Reflections on DFF’s First Law Clinic
Reflections on DFF’s First Law Clinic
We were thrilled to host our first law clinic through a series of online sessions between experts and clinic participants earlier this year. This clinic is part of the Digital Rights are Charter Rights thematic area of digiRISE, a project funded by the European Union (EU) CERV Action.
The clinic focused on the Charter of Fundamental Rights in the European Union (Charter) including looking at fundamental rights like protection of personal data, right to privacy, and beyond.
The clinic was developed with four main objectives:
- raise awareness of the Charter’s relevance for protecting digital rights;
- improve knowledge of judicial pathways to enforce digital Charter rights;
- promote the use of collective redress mechanisms to protect digital Charter rights; and
- provide participants and experts with the opportunity for mutual learning, exchange of good practices and development of collaborative workings on Charter-related issues.
Format of the Clinic
The clinic was setup as a series of online 45-minute sessions between clinic experts and participants from civil society organisations who wanted to develop a strategic litigation case around a digital Charter rights issue.
Our clinic sessions were set up following an open call that we launched early in the year. Applicants had to provide a brief summary of the case that they wanted to develop so that we could assess whether they wished to tackle a digital Charter right and also so that we could set them up with an appropriate clinic expert who had the requisite expertise and knowledge. Given the varied fundamental rights in the Charter, we deliberately chose clinic experts that covered a range of thematic expertise and were experienced litigators so that participants could get the most value out of the sessions.
We also ensured that our experts came from and worked in different EU countries including the Netherlands, Greece and Italy so that they could better understand local contexts and perspectives.
Both participants and experts had to sign confidentiality agreements to ensure that there could be a safe flow of information, a responsibility for a secure environment leading to open conversations about the potential litigation cases. The actual sessions were held without the presence of anyone (including DFF staff) other than the relevant expert and participants in order to foster the desired confidential and safe environment.
Reflections on the Process
We asked both the participants and the experts to reflect on the process and the results were overwhelmingly positive. Apart from one participant, all participants felt that their personal objectives were fully met by the process. All participants felt comfortable talking about their case to their particular expert and were satisfied with the organisation of the clinic.
For instance, one participant said that we should ‘keep fostering these clinic sessions; they are incredibly insightful.’
Some of the experts identified that they found it useful that they were given a decent level autonomy to run the clinic sessions in a way that seemed most appropriate and that the matching of participants and experts were well done.
Some key learnings that the experts reflected on were:
- not assuming that elementary angles to litigation arguments had already been explored by participants;
- connecting experts and participants earlier in the process; and
- creating an online notepad to share notetaking during the sessions so that tangible information remained available after the end of the session.
Looking to the Future
We are very happy the results of our first DFF digiRISE law clinic. Following the end of the clinic sessions, Alexandra was already invited to and held an in-person law clinic session at a Digital Policing workshop which was co-organised by Weaving Liberation and European Network Against Racism.
Looking forward, we hope to learn from this process and host more virtual and in-person clinics in the future tackling different digital rights issues. We also hope to inspire others to set up their own clinics. If you would like advice about setting up your own clinic or have questions about future clinics that we might organise, please get in touch with us at alexandra@digitalfreedomfund.org.
“Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or CERV Programme. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.”