Willem Janssen  0:00  

Welcome to Bestek, the Public Procurement Podcast. Today, Marta and I are talking about AI in sustainable public procurement and law clinics.

Bestek Voice  0:14  

Welcome to Bestek, the Public Procurement Podcast. In this podcast, Dr. Willem Janssen and Dr. Marta Andhov discuss public procurement law issues, their love of food and academic life. In each episode, Willem, Marta and their guests search for answers to intriguing public procurement questions. This is Bestek. Let’s dish off public procurement law.

Willem Janssen  0:38  

Hello. Welcome back, Marta. 

Marta Andhov  0:40  

Hello. 

Willem Janssen  0:41  

I feel like we’re doing a really cool thing today. We’re talking about tech and public procurement, and sustainability, which will get you a full classroom. Talking about the previous episode of building a community, if you’ve got a good topic that will really build a good community, I think.

Marta Andhov  0:56  

I think that a good topic is also debatable. I think that this is more like we’re using all the buzzwords in one sentence.

Willem Janssen  1:05  

Look, you put them in the title of a published article, so it’s your fault.

Marta Andhov  1:10  

This was very intentional, right? I was like, you need to get those downloads, you need to get these impact factors on your research page.

Willem Janssen  1:17  

Exactly. All right, let me run everyone through today’s episode. We’re going to be doing two things. In the main, we’ll be talking about the topic of AI and sustainable public procurement. And we’re doing that based on a recent publication, open access, so you can download it, of which you were one of the three authors. You published it together with Nicole Darnall and Alexandra Andhov, and the three of you wrote an article in Frontiers in Sustainability, which was titled, hold your horses, ‘Leveraging AI for Sustainable Public Procurement: Opportunities and Challenges’. 

Willem Janssen  1:56  

And if we just go straight into the main, I think that’s also what we’ll be talking about, a bit about opportunities and about challenges, but setting the scene, perhaps, if you would want to, you could maybe share a bit about where the idea of this article came from? What’s the relevance of the topic at the moment, and why does it deserve scholarly attention?

Marta Andhov  2:22  

Yeah, so addressing this aspect one is the broader context that led to this publication and some lessons learned out of it; hopefully, it can be interesting for some of our colleagues. And then, more specifically, to the topic and why this topic. So this paper is an outcome of my Fulbright senior scholarship program visit to Arizona State University, last year, 2024. 

Willem Janssen  2:59  

Time flies.

Marta Andhov  2:59  

Time flies, so many things have happened since then. So I’ve been there for half a year, and Professor Darnall was the hosting scholar. Since then, Nicole moved to American University in Washington. But the idea, really, there was that very often when we talk about public procurement, we’re talking about maybe two or three disciplines within public procurement. Predominantly in Europe and the US, to some extent, there is this big thing of law and regulation that we are sitting in. But there is not much focus on law and regulation outside of those two regions, I would say. Maybe also Africa, but Australia, New Zealand, where I’m right now, Canada, it’s much less of a developed scholarly field in law and public procurement, but it is a massive field in public administration, supply chain management and economics, right? And I was really interested about finding ways of working with supply chain managers, because I think there is something really interesting on understanding… because they are all about ‘but how are we actually doing that, how are we managing, how are we delivering the project, how are we doing that in efficient, sustainable manner, how are we addressing various risks in a non-legal way’? And I thought it would be great. We’re going to find some sort of ways of interesting research. And that really is what happened. The interesting context for cross-disciplinary work here is that you’re starting to realise certain biases of your own discipline. So we work really within the legal field. In our risk management, we are looking at, okay, you’re doing this and that to secure those interests, and we’re trying to avoid these long-term negative effects, right? But sometimes it’s a little bit like we are the party poopers of the academic community.

Willem Janssen  5:02  

You are the annoying no-sayer in the room, yes. 

Marta Andhov  5:04  

Absolutely. The same with you, when you are starting to work with businesses, right? Or people doing things in practice, I kind of, in a joking way, heard that more than once. It’s like, well, no, we’re not inviting lawyers, because they will always tell us what we cannot do, right? And then…

Willem Janssen  5:17  

A bit old school, I suppose. If you look at it.

