Legal education is key to promoting the rule of law. Law faculties need to teach their students to find solutions to legal problems which promote legal certainty and justice. The Strengthening Legal Education in Eastern Indonesia (SLEEI) project is supporting four universities in Eastern Indonesia to implement changes in what they teach to law students and how it is taught.

The SLEEI project works with the University of Mataram, Wira Wacana Christian University in Waingapu, Artha Wacana Christian University in Kupang and the University of Pattimura in Ambon to create and implement a new framework for course development and teaching methods.

Better-qualified graduates

The framework is designed to lead to better-qualified graduates, who will not only have more of the legal skills the labour market requires, but will also be aware of the context, ethics and gender aspects of the issues they will deal with in their professional lives.

The geographical focus of the project is on Eastern Indonesia, where few law faculties have had the opportunity for international cooperation.

Improving legal education

Using a ‘training of trainers’ approach, Indonesian and Dutch experts provided focused staff training in improving legal education and facilitating joint-learning processes. The results will not only be applied within the selected universities but also shared to reach and benefit as wide an audience as possible.

To help prepare these trainers for their task and support them in planning their work, KIT, together with the Van Vollenhove Institute of the Leiden University, facilitated a tailored training of trainers in Ambon from 3 to 8 February 2020.

The workshop’s first session featured an engaging seminar hosted by the University Pattimura in Ambon City which brought together 100 scholars, stakeholders and students to discuss current developments and challenges in legal education in Indonesia and in Ambon in particular.

During the remainder of the week, the Indonesian trainers and representatives of the Indonesian project partner universities for Ambon, Kupang, Waingapu, Mataram, Jogjakarta and Jakarta went through an intensive workshop process, coordinated by KIT, that covered both key elements of legal education in Indonesia and training approaches, methods and tools. At the end of the workshop, the four target universities developed concrete plans for strengthening legal education within their institution and supporting staff with capacity building activities. With this, the momentum of the SLEEI project has moved from the Dutch initiating partners to the Indonesian counterparts and their trainers.