A rural family in Sierra Leone is unable to collect payment from tenant farmers. With only 100 lawyers in the country—90 percent of whom reside and work in the country’s capital—who will the family turn to for help? After the fall of the Iron Curtain, many post-Soviet countries had plenty of lawyers; however, few had a legal culture of public interest service and rights defense which law school clinics commonly help engender.
Countries around the world struggling with human rights, justice, and accountability often face a shortage of lawyers or find that few in the legal profession will give up lucrative opportunities in order to assist poor clients or advocate public interest cases. When this occurs, people are deprived of a powerful tool to fight for real change: the law.
The Open Society Justice Initiative builds legal capacity around the world by encouraging and equipping those in the legal profession to pursue public interest work and helping underserved communities partner with paralegals, law students, and lawyers.
It has helped establish more than 75 law clinics around the world—from Mexico to Mozambique—to train advocates in the spirit of social justice and public service, and provide desperately needed legal services in underserved communities. Its fellowship program fortifies this growing network of advocates and strengthens the capacity of local organizations working on the front lines.
The Justice Initiative is also working to improve people’s interactions with the justice system—especially the poor—by taking its pioneering paralegal pilot project, launched in Sierra Leone in 2003, to a national scale. Community-based paralegals, backed by a small team of public interest lawyers, will deliver basic justice services to rural communities and bolster poor people’s power to protect their families, homes, or other possessions.