Marta Andhov  5:19  

A bit old-school, absolutely.

Willem Janssen  5:21  

I always say, well, then you don’t… You know, we safeguard the rule of law. We’ll make sure that all the safeguards are also respected. And I think if you’re a good lawyer, there are always ways of looking around and seeing what is possible, I suppose.

Marta Andhov  5:35  

And I think that this is exactly as you say, is this certain sort of an old school way, particularly when we are starting to address issues of sustainable public procurement, I’m sure that many of our listeners will relate to that very often you kind of come across this very restrictive old school interpretation of stuff, which we all know now, over the last 10 years, it’s not that you cannot do anything. But going to these, as I said, these biases of discipline, we are usually kind of identified at the first go. The presumption is that we kind of see a problem everywhere, but we cannot necessarily suggest a solution that is supportive of a new, innovative development. And that was kind of interesting when we were writing this paper, because Nicole definitely, as a supply chain management professor, wanted to highlight the possibilities, the opportunities, things that AI can do within this space. When both Alexandra and I, coming from a legal background, were sort of, all the time, wanting to tone down the excitement a little bit, pointing out where the issues are, and that there’s this interesting balance. So from that perspective, I actually quite like this piece. It’s been a bit different. It’s a lighter reading also. So I think for anyone who might listen to us, who is not particularly keen on this sort of hardcore legal text, this reads a little bit differently than probably some of our other pieces because it is cross-disciplinary. 

Willem Janssen  7:08  

It’s actually a really nice read to be honest. My printer even decided to print it on A3, so I am holding it up now. It’s huge.

Marta Andhov  7:15  

I can see.

Willem Janssen  7:17  

Almost like a poster. 

Marta Andhov  7:18  

You can see the graphs. It’s also the first time, I think, that I have a graph in my output.

Willem Janssen  7:25  

Sorry, but I interrupted you. You wanted to go into the topic. AI and sustainable public procurement.

Marta Andhov  7:32  

I will actually flip it, because I would also be interested to hear your opinion. I generally feel that, probably, same as sustainability was a good 15 years ago, AI is such a hype word right now. First of all, everything is AI. People use that term, really, for more or less things that have nothing to do with AI, but it’s just simple automation. But second of all, also, I feel like there is this hope and fear at the same time that AI is going to take over all our jobs or solve all the issues in the world. So I kind of bit cynically refer to it that way, too many people drink AI Cool Aid these days. I don’t know whether that comes across in your working environment, whether you see that prevalence of that topic too.

Willem Janssen  8:21  

I’d say all law schools and universities are faced with discussions about what AI does to education. I think that’s one context that I’m confronted with. How do we deal with students using it a lot? But I think also for procurement, the whole bid-writing community, assisting with the submission, which sometimes is a difficult process, they’re also faced with the question, what’s our added value? Where are these language models when companies think they can do it better? And what I do see, I think, is really interesting, is that it seems like every company sort of feels like they need to do something with it, without often thinking like, why? What do I actually need? And why and how would that impact everything? I see it happening around me. I don’t get stressed very quickly about these types of things, but there’s stuff moving, right? And I can see that. So it’s kind of like, I’m happy that there’s scholarly attention to it, and that there’s also this discussion about opportunities and risks, which I think is relevant for any type of development in society.

