Clinical Legal Education Final Report28.09.20161

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Clinical Legal Education and Experiential Learning: Looking to the Future
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Clinical legal education and experiential learning: Looking to the future
Clinical Legal Education and

Experiential Learning:
Looking to the Future
A Report
2016
Dr Vicky Kemp
Dr Tine Munk
Suzanne Gower
Report commissioned by The University of Manchester, the School of Law, 2016
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by
the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without prior permission of the copyright holder.
1
Table of contents
Foreword
Acknowledgements
Executive Summary
1 Introduction................................................................................................................................................... 1
1.1 Clinical models, experiential learning and pro bono activities .............................................................. 1
1.2 Methods ................................................................................................................................................. 2
2 Clinical legal education in a global context ................................................................................................ 3
3 Clinical legal education in the United States .............................................................................................. 5

3.1 A brief history of clinical legal education ............................................................................................. 5
3.2 Educational theory in experiential learning ........................................................................................... 6
3.3 Three different models of legal advice clinic ........................................................................................ 7
3.4 Recent changes in legal education and legal services ......................................................................... 11
3.5 Innovations in clinical legal services ................................................................................................... 13
3.6 Technology, clinics and the delivery of legal services ........................................................................ 14
4 Clinical legal education and experiential learning in the United Kingdom ........................................... 17
4.1 A brief history of clinical legal education - 1970’s to 2014 ................................................................ 17
4.2 LawWorks findings of clinical activity and pro bono work ................................................................ 18
4.3 Assessment of clinical activity ............................................................................................................ 19
5 Exploring clinical models and pro bono practices on the ground in the United Kingdom................... 22
5.1 Legal education or community service? .............................................................................................. 22
5.2 ‘Teaching Law Firm’ - A fee-generating model? ................................................................................ 26
5.3 New models of clinical activity ........................................................................................................... 28
5.4 Clinical activity within traditional Russell Group law schools ........................................................... 30
5.5 Law schools and pro bono initiatives .................................................................................................. 36
5.6 LawWorks and Attorney General Student Awards ............................................................................. 37
6 Proposed legal education reforms in England and Wales ....................................................................... 38

6.1 Clinics and the regulation of legal services ......................................................................................... 40
7 Public funding, partnership and the delivery of legal services in England and Wales ......................... 42
7.1 Developing partnerships with legal providers ..................................................................................... 44
7.2 The potential for developing local partnerships in Manchester ........................................................... 44
8 Potential innovations in clinical legal education in the United Kingdom............................................... 46

