Developing Concepts and Outlines

After determining the writing products and audiences for your program, you will need to develop an initial outline for each of your resources. For your trainer and trainee manu- als, you will also need to consider the additional support materials and activities needed to conduct trainings.

Trainer’s manuals, for example, typically include separate chapters on planning and structuring a workshop, interactive methods, and guidelines for facilitation. You can find many good examples of sections like these in existing paralegal manuals and in other training materials designed to involve participants in active learning. Through your situational assessment you will already have an idea about how much community education your paralegals will conduct. If you anticipate a considerable amount of this education, as was the case in Cambodia, you might develop an extensive set of lessons designed explicitly for use in the community.

Trainer’s and learner’s manuals also generally contain large sections that are focused on content and skills that a paralegal needs to master. Your situational assess- ment will have provided you with guiding information about the specific roles of your paralegal and the problems commonly encountered by communities they will work with. The section of the trainer’s and learner’s manuals addressing paralegal skills should introduce the range of skills that a paralegal will need to know. These can be clustered in different ways, but generally include legal knowledge and assistance; alter- native dispute resolution (e.g., mediation); program administration (e.g., filing systems);

Sample Outline of Paralegal Skills, Cambodia

Part One: General Paralegal and Administrative Skills

• Paralegals

What is a paralegal? Why do we need paralegals? What are the different types of paralegals? The role of paralegals. Paralegals and access to justice.

• Legal and Communication Skills Interviewing your client; language

skills; taking a statement; affidavits; listening skills; monitoring skills; counseling skills; advice-giving and problem- solving skills; referrals; telephone calls; letter-writing skills; report writing

• Administrative Skills

Filing; bookkeeping; how to look up a telephone number or address in the telephone book; meetings; time management; media; managing budgets; fundraising; employing people in an organization.

Part Two: Advocacy

Part Three: Alternative Dispute Resolution

• Introduction • Negotiation Skills

and community education and development (including advocacy methods). The draft learner’s manual developed in Cambodia treated paralegal skills as two distinct sections focusing on different sets of skills (see sidebar).

Legal content of your resources can be included in the trainer’s and learner’s manuals as well as in a paralegal resource manual. Regardless of its location, this content might address the sources and classifications of law; the constitution; institutions for implementing the law (including courts); and topic-specific legal content. Topic-specific legal content commonly found in paralegal programs includes the following:

 Family law

 Criminal law and criminal procedure  Civil law and procedures

 Social welfare law  Consumer law  Housing law  Land legislation  Labor law  Business law

Of course, the materials must be adapted to suit the populations they aim to benefit. A manual developed for disadvantaged rural women, for example, might focus on legal and related issues concerning domestic violence, women’s inheritance and land rights. A manual for women in a country where dowry, underage marriages, and mul- tiple marriages are common would include those issues.

The legal component of your paralegal materials might also include guidelines for referring a case that needs to be litigated, for example, to one of the lawyers associ- ated with the program.

The bibliography found at the end of this guide references paralegal manuals that have already been developed and which have detailed treatments of topics such as general paralegal and administrative skills, alternative dispute resolution, and program operation. You will see that some learner manuals may not include detailed information on techniques for education but instead refer back to the trainer’s manual.

You will have to consider the specific needs of your communities and your para- legals’ roles when developing the section on community development. Potential topics

• Mediation and Conciliation • Arbitration

• Drafting an Alternative Dispute • Resolution Clause

Sources: Black Sash Education and

and techniques include community-based assessments, community development and empowerment, and advocacy. Depending upon the political context of your country, you might also include the topics of democracy and governance, elections, and human rights. Some of these topics are addressed in the paralegal manuals cited in this guide’s bibliography.

In addition to developing an overall outline for each of your manuals, you will need to consider the format for each chapter and lesson. When your materials include interactive lessons that will be developed by a number of different writers and will be used by a number of different trainers, it is wise to develop a standardized format for each lesson.

For example, a lesson or activity in the learner’s manual can have some version of the following sections:

 Brief introduction to content  Activity

The trainer’s version of this same activity may include the following sections:

 Goals for trainees

 Content background for the activity and warm-up questions  Procedures/instructions and methods required for activity  Amount of time estimated for each step of the activity  Facilitation tips

 Suggested answers  Debrief and summary

Trainer’s manuals will include additional guidance on how to carry out each lesson step-by-step, including anticipated answers to discussion questions. You will also need to coordinate lessons that are in the trainer and learner manuals. The Cambodian example on consumer law in Appendix 2 of this guide shows how the same lesson is presented in both manuals, with the trainer’s version including helpful additional infor- mation for facilitating the activity.

Street Law, Inc. has developed an influential law education methodology that has been adapted by groups like Street Law South Africa and the Community Law and Rural Development Centre. The lesson design methodology includes the following elements:

 Focus and review—intended to spark students’ interest in the lesson and open a

brief discussion

 Statement of student outcomes and procedures—what is expected of trainees  Instructor input—the procedures the instructor will use in the lesson to reach

learner goals

 Interactive strategy—the heart of the lesson, the main activity  Debrief—summary of major concepts or skills covered in the lesson

The essential components of a law-related education lesson, according to Street Law, is to incorporate a discussion of laws relevant for the topic, to analyze policy ques- tions surrounding the topic, identify and examine any conflicting values, apply the law to the learner’s life, and help learners to apply this content in an interactive way during the training.