Marta Andhov  9:31  

If you consider the procurement process, there are parts of it that are quite strategic, interesting, valuable, but there are also parts that are very bureaucratic, right? Having that in mind, this really is where the AI comes in place. In other words, it can help to do the things that are a bit dreadful, or also go through a lot of material. So I will focus specifically on opportunities. Iff we’re looking at the advantages, please, have in mind that we mainly look specifically at sustainable public procurement, the idea behind it was there is an awfully a lot of materials by now on good practices and sustainable public procurement, various organisations. You, I and many others are writing tons of reports and scholarly work, including examples of clauses, different sorts of criteria, and how you can really take all that vast amount of knowledge and somehow operationalise it so the regular public servant who has to create sustainable procurement can get help. An idea, really for us, that was the background for the paper, is how can you go through different stages of the life cycle of sustainable public procurement, and in what way, having customer-customised AI – because we’re not talking here about these large language models of ChatGPT, et cetera, but we’re talking about something that would be developed specifically for procurement and the public sector – could help us out. So if you’re thinking about step one, when you actually need to define what you want to buy, what are your needs and how you need to assess the market, well, if the tools work well and appropriately, if the data that is fed is correct, we are sort of assuming these things, right? Where does the opportunity lie? To start with, AI tools could analyse the historical procurement data. So it could help us forecast, right? So if you thought that we would need X amount of, I don’t know, toilet paper, stationery or whatever is this sort of basic sort of stuff, and that historical data of what we used before, that could be a very quick exercise to help us forecast and then ultimately feed towards our cost efficiency around that, right?

Willem Janssen  12:24  

And how do you then define what you would want to buy and how much of it in the next tender?

Marta Andhov  12:29  

Absolutely. And then you can see, okay, so now I know how much I want to buy, and this is what I want to buy. And you can then also ask, when you assess all this data that we fed you with, all these great reports and great practices, can you suggest what type of sustainable consideration I could use here, right? So rather than you manually looking through all these different reports, the idea here would be that you say I’m buying IT services right now, what could I consider here, right? The scale of it and so on. And when it comes to the issuing of the tenders itself, of course, creation of templates, the draft documents, that sort of gives you some ideas, and then you obviously have the human going through it. But the sort of assisting with first the drafting…

Willem Janssen  13:18  

An efficiency type of exercise, time-saving.

Marta Andhov  13:21  

Absolutely. And also, scanning through it, and say, identifying where there are potential issues with what you have within the draft. Then vetting suppliers is also an interesting step, because depending on where in the world you are, you can have it, as we do, the majority of the time in Europe, as part of an actual procurement process, an individual procurement process. Or you can also have it as in the United States as vetting suppliers, as a sort of separate process that stands outside of an individual procurement, so you have a vetted list of tenders, and they only can then partake in the actual…

Willem Janssen  13:59  

Like a pre-selected pool. 

Marta Andhov  14:01  

Yes, exactly right, so depending on which stage, but you could have some sort of automation here, right? Around vetting of the suppliers, aligning the criteria of vetting with the sustainability goals, evaluating the certificates that they have, evaluating whether there is a substitution of different or sort of equality between different certificates, etc, etc. And then also scanning through things like insights to the supplier’s reputation and, for example, the environmental compliance, when you have some compliance requirements, right? The things, of course, then progress to evaluating the actual bids and buying.

Willem Janssen  14:54  

This is where it gets exciting, right? 

Marta Andhov  14:56  

This is where it gets exciting, and this is where it’s like a big red sign that I’m saying, God forbid, I do not suggest that AI actually evaluates your bids, right? I think that here it’s rather in a situation where you, particularly, will use negotiation procedures. What you could use AI for is the stimulation of negotiation strategies. So it can kind of feed you some ideas of tactics that you could use throughout the negotiation, right? You could specifically consider the sustainability aspects of the office, how they have been presented, and that can be somehow summarised for you or fleshed out for you.

Willem Janssen  15:48  

This is interesting. Sorry, just when you say this is a red flag, but it’s sort of interesting that, very recently, Albania made the headlines across the world for saying that they’ve got a fully AI run minister, so not an actual person, but stating that and they, I mean, I don’t know the details, because obviously the report skims across it, and it’s more the headline that it’s not a human having a ministerial post, but an AI. But I think the idea there is to also, one, fight corruption, but that evaluation of bids would be very much part of the equation.