8.1 Clinical work and criminal justice initiatives ...................................................................................... 46
8.2 Innovation and the use of technology .................................................................................................. 49
9 Recommendations ....................................................................................................................................... 52
9.1 Law Schools to engage with the legal education reforms ................................................................... 52
9.2 Conducting an empirical study into clinical legal education ............................................................... 53
10 Next steps ..................................................................................................................................................... 56
ii
11 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................................ 57
APPENDIX .......................................................................................................................................................... 66
Clinics involved in this study ............................................................................................................................ 66
United Kingdom Clinics ................................................................................................................................... 66
United States Clinics ......................................................................................................................................... 66
iii
Foreword
In addition the report gives, in the
As this report rightly notes we are at a
context of likely changes to the required
crossroads in terms of the future direction of
route(s) for professional qualification, a
legal education. Changes to the nature and pragmatic account of how a contemporary
structure of the legal profession coupled
law school might embrace experiential
with demands from and on the academy,
learning methods to serve the needs of both
students, prospective employers and the
future law students and, depending on the
wider public inevitably means that attention model(s) adopted, those with unmet legal
is now focused on what we, as a society,
need. Whilst the report understandably
want from our future lawyers and
focuses on education and public service it
consequently how we might get that. also identifies the potential value of the
clinic as a vehicle for scholarly activity and
Whilst reviews and discussions have
its likely worth when measuring impact for
addressed what might be taught (and
the purposes of the Research Excellence
perhaps learnt) in law schools relatively
Framework. In a nutshell the whole provides
little attention has been given, at least by
a platform for informed choice.
non-law teachers, to pedagogic
considerations, in terms of how content
As one of the post 2000 pioneers in
might best be delivered.
clinical legal education, with the benefit of
the overview and insight that this report
At the same time law schools have been
provides, the University of Manchester now
voting with their feet with an exponential
has the opportunity to further realign its law
rise in the number of law schools engaging
portfolio to cater for academically,
with what might broadly be termed as
professionally and socially relevant legal
learning by doing – or clinical legal
education in the 21st century.
education. It is now the exception, rather
than the rule, not to see clinical or hands-on
Professor Richard Grimes
approaches to study featuring as either
extracurricular activity or (increasingly) as Former Director of Clinical Programmes,
part of the credit-bearing programme. York Law School, University of York and
Considering the wealth of educational theory previously Professor and Director of Pro
on experiential methods of learning this is Bono Services, The (then) College of Law.
perhaps of no surprise albeit that the Richard is now a senior adviser with Les
relevant regulators and the legal profession Deux Ltd, an access to justice and
have been slow to recognise this crucial part experiential learning consultancy.
of the educational formula.
September 2016
This report, based on thorough research
of the literature and an analysis of clinical
activity on the ground at home and abroad,
helpfully sets out the advantages of, and
challenges presented by clinical legal
education.
iv
Acknowledgements
It is also important for us to give our
This study would not have been possible thanks to the School of Law at the
without the support and cooperation of all University of Manchester for funding this
those who agreed to participate. We are research project. The study could have been
particularly grateful to all those clinicians, focused more specifically on clinical legal
both in the United Kingdom and the United education in Greater Manchester but with
States, who gave up their time to discuss thanks to Professor Toby Seddon, Head of
their arrangements for clinical legal the School of Law, and Dr Graham Smith,
education with us and what was happening Director of Social Responsibility at the
on the ground. This included visits to a School of Law, we were able to examine this
number of clinics, and it was extremely topic within a national and international
helpful to see students working within a context. With the potential for change,
clinical setting. With the research team particularly in relation to the legal education
comprising two social scientists and a reforms, we feel that their foresight has
lawyer it was not easy for clinicians to get enabled us to highlight the importance of
across to non-clinicians some of the clinical legal education both in pedagogical
complexities and nuances involved. We are terms and also when considering issues of
conscious that a more detailed exploration social justice. We are also indebted to Dr
could usefully examine a number of Graham Smith for taking the time to proof-
important issues and we hope that by read this report. His very thorough and
working with clinicians we can gain their thoughtful approach has been invaluable in
support for working with social scientists in helping to shape the final document.
a large-scale empirical study in the future.
It is important for us to comment that we Finally, we want to say many thanks to
were very impressed with the clinics we Professor Richard Grimes who kindly peer-
visited and we recognise that such reviewed this report. With his knowledge
excellence has only been achieved by the and expertise of clinical methods and
dedication and commitment of those experiential learning his input has been
involved in clinical work. It is our view that invaluable. While he has provided us with
the legal education reforms will lead to extremely helpful comments on this report
clinical methods being integrated into the we stress that any remaining errors and
law degree and we would see this as a omissions are ours alone.
positive step in engaging law students in
‘learning by doing’. Vicky Kemp
University of Nottingham
We are also very grateful to the
academics, regulators and consultants who Tine Munk
agreed to meet and/or speak with us. Middlesex University
Particular thanks go to Rebecca Sandefur, Suzanne Gower
an Associate Professor at Illinois University Centre for Criminal Appeals
and a Fellow of the American Bar
Foundation, who was an invaluable source September 2016
