• Cáritas 
• Consorcio das Mariñas 
• Teixeiro Penitentiary Centre 
• Fundación Paideia 
• Spanish Legal Clinic Network

Community partners identify pressing legal and social challenges faced by their users. Through ongoing collaboration with academic staff, these needs are translated into service-learning projects. Cases, workshop topics, and legal problems originate directly from community organizations and beneficiaries.

Partners act as beneficiary, co-educator and co-designer. Students subsequently work on real cases under joint academic and professional supervision. Community organizations receive legal support, educational materials, workshops, legal analyses, practical solutions, and increased organizational capacity. Students gain authentic professional experience through direct engagement with real clients and social challenges. Partners actively contribute to defining cases, supervising students, and evaluating project outcomes.

The Legal Clinic “Social Justice” is integrated into the Law Degree through curricular internships (Prácticas Externas Curriculares), extracurricular internships, and Final Degree Projects (TFGs). Students receive academic credits through the internship module and engage in real legal cases serving vulnerable populations. The clinic represents a service-learning approach embedded within the practical training component of legal education.

The Legal Clinic aims to: 

• Develop practical legal competencies through real cases. 
• Connect legal theory with professional practice. 
• Strengthen ethical responsibility and social justice awareness. 
• Foster critical legal thinking and problem-solving. 
• Promote civic engagement and professional responsibility. 
• Enhance communication, mediation, and client-oriented skills. 
• Develop students’ ability to work with vulnerable populations. 

Service activities:

• Legal counselling and orientation
• Analysis of real legal cases
•  Preparation of legal reports and recommendations
• Support in accessing social benefits and public services
• Workshops and seminars for prison inmates
• Development of practical legal guides and informational materials
• Assistance to migrants, refugees, and vulnerable families
• Participation in emergency legal response initiatives. 

Learning activities:

• Legal research and case analysis
• Client interviews
• Problem-solving and legal reasoning
• Preparation of legal documentation
• Reflection and critical analysis
• Collaborative work with professionals and community organizations
• Presentation and communication of legal information in accessible formats

Students play an active role in analysing cases, proposing legal solutions, developing educational materials, preparing workshops, and identifying additional actions that may benefit communities. Several initiatives, such as practical legal guides, originated directly from student ideas and observations of community needs.

Reflection is embedded throughout the placement, taking place before, during and after the service activity. Students maintain diaries, participate in meetings with academic supervisors, prepare weekly reports, and complete final reflective reports. Reflection helps students connect legal theory with practice, critically examine social inequalities, evaluate their professional development, and understand the societal implications of legal work.

Assessment consists of evaluation of professional performance, initiative, problem-solving, and engagement. Teachers, students and community partners are engaged in the course assessment

Assessment methods:

• Professional supervisor assessment
• Student reflective report and portfolio

Values

• Valuing human diginity & human rights
• Valuing democracy, justice, equality & the rule of law

Attitudes

• Respect
• Responsibility

Skills

• Analytical & critical thinking skills
• Autonomous learning skills
• Co-operation skills
• Conflict-resolution skills
• Empathy
• Flexibility & adaptability
• Linguistic, communicative & plurilingual skills

Knowledge and critical understanding

• Knowledge & critical understanding of the world

Students engage directly with socially vulnerable individuals and communities, confronting real issues of inequality, poverty, migration, disability, incarceration, and social exclusion. Through legal counselling, collaborative problem-solving, dialogue with clients and professionals, and continuous reflection, students develop democratic values, empathy, social responsibility, and an understanding of justice and human rights in practice.

• Practical legal competence
• Legal research and analysis skills
• Communication and interviewing skills
• Professional ethics
• Understanding of social justice and vulnerable populations
• Interdisciplinary problem-solving abilities
• Improved capacity to connect legal frameworks with real-life situations

• Legal assistance provided to hundreds of beneficiaries
• Improved access to legal information and social benefits
• Legal workshops and counselling for prison inmates
• Development of guides and educational materials
• Strengthened support for migrants, refugees, and vulnerable families
• Enhanced collaboration between university and civil society

• Limited number of internship places
• Short duration of placements (100 hours)
• Balancing academic requirements and community needs
• Managing complex multidisciplinary cases
• Maintaining sustainability of projects
• Expanding cooperation beyond the Faculty of Law
• Coordinating year-round partnerships and new initiatives

• Institutional recognition of service-learning
• Reliable community partnerships
• Academic staff committed to experiential learning
• Structured supervision and assessment mechanisms
• Opportunities for students to work on authentic community needs
• Balance between professional responsibility and student autonomy