Marta Andhov  16:26  

But I think that also, interestingly enough, you hear that on several occasions, and being over last year on a couple of different conferences, this is very often used as a standalone statement that, yes, we use AI to evaluate bids, and then you are starting to really as a good lawyer, drilling into it, and it’s not really that that’s what’s being done. What is being done is that you run it through the tool, and you say, Okay, how would you score? Those are the criteria, and you score them. But then you still manually go through everything. And the question here, which I think is interesting about the scoring, because we also said, okay, how could you score the bids against the criteria, right? How could you flag some anomalies? And I think that here, an interesting question is whether this is good, positive, and it helps you, or whether this already influenced you even if you find an error, or if you find an issue, it will already influence how you think, right? So this whole thing about using it, you need to be quite careful. 

Marta Andhov  17:32  

But I’m particularly interested in the next two steps of how you would use it. That is, one, how you manage contract deliverables. And we talked with Alexandra a while back about a different digital management tool for contracts, right? So it ties a little bit to that, but also this thing that I worry that we don’t do enough within procurement, which is when the contract is done, when we sort of finalize it is this assessing of how it went, what went well, taking stock of how everything went, what we deliver through the contract, and really forecasting and planning for going forward. So, a systematic approach, right? And why I think that those two are good, because in the management stage of a contract, particularly if we go with this assumption that public servants everywhere, more or less are stretched thin, and you have so many different details of different contracts that people need to keep an eye on, again, some sort of automation, flagging, alerts around different stages of contract can be, I think, quite helpful, but also this thing of monitoring supplier performance with the sustainability feedback loop, because those are the things that you I think need to be quite careful because they are more difficult to really see whether they changed, right? Cement will be cement. Is it sustainable or not? But you need to sort of see that the invoicing, that the reporting is sort of done in a way that is in line with the criteria. But also, I think that the tool could be used to enhance, ultimately, some auditing, optimising the sustainability within the contract when it comes to risk management, right? Throughout the project. If you’re starting to see that you have a drop in the particular supply chain that you need to distribute, that you need to sort of start to have a conversation where you’re going to be getting that somewhere else. 

Willem Janssen  19:37  

And I think it could also tap into one of the often discussed, and I know that on this podcast, we talked to Ezgi about it as well, is this contract performance phase, particularly sustainability and social requirements, or green and social, under the heading of sustainability, are they just something that’s on paper and stays within the drawer or are they actually executed in practice? And so I think that’s why I sort of share your enthusiasm for this phase.

Marta Andhov  20:08  

I think also because we often, and I think we maybe touched upon it with Ezgi, that there is this issue of, oh, we don’t want to build that in a contract, in the form of something that really needs to be tangibly checked at the contract performance space, because this requires additional resources, both financial and human, in going, traveling, doing the audits, etc, etc. And self-reporting in general is probably not the endgame, but maybe a first step. And if you can have it sort of automated, in a way, that you have a tool that flags it, you get some self-reporting, you get some sort of first screening through it, and then just human can come in and review it. I think that is one of the first steps that I imagine that, yeah, you need to invest in the tool, but in comparison with other resources, the human resources, you could imply that it is not an initial good step to counter-argument, but that this is just bringing a lot of additional costs.

Willem Janssen  21:15  

Interesting.

Marta Andhov  21:16  

Yeah, yeah.

Willem Janssen  21:17  

Onto the last phase.

Marta Andhov  21:19  

The last phase, as I mentioned, is really identifying inefficiencies, right? Inefficiencies in the scope that we did, we buy way too much. Was that sustainable criteria actually worth including in such a weighting in our criteria or in a tech spec? Maybe we should change something or also reflecting from the time that we started this procurement, maybe there was a progress in particular way, so next time we can actually apply something else, different requirement in regards to certification or quality, element that it relates to sustainability, what we and how we can use this contract learnings for the future, how we can forecast the sustainability, what are the risks, what are the trends? Because I think this is an interesting thing, that you can work with the trends. And again, sort of share, what were some of the good practices, good outcomes, great maybe, different templates that you developed and different things that you can then reuse in the next procurement, or you can improve them, and the system kind of can show, well, this and that was inefficient, and that wasn’t really working, right? So I think that this sort of automation of things could be quite helpful. I tend to think about it like how we move away from an Excel sheet to something that visually looks a little bit more tangible, clear, and more user-friendly, to also then sort of having automation of some of those dreadful tasks, right? And the masses of information, because that’s, for me, the main thing. If you want to get updated today, Willem, on the most current things within sustainable public procurement, you have about 25 different reports from WTO, OECD and everything else on the topic, right? So, how can we kind of drill it down to, okay, what can I do right now with it when I design my specific procurement-like contract?

