"we would like to showcase the achievements of our legal clinic and reaffirm the importance of access to the law devices"-Le Monde DE droit: Le magazine des professions juridiques

Educational, human and charitable, the clinic is above all a means of access to the law and of professional training from which all parties benefit. To learn more about its functioning and actions, the world of law interviewed Marie Cardinale and Julia-Marie Dulau, President and Vice-President of the EFB Legal Clinic.

Pourriez-vous présenter, en quelques mots, l'identité de la Clinique juridique de l'EFB ?

The clinic is an association made up of student lawyers, supervised by lawyers from the Paris Solidarité Bar. This is part of a charitable approach, which is why those involved, be they students or lawyers, operate exclusively as volunteers.

If there are legal clinics on all sides at the moment, it is worth noting that our clinic is part of the Bar Association of Paris. As such, student lawyers cannot work shifts without being supervised by lawyers. In other words, everything the student lawyer does must be approved. It is a support that we cannot do without.

As far as its structure is concerned, the EFB clinic is composed of 8 poles, one of which is dedicated to communication. Modelo, Secours Populaire and SOS Racisme are partners in the model, asylum and discrimination poles. The rest of the poles are dedicated to the general law, the Restos du Cœur and violence against women.

Les spécialités de chacun influent-elles sur les activités de la Clinique juridique ?

It should be borne in mind that the clinic brings together a lot of student lawyers who have different specialties. For example, Marie does criminal law, medical and pharmaceutical responsibility, while Julia-Marie, for her part, practices in banking and financial law, but in the meantime deals with social law.?

However, we do not ask any of the students to have a specific specialty. The idea is, on the contrary, to allow them to work in their specialties in order to expand their experience in this field, but also to promote the diversity of experiments by moving from one legal field to another.

Quelles ont été les réalisations concrètes de la Clinique ?

Our concrete achievements are carried out within our various poles. Shifts are carried out at different frequencies, depending on the demand. In practical terms, we are at the level of first legal counsel. This first approach may allow us to identify problems that would require the intervention of a lawyer. In the event that a judicial remedy was to be provided, we would take on the role of "relays" to solidarity buses whose shifts are carried out directly by lawyers.

This office has also been in great demand to communicate on how we do and operate. We try to make our contribution at our own level and explain what we are doing. A project with Madagascar was undertaken by our clinic a short time ago, with the aim of bringing our experience and advice as clinicians to the Malagasy student lawyers, who in turn wanted to embark on the creation of a legal clinic. If the partnership is successful, we will be keen to welcome them and provide them with concrete support on the ground.

Finally, we diversify our points of action and communication and try to be present on several fronts, even by participating in sports competitions or round tables.

Quelles sont les nouvelles préoccupations de la Clinique ?

The idea is that the successor offices will continue to promote the projects undertaken by the previous offices. One of the challenges is, in many cases, to take over a newly established partnership, to sustain it and to develop it.

The first concern that guides our actions is inevitably access to the law. The aim is to democratize legal advice in order to make it accessible to the poorest.

The second focuses on the development of communication. Too little known to student lawyers-or even lawyers in general-we want to give visibility to the EFB Legal Clinic. On some issues, we Don't have volunteer lawyers and that's a problem.

In addition to volunteer experience, the Legal Clinic benefits all stakeholders. While it provides the student lawyer with experience, it provides the patient with access to the law and the lawyer with contact with future generations.

Comments received by Léa Verdure