Legal Desk
You can write to us using the form below, or contact us directly using our contact details.
The Legal Desk of the Migration and Rights Legal Clinic (MiDi Clinic) – UNIPA
The legal desk of the Migration and Rights Legal Clinic (MiDi Clinic) was established through an agreement between the CLEDU Association, the Department of Law of the University of Palermo, and the PhD Programme in “Human Rights: Evolution, Protection and Limits”.
CLEDU takes part in the MiDi Legal Clinic help desk through lawyers and legal practitioners who are committed each week to providing free legal orientation and advice, together with faculty members and university students. The help desk is a legal training program aimed at strengthening the theoretical and practical skills of young legal professionals, while also fostering their ethical and social responsibility.
Through this service, CLEDU makes the expertise of lawyers and legal professionals available to the community, involving students and supporting them in a distinctive training path that combines legal theory with the realities of legal practice.
As part of this activity, we have produced two monitoring reports on the MiDi Legal Clinic, which provide a detailed account of the activities carried out and the data collected, including statistics on, for example, the number and nationalities of the people assisted, the types of requests received, the research conducted, and the participants involved.
What does it do?
The legal desk offers a free service of legal orientation and counselling, addressed primarily—though not exclusively—to migrants and foreign nationals in general, in matters such as international protection, reception, residence permits and regularisation of legal status, access to civil and social rights, discrimination, citizenship, and administrative detention. It carries out both extrajudicial and judicial activities in strategic cases.
At the center are students, engaged in a training activity that brings together theoretical knowledge and practical experience.
Activities and educational programs of the MiDi Legal Clinic
Within the MiDi Legal Clinic, the following activities are also organised:
- Training events on migration law and human rights, adopting a learning-by-doing approach, for instance through simulations and workshops
- Preparatory seminars to support the active participation of students in the legal desk’s activities, also open to socio-legal practitioners in the area
- Street-law activities
- Action-Research projects: participation in national and international projects, as well as research and monitoring activities in the field of human rights and anti-discrimination
- Training internships for Law students and, in specific cases, students from other degree programmes
When and where to find us
The help desk is open throughout the year (excluding summer and Christmas academic breaks).
When
Every Wednesday afternoon, from 3:30 PM to 6:00 PM
Where
Department of Law - UNIPA Piazza Bologni 8, Palermo
Any notices regarding the help desk are published on our social media and on this website.
If you are a student, you can participate in our activities as an intern or as a volunteer.
Check the internships section for more information.
If you are a PhD student, a researcher, or a volunteer and wish to participate in our activities, please write to clinicalegalemidi@unipa.it or contact the MiDi Legal Clinic Coordinator at alessandra.sciurba@unipa.it.
For more information and further details about the MiDi Legal Clinic, please consult the page.
What is a legal clinic?
Legal clinics originated in the early twentieth century in the United States and later spread worldwide, to the point that some scholars speak of a “global clinical movement”. The ENCLE – European Network for Clinical Legal Education gives concrete shape to this movement at the European level by connecting the different experiences.
The clinical legal approach is a method of teaching law through practical engagement, generally oriented towards the promotion of social justice. In a legal clinic, students—under the supervision of academic tutors and lawyers—learn the law by providing legal assistance in real cases.
Clinical legal education programmes take many forms. The most widespread is pro bono judicial and extrajudicial legal assistance for individuals and groups with limited access to justice, due to factors such as poverty, marginalisation, or legal and social discrimination.
Clinical activities may include the direct handling of individual cases, street law programmes—designed to disseminate legal knowledge outside university classrooms through interactive methods that increase public awareness of rights—policy drafting on issues of significant social relevance, and other experimental initiatives.
The distinctive feature of clinical education is offering students the opportunity to “learn by doing”, exposing them to a guided but direct encounter with reality, while at the same time fulfilling the “third mission” of universities by placing academic knowledge at the service of the community.
Training Internships
Collaboration by students in the work of the MiDi Legal Clinic may also be formalised through training internships.
Training internships are open to Law students enrolled in the third year and above and, in particular cases, also to students from other degree programmes and/or from foreign universities through inter-university exchange projects. Activities take place mainly on the premises of the Department of Law.
Interns collaborate in the activities of the legal orientation and counselling desk (clickable link to the desk). Within inter-university exchange projects, interns carry out research activities on specific topics agreed upon with their tutors.
As part of their overall training, internships also include additional moments of individual or group legal and bibliographic research, based on materials and guidance provided by the tutors.
Attendance is mandatory. Preference is given to applicants who know one or more foreign languages.
To participate in the activities of the MiDi Legal Clinic, send an email to clinicalegalemidi@unipa.it or to the Coordinator, Prof. Alessandra Sciurba, at alessandra.sciurba@unipa.it.
What does the MiDi Legal Clinic offer students?
In general, the learning-by-doing approach typical of legal clinics allows students to acquire knowledge through practice.
The MiDi Legal Clinic seeks to combine the educational goals of the university curriculum with broader objectives of social justice, encouraging students to develop skills that will be essential in the professions they will undertake at the end of their studies.
More specifically, students participating in the activities of the legal clinic have the opportunity to:
- gain field experience under the qualified supervision of professors and lawyers, particularly in the areas of immigration, asylum, and discrimination, by contributing to the resolution of real cases;
- apply their legal knowledge in the service of the community and for the protection of human rights, facilitating access to justice for individuals who are impoverished, marginalised, or made vulnerable;
- collaborate with associations, institutions, and legal and social practitioners active in the field of rights protection;
- apply legal research and analytical methods to solve legal issues arising from real situations;
- develop organisational, communication, and interpersonal skills, especially through continuous teamwork;
- expand their multidisciplinary knowledge, awareness, and sensitivity towards fundamental and current social issues;
- enrich their curriculum through training internships.
Further information is available at UniPa’s website.
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