of information for us when considering
innovations in practice in the United States.
v
Executive Summary
Law schools are not able to fill this gap
in legal services, but over the years law
students have assisted thousands of poor
and vulnerable people with their legal
problems and recovered millions of pounds
in compensation. Clinical work, therefore,
could usefully fit in to the ecosystem of legal
advice providers. The current economic
climate is also encouraging innovation in the
delivery of legal services and students could
assist in identifying new ways of working in
helping to improve access to justice,
particularly through technological
developments. Proposed changes to legal
education are also intended to encourage
law schools to adopt clinical methods
through an integrated law degree. With law
1 Introduction schools preparing for the future, it is timely
to undertake this review of clinical legal
There has been a gradual increase in law education (CLE).
schools adopting clinical methods and pro
bono work over recent years; with now
around 70% of universities providing 2 A global perspective
students with such opportunities. It is not and developments in the
always evident from the descriptions of
clinical and pro bono work on websites and United States
in reports what activities are being A global perspective is first adopted in this
supported by law schools, how and if the report when seeing how CLE has been used
work is supervised and assessed. There is at in making a connection between legal
the present time a number of factors which education, public interest and social justice.
are encouraging the expansion of clinical By focusing on a global clinical movement
methods and experiential learning in law we can see the struggles law schools have
schools. These include the economic been through when establishing clinical
recession leading to the retrenchment of projects, particularly in the developing
legal services. This has led to fewer training world. Such struggles are inspirational and
contracts and job opportunities being can be used to help invigorate clinical
available for new lawyers and their approaches in the developed world when
involvement in clinical methods and pro highlighting the importance within a civilised
bono work is seen to increase their society for people to have access to justice.
employability and give them a competitive
edge when applying for such positions. Cuts It is useful to look to the United States
in public spending have reduced the number of America (US) when considering the
of legal advice suppliers and changes to background to CLE, including developments
legal aid have removed from scope in educational theory and availability of
altogether some areas of social welfare and capital funds, which has led to most law
family law. This undermines access to schools having some form of clinical activity.
justice and has led to an increase in unmet There are differences in the route to
legal need. qualification for lawyers when comparing
developments in the US with the United
Kingdom (UK), but there are also
observable similarities. These include the
‘perfect storm’ that has followed the 2008
recession: retrenchment of legal services,
high costs of legal education, regulators
encouraging law schools to expand clinical
vi
work, and fewer job opportunities for new examination’ throughout their five or six
attorneys. There is also identified a market years of study. This could include law
failure within legal services as private schools offering an integrated law degree,
practice attorneys are targeting the which will exempt students from taking the
wealthiest 20% of the population, which legal practice course, and to then work with
leaves many people without having access legal providers in finding work-based
to a lawyer to resolve their legal problems. placements over the next two years. With
This is leading to innovation in practice, the expansion of CLE it is important to
particularly through the use of technology consider the potential for law schools to
which is providing new ways for lawyers to work with others in the ecosystem of legal
communicate with their clients and provide providers. While the pedagogic aims of
legal services, including on-line initiatives, universities have to be dominant as
which are helping improve access to justice. education providers, we have seen the
potential for law schools both working on
3 Practice on the ground their own and in partnership with others to
help address unmet legal need and increase
in the United Kingdom access to justice. It would also be useful to
explore within an ecosystem of legal
Developments in the US provide a useful
providers the extent to which a ‘judicare’
context for examination of developments in
model of providing legal aid through private
the UK. After setting out a brief summary of
practice can continue in the future. We
CLE from the 1970’s, we consider the
explore in Manchester the early-stages of a
assessment of clinical and pro bono activity,
local initiative which involves a collaboration
including the importance of reflective
between legal advice agencies, law schools
practice. We next explore practice on the
and lawyers in private practice to work
ground by examining clinical initiatives
together in seeking to target legal services
supported by twelve law schools and pro
to the poorest and most vulnerable people
bono work undertaken in three universities.
in society. Examples of innovation in
The law schools selected were those with a
practice are also highlighted in order to
reputation for excellence and/or are
encourage local responses both in relation
adopting innovative practices. Within the
to criminal justice initiatives and through
context of this study, however, we must
the use of technology.
stress that we have not been able to include
all law schools having a good reputation for
clinical work. Nevertheless, we are able to 5 Recommendations
examine a wide range of activity and we We have only been able to scratch the
adopted a thematic approach when surface of what is happening with CLE and
considering the following issues: pro bono activities when looking at activity
on the ground. It is in this context of
 Whether the primary goal of the activity
change, and particularly with the proposed
is legal education or community service; legal education reforms in England and
 The potential for a fee-generating
Wales, that we feel law schools could
‘teaching law firm’ model;
usefully engage with the Solicitors
 Examining relatively new models of
Regulation Authority (SRA). The SRA would
clinical activity; benefit from having the knowledge and
 Exploring clinical activity within
expertise of clinicians working in established
traditional Russell Group law schools;
law clinics and we also recommend that law
 Considering pro bono activities
schools consider working with the SRA as an
supported by a number of law schools.
‘early adopter’ of the proposed reforms,
including the more traditional universities in
4 Proposed legal the Russell Group. This would help to ensure
that the adoption of clinical methods
education reforms complements rather than detracts from
We next explore the proposed legal high-quality teaching methods.
education reforms in England and Wales and
the potential for universities to work with
students on the new ‘solicitors qualifying
vii
With the potential for expansion in CLE,