Willem Janssen  23:25  

For sure. So I think that this journal article has this really nice wheel of fortune or something, where you go through those stages that you’ve just mentioned, I think, talking about things that visually look very nice. 

Willem Janssen  23:41  

But you mentioned in the introduction, it’s not just about opportunities, it’s also about challenges, right? So maybe the risk-averse lawyer can pop in now. How do you go from here?

Marta Andhov  23:53  

Now it’s one of those floodgates, right? You just want to go extensively. There’s so much to be said, and there is so much written about it, and it needs to come with a big warning sign that I’m a sceptic. I don’t think that we should be using full-fledged AI systems in public procurement. I don’t, because of so many issues, and if you’re interested in this, in societal context, I mean, what broad application of AI in all aspects of our life, as a customer, as a citizen, as a part of your business model, really, in all aspects for your children, for students, from learning perspective, If you’re interested in that, I would really want to refer you to a great initiative here in Auckland University. It’s called ‘speech up to the bar’, where, once per year, selected researchers from Auckland University go to the bars throughout one week here, and they give their presentation of their research at the bar, and it’s open broadly to the public. You can go for a pint, buy your ticket, and listen to some interesting stuff that people do. And Professor Andhov, so the third co-author of this paper, gave one of those talks, I think, about a month ago, and the talk is called ‘Code Red for Democracy’, and it is available on Spotify, and I would link that in our show notes.

Willem Janssen  25:38  

Interesting. 

Marta Andhov  25:38  

And that’s a really kind of cool perspective of showing all those big problems. And just to give you some idea, what are those big problems? Those are issues with security, data privacy, issues of bias, non-discrimination and fairness when it comes to how the AI is designed and deployed, the massive issues of distributed responsibility and fragmentation there and transparency, how we have a lack of accountability and due process within those. So, not to mention things about market power and competition. So those are just headlines, and trust me, we could have a whole hour on each one of them. As a good lawyer, sceptic would, but I won’t bore you with it, specifically what I mean by boring, because I’m not an expert. I’m not an expert in AI in law. We had Alexandra on this on the paper who did a great job. I think I would, for the purpose of our podcast, I maybe would want to just focus on the immediate one. And there is a certain contradiction, AI and sustainability, right? And I just wanted to touch on that one, because, yes, we can utilise it, but what is the price to pay for using AI in sustainability, right? There are quite a few reports by Google, by Microsoft, in recent months on how they progress; there’s also a lot to be said about maybe ever so slightly misleading usage of data, or how this is presented. Ultimately, what it all boils down to is the deployment of AI, even if it’s in the form of our Chat-GPT, but it’s a very high energy consumption that AI training models really use, a massive water usage, but also resource extraction and hardware. Within our article, we are pointing out that those big players on the market continuously invest in the utilisation of renewable energies to…

Willem Janssen  27:57  

To mitigate that a bit.

Marta Andhov  28:11  

Exactly, right? But I do think that for the scale of what it is versus where we are with greening those training models, we’re probably not there. 

Marta Andhov  28:14  

But it’s also something about social challenges. Where are those training facilities and data facilities really built? They are usually built in lower socio-economic rural areas. There have been some studies pointing out that it impacts the general prices of electricity within those regions, because of how much they… 

Willem Janssen  28:38  

The double hit.

