract ought be structured or the litigation ought be argued, these are the legal risks.

I guess my formal law course as an undergraduate was much the same as yours – nothing special about me.  My course, even my articles, did not teach me to write to my own clients, the Courts, or the opposition in a comprehensive manner, to show people what litigation or documentation actually meant in practical terms.  My doctor, now, that’s different, she had one of those multicoloured plastic overlay kids’ anatomy books with charts of parts of the human body so she could show me the various parts and where the break in the bone was, how it related to the muscles around it, and so on.  And I thought, if she can do it, I can do it. 

I’ve proven the approach I took in my thesis by using its methodology to teach business skills to poor Indian villagers in 2008 and 2009.  On the basis of my work, my thesis was accepted and although it might seem unusual to be claiming to have a doctorate awarded by an obscure Indian educational and developmental institute,  I have the satisfaction of knowing the number of jobs that were created as a result of the pilot programs my wife and I ran using the methodology of my thesis.  (over 100 in the first year!)

Every book I write for Smokeball is based on the simplification of complex concepts outlined in my thesis, in everyday speech which can be easily adapted for letters to your clients.  I have designed them to be easy to read, easy to work with and easy to adapt; a sure-fire way of saving you time and money.

Whilst no charge is made for the thesis, paypal donations will keep the orphanage at Vikasana Institute in Mandya, Karnataka, South India functioning.  For information on the project see www.vikasana.net or my all-time favourite website (and not only because I wrote it) www.tradeyourkid.info.