Prof. V. S. Mallar Memorial Legal Aid Competition 2022

The Centre for Environmental Law, Education, Research and Advocacy (CEERA), NLSIU, under the aegis of the Department of Justice, Ministry of Law and Justice, Government of India, is organising the Prof. V. S. Mallar Memorial Legal Aid Competition 2022. The competition, being held under the Pan India Legal Literacy and Legal Awareness Programme, will take place over four months, commencing July 1, 2022.

About the Competition

Access to legal education is a necessary corollary to the right of free legal aid. With the advance of digital technologies, this right has become all the more accessible. This being stated, limited access to digital technologies may stand as a barrier to the effective enforcement of this right. As a legal literacy dissemination agency, CEERA, NLSIU is endeavouring to ensure the spread of legal literacy and awareness not only through digital platforms but also through engagements with institutions at the ground level to achieve the visionary efforts of the Department of Justice. In this regard, the catalytic efforts of legal aid clinics and legal aid cells are key to ensuring dissemination of legal literacy at a grass-root level.

Legal aid clinics, particularly those functioning under the aegis of educational institutions, play a pivotal role in improving community access to legal information and education and in engaging the youth in mass literacy dissemination efforts. They serve as vital bridges in bridging the information asymmetry between public institutions and the general citizenry, especially with regard to the latter’s rights and entitlements. However, the state of affairs in India depicts the need for more impetus to tap into the potential of legal aid cells and clinics. At present, around 907 legal services clinics housed within law schools/ universities exist in India.1 But the number of such cells and clinics which are functional or are actively involved in dissemination of legal literacy remains dismal. At this juncture, the Prof. V. S. Mallar Legal Aid Competition stands to provide an important platform to encourage active involvement of legal aid clinics with the community at large.

The endeavor of the competition is to augment the activities of the legal aid cells across the country to spread essential legal awareness by conducting awareness drives and various other creative initiatives and campaigns to bring to the fore the presence of informational asymmetry contributing directly to the lack of legal awareness. This initiative shall encourage budding lawyers to explore creative means to disseminate legal awareness about the issues that they feel need to be addressed by the mainstream society.

The competition is sought to serve as a unique platform for young changemakers to disseminate legal awareness through innovative means by identifying areas and target groups to ultimately create tangible legal awareness dissemination drives.

This initiative primarily aims at building on legal literacy across India that translates to spreading knowledge of a primary level in law. This is the need of hour as law students need to take the mantle of disseminating legal awareness and explore innovative ways to spread legal literacy. This endeavor shall culminate in the creation of a nation-wide movement that shall bring out issues that that were non-existent in the pre-pandemic world.

Registration

• Registration deadline: The deadline has been extended to June 30, 2022
• Registration fee – Rs. 4000

Who can register?

The Legal Aid Competition is open to all legal aid clinics/committees housed in any educational institute.

How do I register?

To register, please fill out the form here. Registered institutions will be shared with a zoom link to join the launch of the competition, details of which will be shared in due course.

Know More

To read more details, please view the brochure here.