we also recommend that an empirical study
is undertaken. Clinicians are best placed to
inform the research agenda but there will be
limits to what can be learned about clinical
practice from people studying their own
programmes. We therefore propose that a
study is undertaken in which clinicians and
social scientists collaborate to consider the
following key issues arising out of this
study:
 Creating a taxonomy of CLE;

 Exploring approaches to CLE: a bolt-on
clinic or integrated into the curriculum;
 Measuring the quality of clinical legal 6 Next steps
advice; In the interest of taking forward the findings
 Considering the student perspective on and recommendations contained in this
the ‘clinic effect’; report commissioned by the School of Law
 Exploring law clinics and the ecosystem at the University of Manchester it is
of legal providers; proposed that the School convenes a
 Examining technology and innovations in seminar in association with the Clinical Legal
practice. Education Organisation, at which clinicians,
regulators and academics can discuss the
issues raised in this report. The suggested
aim of the seminar would be to craft a
framework for the future that makes sense
of the complexities and uncertainties
currently associated with the teaching of
law.
viii
1 Introduction
The original purpose of this study was to evaluate the viability of a new approach to clinical
legal education (CLE) in the School of Law at the University of Manchester, including the
possibility of setting up a ‘teaching law firm’. It soon became apparent that uncertainty in a
number of policy areas would shape the study, including proposed reforms of legal education
and, following the 2008 recession, an increase in unmet legal need for the poor, marginalised
and disadvantaged in society. Cost-cutting measures have also had a dramatic impact on
reducing publicly funded legal services available to such individuals and groups. In particular,
implementation of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO),
led to whole areas of law being removed from scope of public funding. Similar developments in
the United States (US) over recent years have led to reforms in legal education and innovations
in CLE intended to help improve access to justice (Goldfaub, 2012; Krantz and Millemann,
2015). With the potential for legal education reform in England and Wales encouraging law
schools to integrate clinical methods into the curriculum we have taken the opportunity to
examine what is currently happening on the ground and to consider how this might change in
the future.
It is helpful to begin by briefly placing CLE in a global context and we then look at its
background and development within the US. Having examined three different legal advice clinics
in Chicago, we consider a recent coalescing of factors which have influenced clinical methods
and innovation in the delivery of legal services.
There are important differences between the US and the United Kingdom (UK) in the way
that students qualify to practice law, but in our view developments across the Atlantic are useful
when looking to the future over here. In Section Four we set out the background to CLE in the
UK and look at some of the issues arising out of the assessment of clinic work. A thematic
exploration of 12 clinics that operate across the UK is followed by examination of proposals to
introduce the ‘solicitors qualification exam’. In our view the proposal would see a shift in legal
education towards the American model. The advice ecosystem in which law clinics operate
within the context of cuts in public spending is then considered in Section Seven. This provides
the framework for exploring the potential for clinical service innovation in the civil and criminal
justice systems. We conclude this report by setting out recommendations and outlining the next
steps that we believe should be taken when looking to the future of CLE.
1.1 Clinical models, experiential learning and pro bono

activities
It is helpful in this introduction to set out what we mean by a law clinic and identify key models.
Grimes (1996:138) defines a law clinic as “a learning environment where students identify,
research and apply knowledge in a setting which replicates, at least in part, the world where it
is practised”. Here, the term ‘experiential learning’ refers to an approach to education in which
students are exposed to real or realistic legal issues and problems (Grimes and Gibbons, 2016).
1
Although CLE and pro bono activities are conceptually distinct, it is exceedingly difficult to pin
down “one all-encompassing definition that will meet with the approval of everyone” (Kerrigan
and Murray, 2011:1). Sandefur and Selbin (2009:58) note that CLE in the US is a “catchall term
for a wide variety of practices and methodologies not easily summarised”. When considering a
taxonomy of CLE, Richard Grimes notes that there are essentially two models: the law school
clinic (run within or external to the law school but staffed and run by the law school) and the
non-law school clinic (based on externships but where the law school provides the students and
deconstructs the students’ experience afterwards). 1 Each model can then be subdivided into
different types of clinical activity and this classification can be further analysed in terms of
whether it has an educational or service focus. CLE can mean different things in different
contexts, and the different types of clinical activity and pro bono schemes summarised by
Kerrigan and Murray (2011:1-3) are helpful:
 In-house advice and representation clinics – often referred to as a ‘teaching law firm’, the
type of service clients would expect if they went to a firm of solicitors is replicated in the law
school.
 Advice-only/gateway clinics – providing initial advice and/or referral to other services and
covering a wide range of activities, such as a drop-in/telephone advice and email research.
 Placement or externship schemes – absent from law school supervision, students go out to
work with law firms or other external agencies.
 Simulation activities – students act in roles as lawyers performing realistic but standardised
tasks set by a tutor.
 Specialist clinical projects – a range of projects which do not fall clearly into one of the
above categories, such as ‘Innocence Projects’ and the Free Representation Unit.
 Streetlaw projects – students work as a member of a team to educate community groups

about an area of law or legal rights relevant to members of the group.
 Voluntary pro bono activities – a range of activities that take place as part of or as an
adjunct to study at law schools.
1.2 Methods
The methods adopted in this study have included a literature review of CLE initiatives both
nationally and internationally and legal education reform in England and Wales and the US. We
have visited eight clinics, and spoken to clinicians (either in person, over the telephone or via
email) at four other law schools in the UK, and Dr Vicky Kemp visited three legal advice clinics
and interviewed clinicians and academics in Chicago. Web-based research into CLE initiatives
and pro bono work was undertaken at four other universities.2
Research interviews were held with Associate Professor Rebeccca Sandefur, an Associate
Professor at Illinois University and a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation (25 May 2016),
Michelle Waite from Fieldings Porter (7 June 2016), Matthew Bown from Police Actions Lawyers
Group (7 June 2016), Dr Graham Smith, Director of Social Responsibility at the School of Law,
University of Manchester (21 June 2016) and telephone interviews were held with Julie Brannan
from the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) (17 June 2016), Professor Nigel Savage, former
President of the University of Law (21 June 2016) and John Nicholson, barrister from the
Greater Manchester Law Centre (23 June 2016).
1
Without this reflective component it is work-experience and not a clinic.
2
Details of the clinics visited and clinicians spoken to are set out in the Appendix.
2
2 Clinical legal education in a global context

