The access to justice crisis is severe in India and Bangladesh. Both of these countries have enormous unmet legal needs. To ensure access to justice, three components need to be fulfilled: The existence of a legal institutional framework, awareness among citizens regarding this framework and its processes and citizens’ effective access to them. The state is obligated to ensure that there is access to justice, especially for the poor sections of society. Law schools have an important role to play in providing solutions to this crisis. Clinical legal education (CLE) programmes in law schools, with their mission of providing skill-based training to law students, and legal services to underserved communities are well positioned to respond to the needs of access to justice. This article examines the challenges to social justice lawyering and community empowerment in India and Bangladesh and compares the status of CLE’s response to them in both countries. It recommends three solutions for ‘socially relevant legal education’ and to resolve the access to justice crisis. First, the institutional support for CLE programmes needs to be improved. Second, sustained sources of funding are imperative for the development of such programmes. Third, the regulators of legal education should take serious measures to bridge the gap between academia and practice in the legal profession.