In the first week of law school I heard about the Legal Services Clinic. An introduction was given to me in our legal methods class by the ‘convener’ and some other members. Soon after an ‘LLP’ was announced. After the initial confusion over what an LLP was, which I later realised was the short form for a ‘Legal Literacy Program’ I decided to go along and see what it was like. We were told that we would teach class 10 students ‘the law’. This seemed to be a very scary idea for me. First of all just into law school I firmly believed that I did not know any ‘law’ and secondly teaching class 10 students for me was a very formidable idea as I did not really consider myself out of school at that time..but I still went along.
Once we started off I realised that we do little skits for the students and teach them the law through that to make it more interesting for them. And to my relief in the first trip first years we were not expected to have any magical knowledge of the law but were just required to participate in the skits. So began my first llp with me acting as a hoity toity housewife who had lost her precious diamond necklace and was blaming the poor housemaid for it. And as the legal literacy program progressed I myself learnt a lot. Coming to law school, it was the first time someone told me how to file an FIR! It is then I realised how important these legal literacy programs were as even some of us first years did not know basic things like filing FIRs. Also participating in the LLPs I realised what a difference these could make and how interested these children were in these LLPs.
-Adhiti Gupta
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