3. How did CLE come about and what do clinics do that is relevant to the climate?

CLE in Australia began in the early 1970s alongside and in conjunction with the nascent community legal centre (‘CLC’) movement. Australian CLE and CLCs had a common focus on social justice and providing legal help for economically and socially disadvantaged individuals who were unable to access regular paid legal services.^[1] Many CLE programs in Australia were started by volunteer law students inspired by the politics of social change and social justice. Similar forces were at work in other jurisdictions. While each jurisdiction has its own history, the 1960s and early 1970s saw clinical programs established in at law schools in the United States of America, Canada and the United Kingdom. Clinical programs are now found in law schools worldwide.

In Australia, early clinical programs provided general legal support and focused on assisting individual clients, usually low-income or disadvantaged.^[2] Specialist clinics that focused on a particular subject matter, area of law or category of client emerged in the 1990s.^[3] Since then the concept of the ‘client’ as well as the nature of the work done by students in clinic has expanded. For instance, clinics now:

• offer advice and transactional work for organisations and enterprises;
• undertake research, advocacy and policy development for social movements or even for the environment as client;^[4]
• do community legal education, law reform and capacity building where the client is the community.

Two elements provide a common link for clinics across time: the real nature of the work and the ongoing commitment, particularly in the Australian context, to social justice and the public interest.^[5]

The term ‘climate justice’ recognises that structural and socio-economic inequalities, and intergenerational inequity, impact individuals’ and communities’ experience of climate change, and advocates for equitable solutions that prioritise the needs of those who most affected.^[6] Given the existential threat posed by a changing climate — to the environment and humanity — and the recognition that the impacts of a changing climate are not borne equally, a climate clinic falls squarely within this framework.^[7]

In addition to the wide ambit of the ‘work’ and ‘clients’ of a clinic there are a range of approaches or models for CLE, ranging from in-house generalist or specialist clinics based at law schools in which students are supervised by law school academic staff practitioners, to externship models in which students undertake placements and are supervised by lawyers in CLCs, private firms or government. These different ways of doing CLE will be discussed in more detail later in the chapter in the context of different models for climate clinics.