Legal Empowerment
Building people creates change. CSJ’s strategy is to build capacity in those from vulnerable backgrounds, to lead the change.
How we design trainings for empowerment
Conventional trainings limit empowerment; they are unilateral and feed information into the head. CSJ has developed its own pedagogy that targets perspective and skills with information: the Heart-Head-Hand model. This pedagogy, rooted in Freirian thought, applies to training all: lawyers, paralegals, students, teachers and more.
Empowering lawyers to
be change-makers
It is key to justice that lawyers from vulnerable communities lead the charge. CSJ helps them become strong leaders at both the Bar and in the community.
Vulnerable young lawyers face many obstacles. Legal training is often inaccessible, incomprehensive, and lacks sensitivity to identifying one’s own vulnerability.
Over the years, we have developed a strong institutional mechanism to identify, train, and guide them in overcoming the shackles of deficit they face in establishing themselves as lawyers.
Pioneering and institutionalising
the role of paralegals in India
There is a gap between lawyers and the common people, making the law hard to access.
Paralegals are the systemic solution to this. But despite more paralegals being available in India today, their recognition by the mainstream has been a challenge. Legitimising their role has required sustained effort: in which CSJ has been instrumental.
CSJ anchored the Indian Institute of Paralegal Studies, a network of 34 organisations in 5 States to establish paralegals as a widely recognised cadre and to eliminate the hierarchy between lawyers and paralegals in their roles to provide legal aid.
A MAPPING OF PARALEGALISM IN ACTION
Bringing the Grassroots to the Classrooms
Conventional university education leaves out practical realities and an understanding of the law from a social justice perspective.
To bridge this gap, we work with both, faculty and students, through a pedagogy developed by us that combines social realities with classroom teaching into a seamless whole.
Reach out to us to collaborate and select from the fine curation of tried-and-tested courses that we have provided to universities like NUJS Kolkata, NALSAR Hyderabad, GNLU Gandhinagar and ILNU Ahmedabad.
Adding a legal lens to social movement
The law can be a powerful tool for social transformation. We enable civil society organisations to be able to use it more.
Over the years, CSJ has developed various frameworks, concepts and methods that combine grassroots realities with the law. We collaborate, train and help various other organisations committed to social transformation so that our works can benefit more people.
To know more about this, read our works below.
Enagaging with key stakeholders
State officials are key stakeholders to creating change. We engage with multiple government stakeholders to influence their decision-making. We engage with them by attending their meetings, inviting them to our trainings and meetings and, through a process of continuous dialoguing with them.
Many members of CSJ also hold positions in the Internal Complaints Committee for government organisations.
To know more, read our works below.