CLE programmes exist in one form or another at law schools throughout the world. Whereas
local approaches to the study of law are outdated CLE is different. As Bloch (2011) points out,
clinical law teachers use experiential learning methods that place students in the role of a
lawyer in a social justice context. Thus, CLE is taught on the ground and teachers rely on their
experience in the field and ties to local communities and legal professionals. Despite this
‘localism’, Bloch (2011) shows why CLE is global. First, he notes there is now the global reach of
CLE, particularly over the past 15 to 20 years. Second, there is a commitment to legal
education and legal system reform, which has a social justice mission of global significance.
Third, clinical law teachers and their collaborators have joined together in a global clinical
movement.3
Committed to achieving justice through legal education, the Global Alliance for Justice
Education (GAJE) was set up by clinicians in 1999 with the intention of involving people,
including law students, from as many countries in the world as possible. A bi-annual conference
is held at locations which are accessible and affordable for people from developing countries. 4
As part of the ‘Global Clinical Movement’, Bloch (2011) has published an edited collection of
essays with contributions from 50 CLE scholars from six continents. For Asher (2012), this is
one of the first books which is exclusively focused on clinical legal practice and encourages
coherent thinking about law school clinics as a subset of public interest law.
In many developing countries CLE has emerged, after much struggle, to play an important
role in supplementing the work of national legal aid bodies (McQuoid-Mason et al., 2011:34).
Law clinics also provide backup legal services to clusters of paralegal advice offices, as occurs in
South Africa, which helps to make law clinics more financially viable.
Bloch (2011) comments that struggles for CLE provide a credibility that helps reformers
establish new programmes, which also help invigorate clinical projects in the developed world.
Take Streetlaw projects, for example, where students work as a member of a team to educate
community groups about an area of law relevant to members of the group. Having first
developed in the US, such initiatives are popular in law schools in the UK, but often these are
run by students with little or no supervision. In other countries Streetlaw is being used as a
“tool for social change” (Ikawa, 2011:209): indeed, Grimes et al. (2011:225) describe it as a
“vehicle through which the public can be made more aware of their rights and responsibilities”.
This is seen to be effective when carried out by law students whose task is to learn the material
themselves before helping others to understand it. In South Africa, for example, in the post-
apartheid era Streetlaw has highlighted the role of legal literacy as a powerful tool for social
change and, at the same time, demonstrated the capacity of law students to promote greater
awareness of basic civil rights. The Streetlaw programme also helped break down racial barriers
3
See further Bloch’s (2011) introduction to ‘Global Clinical Movement’.
4
For further details of the GAJE see http://www.gaje.org/
3
between young people by enabling Black and White school children to share experiences and
debate important societal issues (Grimes et al., 2011:228).
In articulating a vision for what the global clinical movement should strive to accomplish,
Maisel (2011:335) comments on three goals: increased access to justice for previously
unrepresented groups; a system of legal education that ensures future lawyers have the
knowledge, skills, and values needed to help solve the world’s complex problems; and a legal
profession that is more diverse, skilled and committed to serving social needs. For Asher
(2012), there is the need to question the contested meaning and purpose underlying CLE at law
schools both within and outside of the US. An important step forward, he proposes, is to have a
‘thick description’ of the content of clinical work and the contexts in which clinics operate. Asher
(2012:197) argues that “the goal of subsequent scholarship in this area should be to develop
taxonomies of institutional form that allow us to assess and further develop clinical legal
education”. In so doing, we need to know about legal practice in the various settings to
understand how it might constitute a model of work that is shared across borders.
4
3 Clinical legal education in the United States

It is important to note from the outset the way in which students have to qualify as an attorney
in the US. It involves them having to complete their first degree, generally a four-year course
(three years at some universities), before postgraduate study of law under the Juris Doctor
(J.D.) degree, which is usually of three years duration. During years two and three of the J.D.
degree programme law students tend to be involved in CLE, that is after a minimum of four
years in higher education.5 Having completed the J.D. degree, and having successfully taken
the bar exam, they go straight into legal practice as an attorney.
Factors informing changes in legal education in the US over recent years include the impact
of the economic crisis on reducing student recruitment and increasing encouragement from
regulators for law schools to expand clinical and pro bono activities. Resources are the dominant
factor when US law schools make decisions on how to engage students in clinical activity, and
significance also attaches to the legal services market: most legal services are targeted at the
wealthiest 20% of the population. This leaves gaps in legal advice provision, not only for poor
and marginalised communities but also for middle-income earners. Recent innovations in the US
are, therefore, aimed at improving support for students and new attorneys and also improving
the delivery of legal services.
3.1 A brief history of clinical legal education

