Project details

Passau's Law Clinic promotes academic exchange within the worldwide iLINK network. Through international exchange within the iLINK network, the student legal advice group hopes to foster academic exchange, to gain didactic skills and gain international contacts.

The iLINK network establishes academic links between ‘core partners' (Queen Mary University of London, University of Amsterdam, KU Leuven and the Hans Bredow Insitute for Media Research, Hamburg) as well as partner universities from all across Europe and a number of transatlantic contacts.

Support for free legal advice from students

The network supports and advises institutions who offer legal services to individuals and companies that are not (yet) able to afford conventional legal advice, as is often the case with entrepreneurs and companies that have recently been formed (start-up businesses); at the same time this gives university students an opportunity to combine theory and practice. As a 'best practice meeting', the Amsterdam conference aims to establish a personal contact between the various stakeholders, creating a network and presenting current projects to the other partners. The previous experiences exchanged might be beneficial to the further development of Passau's Law Clinic.

Membership in the network is vital for Passau's Law Clinic, as it can benefit from the experiences and knowledge gained from other network partners, some of whom have been operating their law clinics for a longer time: this is expected to result in an increase in the quality of services offered by Passau's Law Clinic.

Gaining didactic skills

The team intends to collaborate closely with the network and its active partners in the future. In doing so, it hopes to obtain didactic skills and knowledge benefitting both the law students and the stock of knowledge within the Law Clinic. As the concept of Law Clinics derives from the Anglo-American legal area, cooperative partnerships with partners from this area are particularly expedient.

Underscoring the significance of the network, the project is integrated into the European context through the EU's Seventh Framework Programme; it aims to improve collaboration between lecturers and students, which should bring about higher levels of academic work. Knowledge creation and transfer within the project will make a positive contribution to the long-term establishment and organisation of Passau's Law Clinic, thereby indirectly benefitting those seeking legal advice from outside the university context.

Project head at the University of Passau; funding organisations

Professor Lewinski, holder of the Chair of Public Law, Media Law and Information Law, has headed the Law Clinic at the University of Passau. The project has received funding from the cooperation promotion fund BayIntAn of the Bavarian State Ministry of Education, Science and the Arts, which is aimed at supporting international research partnerships.