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Monday, July 5, 2010

How to start an IDIA chapter at your law college

IDIA teams are free from bureaucratic controls and institutional requirements. It is a volunteer based movement which any socially motivated law student can initiate at his/her law college.

Here is a brief primer:






1. Read the concept note on IDIA (Increasing Diversity by Increasing Access to Legal Education) to get to know about IDIA in complete detail.

2. In your college inform as many people as you can. Tell your friends about it and get in touch with the Legal Aid Society and other related groups. Send the concept note to the group/batch email accounts. Get the support of the faculty too.

Please note that IDIA has no hierarchical organisation though team leaders are responsible for the allotted tasks.

After gathering considerable support of the students and faculty, talk to your Vice Chancellor/Director about IDIA and brainstorm how your law college can start similar initiatives in and around the area.

You can put a letter by the Vice Chancellor/Director on notice boards asking students to join the IDIA team.

3. Identify senior secondary schools (schools till class 12) situated in rural/economically backward areas in and around your college. See if you know some student/teacher from that school so that convincing the authorities becomes easier. You can also talk to the Principal of the school directly.

4. After discussing it with the school principal decide on some specific day when the IDIA team will visit the school for the talk/seminar and the aptitude test. Prepare well in advance. Talking about local legal personalities, stars go well with the students and so does the mention of placement figures etc.

5. Talk and test- Ideally you will need to reserve two classes (of 45 minutes each, approximately) for the two tasks. During the pre-decided day the first class is utilised for a small talk on CLAT, National Law Schools and Law as a career option. In the second class the aptitude test (which is available to the IDIA teams) is administered to the students.

6. Select- The students who score the highest in the aptitude test are selected after consultation with their teachers. The students selected should have a good chance of cracking CLAT on being provided with coaching.

The aptitude test’s marks are to be tabulated in an excel file.

Those students who are economically well off are not given free CLAT coaching but can surely keep in touch for guidance/mentoring etc. Economically poor students qualify for free CLAT coaching. Their full details should be kept for record.

7. Share- Students are encouraged to share their experiences on the school visits etc. Our blog should provide you a ready reference on that.

8. Reach out- Visit as many schools as possible. Join the Facebook page, the blog, the group mails etc. For any clarification you can contact Prof. Shamnad Basheer of NUJS at shamnad[at]gmail[dot]com or Deepak Raju, a 5th year student at NUJS who is coordinating with the IDIA regional teams at deepakelanthoor[at]gmail[dot]com,

9. Funding and support- Try to get as many funds as possible. Travel, accommodation, printing costs etc. require money and socially committed lawyers, law firms, NGOs, philanthropists etc. should be willing to help you.

You can send the IDIA funding note to prospective donors.

IDIA has a tie-up with IMS for free CLAT coaching. If your area does not have an IMS center you will also need to involve a CLAT coaching institution to train the selected students.

There is a lot more that IDIA teams are doing. You will get to know about that with time when you become the part of the Google groups which have such great levels of activity that it has been difficult to keep with the inflow of emails!

Picture from here.

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