Boyd Professor to Work with Vietnamese Legal Programs for UN

One professor at the William S. Boyd School of Law will be going to Vietnam on behalf of the United Nations thanks to their approval of a project made up of world-wide consortium of law professors in partnership with Vietnamese lawyers and law professors.

Martin Geer, externship director and professor at the law school, will join this diverse group to help Vietnamese law schools develop their own clinical law programs. The UN approved a grant for the program for one year earlier this month.

"This is the first time for an UN-funded project focused on developing both legal aid and clinical education in Vietnam," Geer said. "There is a core group of six people who will be involved in on-the-ground development and I will be one of the senior trainers. I will be spending 10 days this year and next on the ground in Vietnam."

A training session of supervising lawyers at a law school in Hanoi last year.

The UN has given the project group a year to do training and assessment.  Geer said that although he will be providing information on how clinical programs are done in America and other countries, it will be up to the Vietnamese to decide what long-term revisions in their legal education system.

"We are bringing in models of clinical legal education into those law schools," he said. "In many classes I've seen, the teacher comes in, opens a book, reads directly from it, closes it and leaves. There's no discussion. There is a significant care taken by the UN and the project group not to impose models.  Options will be explored for the development of legal education by partnering Vietnamese legal educators and lawyers with those with expertise in clinical education throughout the world. Ultimately, the Vietnamese will decide what is a 'good fit' for them and how to implement it."

Geer added the importance of gaining the support of the lawyers who will be supervising law students in clinical programs who will be the legal aid providers to the poor.

"There is a need to train lawyers on how to do good supervision – to give feedback," Geer said. It's all about tying the law schools to the real world. This will also facilitate the growth of international externship placements in Asia for Boyd students."