Marta Andhov  28:40  

Absolutely. The data privacy is the social element, another one, but general, also increased consumption, right? We certainly use it much more. So this sustainability aspect, the counterbalance, is there, and the question is whether it’s worth utilising in this. So I think that if you would ask, probably Nicole, who is much more optimistic and solution- and innovation-engaged, she would say that there are obviously things that need to be improved, but there are some great applications. If you ask me, I probably would say, Look, I just don’t think that in today’s day and age, on the large scale of pros and cons, it’s really getting us…

Willem Janssen  29:33  

I think it’s…

Marta Andhov  29:34  

Very high.

Willem Janssen  29:35  

No, I mean, it’s an incredibly valid concern. Also, you see this debate splitting up into two, right? And one says, well, these are all temporary things. The energy usage will drop, and others are rightly pointing out that this is something permanent, particularly if this promised growth of AI will continue; it’s a continuous question. So I’m also happy that you chose that one to highlight the discussion a bit further. I think this is. I think you’ve given us a really good teaser to read the article.

Marta Andhov  30:11  

Hopefully.

Willem Janssen  30:12  

I think so. Because it sort of seems like you three authors have really gone for a balanced approach, where you want to highlight the opportunities but also show the challenges that are related to AI in sustainable public procurement. So, I think you’ve very clearly stated in the article, and also today, that the application could be done in multiple phases, but that it does come with serious consequences as well, which need to be taken into account.

Marta Andhov  30:44  

There is a price to pay, so to speak. 

Willem Janssen  30:46  

Don’t drink the AI Cool Aid, I think. 

Marta Andhov  30:49  

No, that’s absolutely true. If you take one thing from today, don’t drink the AI Cool Aid. Be critical of it.

Willem Janssen  30:54  

For sure. All right, that means that we’re ready to finish the Main and move to Dessert. 

Willem Janssen  31:07  

So, for dessert today, we’re looking at law clinics, and I think they’re a cool topic to talk about law clinics, or legal clinics, as they’re also referred to, because I feel like they really are a beautiful part of the legal education that we can offer our students. So I felt like it was a nice opportunity for today to devote our dessert to.

Marta Andhov  31:31  

For sure, and I think it’s also interesting, because it’s really that prelude to practising law. For a lot of our students, it’s probably something besides mooting that really imitates most how their professional life will look when they exit University. 

Marta Andhov  31:55  

So, in a couple of words for them, could you also describe, maybe for our listeners, that by some miracle, are still with us, and they might not be interested really in the education. They are practitioners. They are procurers, but for some reason, they like hanging out with us. Can you tell us a little bit more about how you would define, characterise, and describe law clinics a bit? The role of the different types of law clinics. If I hear the term Law Clinic for the first time, what should I be thinking about?

Willem Janssen  32:28  

I don’t have the perfect definition, but I think they’re a really good form of community-engaged learning. What they say is that it’s where you involve the community in the learning setting for students, right? And what I personally like about them, and why I would recommend anyone to get involved in them, is that it’s really a win-win, I find. So you have different types of law clinics or legal clinics, the traditional one is that law students engage with, say, underprivileged groups in society to provide legal advice, right? So in the Netherlands, we also have the tradition of ‘Rechtswinkels’, where you could go get free legal advice on housing issues, family law types of issues. And I think those are super. They actually fulfil a super important role in society. And it’s also a way for universities to give back to the context in which they actually operate. And so that’s one example, but you have those for, and that’s one that I set up a while ago with the Utrecht Law Clinic, for more corporate startup advice. So students engaging with corporates that have just got off running, and basically the last thing they think about is their legal structure and their contracts and those types of things. So really, offering students that context, or you have it in a more public international law, litigation type of context. It’s also a nice one that I’ve seen, and one that we’re very happy to work with, ClientEarth, in our master’s law and sustainability in Europe, which we offer at the law school in Utrecht. And there we really are, more advisors, right? So we don’t litigate, but it’s more of a research clinic, right? So I think those are maybe three examples of how law clinics can operate. But to be honest, there’s not really a clear-cut definition. There are many of them that really engage with the community as a whole, or a specific part of the community, to create that win-win. The learning of the students but also a benefit for anyone operating within the context of that law clinic.