CLE and experiential learning first developed in the US and today almost all law schools offer
clinical modules. In the early 1900’s Harlan Fiske Stone (1911:733), lawyer and Dean of
Colombia Law School, declared:
“If it is true that the function of the law school is to approach the study of law from the
theoretical and scholarly side, it is equally true that it must not become so academic as to
separate itself from the profession which it represents and for the practice of which it
undertakes to train its students”.6
Clinical methods began to be adopted in the US in the 1930’s (Llewellyn, 1930) and gathered
pace during the 1950’s, when funding was made available. This was partly motivated by the
legal aid movement and in 1958 the Ford Foundation awarded $800,000 to set up the National
Council on Legal Clinics. In the 1960s the Ford Foundation shifted the focus towards educational
rather than legal aid and the Council was renamed the Council on Legal Education for
Professional Responsibility (CLEPR). A $12 million Ford Foundation grant followed and the
number of clinics set up by law schools increased dramatically. When funding from the Ford
5
In the UK students tend to be invovled in CLE from the second year of studying for law as their first
degree (see Section 4).
6
It is due to such concerns today that the SRA in England and Wales have proposed educational reforms
which seek to integrate the theory and practice of law into the curriculum.
5
Foundation was withdrawn the US Department for Education took over CLE funding and, with
spending of $87 million clinics proliferated in law schools between 1978 and 1997 (Joy, 2012).
The organised bar in the US has repeatedly called for students to be better prepared as
lawyers and for law schools to integrate ‘experiential learning’ which involves more practical and
professional training in legal education. In the American Bar Association’s (ABA, 1992) most
influential report, the MacCrate Report, law schools were called upon to place greater emphasis
in developing professional skills and values for law students. The Clinical Legal Education
Association (CLEA) was formed in 1992 and now has more than 1,000 teacher members who
regularly publish in the Clinical Law Review.
The Carnegie Report (Sullivan et al., 2007) has been seen as perhaps the most influential
document in current debates about the future of legal education (Thomson, 2014). Emphasising
that law schools should teach less about what the law is and more about what the law does and
what lawyers do with it, the authors argue that students must encounter law not just as a set of
doctrinal principles but also as a set of systemic processes. The curriculum, therefore, should be
organised around foundational professional skills and the contexts for using them, aimed not at
having knowledge but at using knowledge.
The third important US report, ‘Best Practices for Legal Education’, was published by CLEA
in 2007 (Stuckey et al., 2007). The Committee spent six years adopting a collaborative
approach in order to develop a statement of best practices for legal education. In the report,
Professor Roy Stuckey and his colleagues identify six attributes of effective, responsible
lawyers, which include intellectual and analytical skills, professional skills and professionalism.7
The Best Practices report supported the concept that experiential learning is an effective
method of integrating doctrine, skills, and professional formation. Experiential courses are
identified as those which involve students’ experiences in the roles of lawyers or their
observations of practising lawyers and judges to guide their learning. Experiential education is
seen to integrate theory and practice by combining academic inquiry with actual experience
(Stuckey et al., 2007:165).
By 2010, almost all law schools in the US have multiple clinics (Bintliff and Alford, 2010).
3.2 Educational theory in experiential learning

In 1984 Professor David Kolb (2014) wrote about experience as the source of learning
development and he produced a cyclical model for reflective practice. The model was adapted
by Gibbs (1988) in a six-step ‘reflective cycle’. This sets out, in summary, that when reflecting
on an interaction with clients, students needs to think round: describing what happened – what
were they thinking and feeling – what was good or bad about the experience – what sense they
can make of the situation – what else could be done – if it arose again what would they do.
Schön (1983) used the theory of the reflective practitioner to encourage a debate about the
nature of professional knowledge and the role of reflection in professional education. Crucially,
Schön (1991) observed that professional education tended to distinguish between knowledge
and action by assuming that professional practice is merely the application of a body of
knowledge to a practical situation. In real life, he pointed out that things are not so simple and
professionals are often presented with difficult situations which are vague, messy and ill-
informed.
Within a professional field Casey (2014) notes that experts need to have the capacity to
exercise judgement and they do so quickly, seamlessly and repeatedly. They draw on
experience to distinguish relevant information from the irrelevant, and to assess the risks of
different courses of action. Professional experience for an attorney comes to inform their
intuition and helps to shape the exercise of judgement. Over time the attorney comes to rely on
their ‘gut instinct’ or intuition in the exercise of their professional judgement. Their experience
also allows them to analyse immediately factors that could affect the professional performance
7
The other three related attributes include self-reflection and lifelong learning skills, core knowledge of the
law, and core understanding of the law (Stuckey et al., 2007:65-66).
6
or outcome. New attorneys lack experience and it is in this context that Schön (1983) writes
about the ‘reflective practitioner’. Without experience new attorneys cannot rely on intuition and
instead they must “de-couple the action from the thinking about the action” and thereby
consciously activate a process to assist in exercising professional judgement (Casey, 2014:319).
This is not to say that experienced lawyers have no need for reflective practice but that they
integrate reflection in their practice. The way in which students are assessed on reflective
practice is considered below when examining the assessment of clinical work (see Section 4.3).
3.3 Three different models of legal advice clinic

