法律诊所与法律赋能的有机结合： 法律赋能诊所

随着诊所式法律教育和法律赋能理念的发展，两者相结合的法律赋能诊所成为一种新型的法律诊所形式。法律诊所和法律赋能在目的上彼此接近，在气质上彼此契合。一方面，法律赋能为法律诊所提供了新的思路和主题，另一方面，法律诊所为法律赋能提供了新的路径和资源，因此，法律赋能诊所这一形式颇有价值。强调替代性争端解决机制的作用，以社区为基础，注重当事人的参与，均构成了法律赋能诊所的特点。而以学生及当事人利益为依归，以法律赋能为基础更是这一诊所形式必须坚持的价值原则。在这一原则的指导下，法律赋能诊所可以开展个案法律援助、社区法律教育、社区法工培训、社区法律调研和法律政策倡导等活动。为了促进法律赋能诊所的发展，可以用量性和质性方法对其管理和教学质量、赋能成效进行监测和评估。

The Legal Empowerment Clinic: A Successful Combination of the Legal Clinic and Legal Empowerment

With the development of clinical legal education, legal clinics have begun to highlight its value in “social justice,” in addition to its value as a practical legal education model. When it is combined with the concept of legal empowerment, a new type of legal clinic, namely the legal empowerment clinic emerged. This combination is a success because clinical legal education and legal empowerment share common goals and characteristics in certain aspects. With this combination, these two types of programs promote each other. On the one hand, legal empowerment inspires clinic legal education with new methodologies and themes; on the other hand, legal clinics provide legal empowerment programs with new approaches and resources. Hence the value of the legal empowerment clinic. As a new type of legal clinic, the concept of the legal empowerment clinic is not “lawyer for” clients, but “lawyer with” clients. The main characteristics of the legal empowerment clinic include: （1) recognition of the importance of alternative dispute resolutions and multiple ways to achieve social justice; （2) community-based approaches; and （3) encouragement of the participation of clients in the programs and legal empowerment for clients. The most important principles of the legal empowerment clinic are: （1) taking the interests of the students and clients of the clinic as the highest values, and keeping a balance between its educational function and social function; （2) focusing on the empowerment for clients and their communities by deciding topics and program designs from the perspective of legal empowerment, empowering the clients during service, and promoting the changes of policies and the social environment to achieve an equal standing for the client within the power structure. There are several activities which legal empowerment clinics can launch, including providing legal aid for individual clients, and engaging in community legal education, community-based paralegal training, community legal research and policy/legal advocacy. To improve legal empowerment clinics, we can monitor and evaluate the quality of their teaching and management, and the impact of the above activities by quantitative and/or qualitative methods. This paper discusses the legal empowerment clinic, a new issue in the fields of clinical legal education and legal empowerment. The research of this topic is of great significance to the development of China’s clinical legal education and legal aid as well as to the improvement of rights of vulnerable communities. The paper demonstrates a new type of legal clinic, namely legal empowerment clinic, and summarizes its characteristics and principles. It looks into the latest theories on legal empowerment and the practice of clinical legal education in China, and probes into the possible activities and the methods for monitoring and evaluating legal empowerment clinics. Finally, due to space limitations, this article only gives a general introduction of the monitoring and evaluating methods of legal empowerment clinics without expatiating on their procedures and tools.