Marta Andhov  34:41  

For sure, what are some… I think, benefit-wise, you mentioned on a broad scale, but if you want to sort of point out a couple different benefits for the students to get engaged, what type of skills or knowledge or experience are really beneficial? What did you see over the years?

Willem Janssen  35:03  

So I think one of the major things that students’ feedback to me always is, one that they feel like they could contribute to something, it gives them purpose, right? So we helped the founder of that startup, or we helped that family in need, or we managed to give really in-depth legal advice to an NGO, right? And often they even say, and we’re only students, which is a very humbling way of looking at it, even though they’re generally, I would say, they’re sort of professionals, right? Even though they’re studying, they can do more than they think. And the second one, a major thing that I always note and that students give back is that their academics also get better. So, because of them, feeling practical relevance… I had it too, after I did an internship, all of a sudden I felt like, oh, that’s what competition law is like. That’s why this is, Oh, okay, now I get this weird case of maloash, or whatever I was studying at the time. And because of that, I think it’s giving back that gives purpose, but also, for their own academics, it makes their own study field more relevant, and thus, maybe easier to get the motivation. I think those things always pop up, no matter what type of law clinic I’ve been involved with. And you’re also right there; it gives them skills, so it sets them up for a future career. I think that’s also a really relevant one, and also very obvious that that’s part of the learning system that they’re in.

Marta Andhov  36:43  

How do you communicate, right? Some of those things to a client that is not a lawyer or someone who is quite emotional about whatever the work is, and how you deal with that? The pressures and so on. 

Marta Andhov  37:06  

Have you seen law clinics woven into your sort of grading system during your education, because the ones that I’ve seen usually are split, or they are really something additional, and up there, you also get the most passionate students about the topic, or very ambitious students that really want to set themselves apart when it comes to later on the job market. All the ones that we run in Copenhagen within the course of a startup law, then we build in a part of the course where they work with startups, and then sort of evaluate. Would you see the sort of same structure around that, or is there another third or fourth that is still something different?

Willem Janssen  37:53  

So, I think it depends. I think a lot of law clinics come on top of your curriculum, and so that would be the example often in the Netherlands, the Rechtswinkel, so the aid to individuals, more on rental agreements that I just mentioned, or family law matters, or anything like that. But there are also ones that are integrated in the curriculum for which you can get ECTS points, right? So in your bachelor’s, right? Maybe in your third year, you would be able to get one. That’s the Utrecht Law Clinic, for example, the corporate advice or it’s part of, say, an honours program. That’s what we do in our master’s program. So it’s part of the Honours Program. So in a way, that falls in the category of it comes on top. But it helps you at least get an honours certificate at the end of it, or it’s part of that honours experience. So I think then that’s different ways of recognising the value of the work, I think.

Marta Andhov  38:51  

What are some challenges? We’ve been quite positive, optimistic, and seeing it in a very great light, of why you should get engaged. What might be some of the challenges around it?

Willem Janssen  39:07  

I think there are multiple. There’s always this layer of competing. So are you competing unfairly with the rest of the market? So an advisory opinion to a startup could have been given by a law firm. Are you taking away their business? So I think that’s a fine line to thread. It is to make sure that you really provide advisory work that is beneficial for a learning environment, but also that perhaps the startup wouldn’t have gotten the legal advice anyway, right? So that’s, I think, one of the things that you could operate it, right? But that’s a case-by-case approach, and I think two more, but they sort of relate more to us as scholars and lecturers, is that the time invested is disproportionate to other activities.

Marta Andhov  39:59  

What you get accounted for, so to speak.

Willem Janssen  40:02  

Running a law clinic, say, just to use the corporate law clinic that I was referring to. You’ve got to find the clients, you’ve got to make sure there’s PR, you’ve got to make sure that there’s a house style, you’ve got to make sure that everything is set up. Basically, you’re running a law firm to a certain extent. 