As part of this study three law clinics were visited in Chicago, USA. The first CLE initiative
presented below is run by an elite university and the impressive work undertaken is resource
intensive. Next observed is a law office based in a university, with employed attorneys providing
pro bono legal services and charging a fee for clients who can afford to pay. A general legal
advice clinic operating outside of a university with students on placement assisting attorneys is
the third model examined.
3.3.1 The Mandel Clinic – University of Chicago Law School

It is now over 50 years since the University of Chicago set up the Mandel Clinic with twin goals
of assisting those who need help and teaching students the practicalities of legal practice. Since
inception the Mandel Clinic has been regarded as an exemplary law school–affiliated legal aid
clinic and it is reported that hundreds of thousands of people have been helped by the clinic.8
Professor Jeff Leslie, Director of Clinical and Experiential Learning at the Mandel Clinic, said
that in the 1950’s there was a drop-in centre with long queues of people waiting for advice. The
focus at that time was family law followed by contract and debt advice. With a high volume of
cases students tended to be used as paralegals, supporting attorneys, rather than seeing clients
and doing the work themselves. The clinic was seen as separate from the law school and in the
1970’s attorneys were not recognised as teachers within the law school. With increasing interest
the need to integrate the clinic into the law school became evident. A new director was
appointed in 1970 with the aim of creating more individualised and personal legal training for
students. Jeff said that the clinic’s pedagogical mission became more dominant around 20 years
ago. The attorneys appointed were experts in their specialism which gave students more
sophisticated and relevant legal practice experience. This specialisation, according to Jeff, led to
the Mandel Clinic’s reputation as an exemplar of CLE.
Jeff said students register for clinics in their second and third years of studying law and are
selected on the basis of an algorithm. In the clinics they learn through classroom instruction,
simulation and representation of clients under the close supervision of clinical teachers and
attorneys. There are at present around 150 to 175 students involved in clinic work, which is
about half of the student body, and the clinics handle more than 1,000 cases annually. Clinic
8
For further details of the Mandel Clinic see University of Chicago (2016a).
7
work started with an access to justice focus and then switched to pedagogical concerns with Jeff
stressing that a balance needs to be struck between the two. The subject areas available to
students under the clinics include environmental law, civil rights and police accountability,
criminal and juvenile justice, employment discrimination, federal criminal justice, housing
initiative, international human rights, mental health, social services law and recently the setting
up of the new Supreme Court and Appellate Advocacy Clinic.9
Jeff describes the housing initiative project as a transactional clinic in which students
provide legal representation to community-based housing developers, tenant groups and other
parties involved in affordable housing development. Working with non-profit housing developers
it addresses issues concerning contracts, acquisition on construction and financing. Students, he
said, serve as deal lawyers, advising clients on structuring issues, which include negotiating,
drafting and reviewing construction loan documents, construction contracts, purchase and sale
agreements, partnership agreements, and other contracts.
Professor Craig Futterman is responsible for the work of the Civil Rights and Police
Accountability Project (PAP), a leading US civil rights clinic that focusses on criminal justice
issues. As an expert in the field he is able to influence policy and practice and, for example, in a
recent case he released hundreds of Chicago police video and audio clips. He explains that if
there has been a police shooting or an allegation of police brutality it is important that the
Department is held to account for its action from day one: “If there’s a video taken in a public
area, the video should be released within 24 to 48 hours of the incident. That’s what better and
more effective police departments are doing”. 10
Jeff explained that the Mandel Clinic does not charge fees for any of the work undertaken,
although the clinic will claim fees from the court for cases won. More generally, however, Jeff
confirmed that the cost of CLE is covered by the law school, mainly through student fees and
endowments. It is at the elite universities, including the University of Chicago which is ranked
joint fourth in the list of best law schools in the US (US New Education, 2016), that there are
large endowments from alumni which help fund CLE work. Indeed, in the world rankings of the
richest universities the University of Chicago is in 15th position with an endowment of $7.55
billion.11
With the University of Chicago’s status as an elite institution students are highly
employable. Jeff said that work in the clinic is important to employers who want new attorneys
to have embraced problem-solving approaches, experience of working with clients and skills
which help them understand legal practice. By investing heavily in CLE work, therefore, the
Mandel Clinic are able to provide a ‘Rolls Royce’ model which is beyond the financial reach of
many universities.
3.3.2 The Law Offices of Chicago-Kent College of Law

