This dissertation discusses the origin and ongoing transformations of law school clinics in Latin America with a public interest law focus. Through a historical analysis, the dissertation challenges a general assumption according to which the origin and development of clinical legal education in the region corresponds simply to the idea of a legal transplant from the Global North to the Global South during the second half of the 20th Century. The dissertation shows that there is a pre-history of clinical legal education efforts and the fact that law school clinics were not at the core of the early efforts of the Law and Development movement across the region. Furthermore, the dissertation concludes that clinical legal education in Latin America today is the result of a much more complex set of ideas, competing projects and ongoing economic, political and constitutional transformations in the region that the metaphor of a legal transplant from the North to the South cannot fully comprehend. For this reason, the dissertation concludes that it is key the understanding of our own history of clinical legal education to better address the challenges of the contemporary clinical practice. In particular, the issue of clinical collaborations between law school clinics from the North and South. Finally, the dissertation revisits a proposed framework of clinical teaching and advocacy as a way to improve clinical collaborations taking into account the origin and transformations of the Clinical Legal Education movement in Latin America.