An Employment Law Clinic: Developing of Student’s Capacity through Clinical Legal Education in Employment Matters on ASEAN Economic Community Era

Abstract

A legal clinic recognized as one of an important program in law school.
Legal clinic provides a legal experience to law school students and
services to various clients. Legal clinic typically do pro bono work in a
particular area, providing free legal services to clients. ASEAN Economic
Community (AEC) Era become one of challenges for regional
community especially Indonesia on facing and surviving in free trade
area. With high flow of trade activities—in the context of international
trade activities—the understanding about employment law is needed
on only for practitioners but also students as well as law school
graduates. The employment law clinic offers legal advice to members of
the community on a wide array of employment matters. This service is
critical, particularly at a time when the introduction of employment fees
have caused an alarmingly significant drop in claims. This translates to
an increase in non-litigated violations of employment law due to
financial barriers. The paper would examine three main things, first how
was an employment law clinic in law school legal education as a prior
basic understanding to face AEC era, second how an employment law
clinic can be used by students to establish and increase their capacity in
the context of employment matters, and third how this clinic will
provide a legal service in international trade law context as well as
concerning to labor and employment law. The paper focus on
employment law matters, such as illegal deduction of pay case,
employment discrimination, unfair dismissal, zero-hour contract, trade
union freedom in regional Southeast Asia. The paper emphasized that
the clinic was need to involve some companies and governments as
partner, as well as the practitioners and lawyers.