Marta Andhov  40:20  

Yes, that’s what I was about to say. It’s like you are running your own business that is not really your own business, and it’s not really a business but…

Willem Janssen  40:28  

You just don’t get money from it.

Marta Andhov  40:29  

Yes, you have all the other characteristics of it.

Willem Janssen  40:34  

So I think that’s something to consider. And lastly, something to consider and something that I’ve always struggled with, and I’ve always tried to think about, how can we scale this up? Because most Law Clinic programs are quite heavy on selection, not every student wants to, but often there’s a students who want to but can’t participate. So the time that we have as lecturers is divided up into different portions, right? And given the previous point that I just made about time, obviously, law clinics take up a lot of time, which benefits a small portion of your entire cohort of students. So how do you ensure that, one, that’s justified, that it doesn’t go too far? But also, how can you have, like, a feedback loop from that small group to the big cohort? So, do the learnings in a law clinic mean, or in terms of research skills with clients, that you have to integrate them for everyone, right? So does that provide a reflection method on the entire curriculum to ensure that, say, skills-based learning or practical relevance is included in all of those parts of our curriculum, to sort of justify the fact that, yeah, this is kind of a playground where we do a win-win, but it’s only a win-win for a limited number of students. And I think that’s something also from an educational policy perspective, that’s always important to keep in mind that you are making that choice and that there are obviously reasons to think or to keep thinking about, how do you make that loop back?

Marta Andhov  42:07  

And I think that there are probably two comments to that. One is that in some of the US law clinics that I had a chance to see, but also in Australia, you have a full-fledged institutionalisation of a law clinic. And what I mean by that is that you have between one to three academics, one who is a director of the clinic, and then you have two others. But all your teaching, your time is dedicated to the clinic, and that is to address that point of what you’re saying that you’re doing that kind of as an addition to everything else, but there is a recognition of its value, of its importance, and the commitment that it requires. And you are kind of fully committed to that. It’s a bit similar to that, if you have a very good… Or there is a recognition of how mooting is important, and it’s, again, it’s a very common law system type of thing. But mooting is really, there are so many moots that you have one specific, again, academic that sort of runs the largest moot and recognises, and then that is even run as a course. And it’s sort of recognition of the time and commitment that that requires. But then, to your point about how you’re creating that back loop, it’s the sort of analogy that you could make. It’s a little bit with students who go on exchange, right, from different reasons, only some of them would be able to go outside. How are you creating that experience? The main sort of benefit of all that, really, in the classroom back home, right? And it’s a bit similar, and I wonder whether you could not chop it into smaller chunks, and really sort of implement this more hybrid workshopy thing that you can do as a specific assignment that you kind of think in the Law Clinic work really well, and then build it as a part of exercise, let’s say in company law or in contract law, or whatever the thing is, right? That you have that on a small scale.

Willem Janssen  44:15  

I think that’s a good example, right? The cases that you’ve discussed in the clinic are also perfect to inspire the casework that students in general might do. But then you don’t have the client dynamic, but you do have the real-life case scenarios, for sure.

Marta Andhov  44:32  

Yeah.

Willem Janssen  44:32  

That’s something that could loop back in.

Marta Andhov  44:37  

Something to think about. Well, that’s great. I think that’s more or less the substance of today’s episode. Wouldn’t you agree?

Willem Janssen  44:46  

I would totally agree that was, that was dessert. And I’d love to hear about any of our listeners who work in legal education, who are working with law clinics, whether the thoughts that we had today somewhat resonate, right? Or if you totally disagree, that’s generally when we’d love to hear about your thoughts, and then maybe send some prayers afterwards. This was a great episode, Marta, thank you so much. It was a pleasure to talk to you about AI in sustainable public procurement, opportunities and challenges, and to discuss law clinics a little bit. This was Bestek, the Public Procurement Podcast. 

Bestek Voice  45:28  

This was Bestek, the Public Procurement Podcast. Do you want to contribute to today’s discussion? Then share your thoughts on LinkedIn or Twitter. Do you have an idea for a future episode? Write to us at www.bestekpodcast.com.

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