Legal clinics / Legal Aid

In cooperation with the Open Society Institute and the International Renaissance Foundation we support legal clinics and legal aid projects to promote equal access to justice for Ukrainian citizens, bolster the rule of law and safeguard human rights.

Legal clinics

This project helped to establish a network of 37 legal clinics in 21 different regions in Ukraine. Legal clinics, where law students offer free legal services to the general population, serve two main goals: educating people in legal affairs, and providing legal services to those who need but cannot afford them. These legal clinics are extremely important for Ukraine, where the educational system for lawyers desperately lacks practical skills, and where the majority of citizens cannot afford to hire a private lawyer.

Legal aid

This project, launched in 2007, provides free legal representation for criminal defendants, i.e.: access to a public attorney prior to police interrogation; the right to decline an attorney’s help only in his/her presence; and notifying public attorneys of each detention case. This initiative was launched in three regions of Ukraine: East (Kharkiv), Center (Bila Tserkva) and West (Khmelnitsky).

The three public defenders’ offices made contracts with the regional law-enforcement departments and provided legal aid for criminal defendants from the moment of detention. This has resulted in fewer number of detentions performed by the district offices involved and fewer people imprisoned as a prevention.