Within Chicago-Kent College of Law a teaching Law Office has been set up which operates on
the same basis as a private law firm. Its dual mission is to provide high-quality clinical
education to over 150 students each semester12 and deliver outstanding and competitively
priced legal services to clients. A unique aspect of the Chicago-Kent CLE programme is that it is
a fee-generating model which is reported to bring both educational and financial benefits for
students. The Law Offices are staffed by 10 clinical professors and another 10 ‘staff attorneys’.
Of the 10 professors, the directors of the externship program and the ADR training program are
funded by the University and the other eight are self-funded.13
9
It is interesting to visit the Mandel website and see the brief descriptions given about the work
undertaken in the different clinics as this helps to highlight the specialist nature of the legal work that
students can participate in (University of Chicago, 2016a).
10
University of Chicago (2016b).
11
See The Best Schools (2016).
12
The students receive academic credit for working with one of the clinical professors in the area of their
choice.
13
For further information see Chicago-Kent College of Law (2016a).
8
Director of Clinical Education Professor Richard Gonzalez, with over 30 years of legal
experience, is acclaimed as one of the nation’s best-known and successful employment
attorneys. Richard described that Law Offices clinicians’ salaries are linked to the fees they
generate and bonuses allow them to earn more than highly paid academic faculty members.
Clinicians are appointed on a long-term contract basis and are required to supervise students
and teach in the clinic classroom components. With the fee-generating model Richard explained
that their experienced practitioners also become experienced teachers.
The in-house clinic programme covers criminal defence, employment discrimination and
civil rights, entrepreneurial, environmental, family, health and disability, intellectual property,
areas of legal practice along with mediation and alternative dispute resolution, a tax clinic and a
centre for open government. Nine clinicians support these activities and annual caseload is
around 1,000.
Prior to joining the Chicago-Kent faculty in 1988, Richard was a litigator in a law firm,
attorney with the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago and administrative law judge for the
State of Illinois Human Rights Commission. In the Law Offices Richard concentrates on
representing employees in discrimination and wrongful discharge cases. He described how
students are exposed to clients and potential clients and get involved in the preparation of
pleadings and discovery, trial preparation and discussion of related strategic issues.
Professor Daniel Coyne is one of the two clinicians who practices criminal law in the Law
Offices. Before joining the faculty at Chicago-Kent in 2005, he headed a private practice
working on criminal cases. As an experienced attorney, Daniel said that he is one of around 70
attorneys locally who are certified as ‘first chairs’ and able to take on cases of murder and other
offences which, until recently, attracted the death penalty. This means that Daniel and his
colleague, Professor Richard Kling, who worked in a Public Defender’s Office and was a member
of the Special Homicide Task Force, can deal with the most serious of offences heard at the
Federal Supreme Court. Daniel explained that the Criminal Law Office deals with more pro bono
work than private firms with around half of their cases being court-appointed and funded. A
sliding-scale of fees operates and people who can afford to pay are only asked to contribute
towards their costs.
Students working in the Criminal Clinic not only assist clinicians on preparing cases, the
State of Illinois allows them to obtain a 711 Licence to make representations in the criminal
courts. Students may only apply for the Licence after completing a fixed number of credits,
which can only be achieved in the third year of their J.D. degree, and may then do anything in
court that Daniel does so long as he is present and supervising them. He said that students
routinely deal with jury trials and some have argued cases all the way to the Supreme Court.
This, he said, gives students an excellent opportunity to try out their advocacy skills in front of
a judge who knows their trainee status while under the watchful eye of a clinician who can
intervene if problems arise.
Daniel also commented on how students’ exposure to criminal cases in the clinic, and to
prosecutors, public defenders and judges, helps their future employability. When commenting
on what distinguishes the Law Offices from other non-paying clinics, Daniel said: “I think it’s the
wake-up call – when our students not only see the law but how the practice of law works …
They have to have an understanding that litigation does cost money. If you’ve never been faced
with that and you have a client out on the street what you don’t have from the perspective of a
young lawyer is how to manage the client”.
Professor Rhonda de Freitas, a family and matrimonial attorney who deals predominantly
with child custody and visitation issues, complex financial settlements, and collaborative law,
joined the Chicago-Kent faculty in 2008. Rhonda was an experienced attorney in family law
prior to joining the Law Offices and explained that with three children to look after she was
finding it difficult to manage the 18-hour days required. The majority of her clients at the
Family Law Office do not have the funds to pursue all issues arising and after establishing what
they can afford to pay she then negotiates with them about the best way to proceed. Such
negotiations Rhonda said were an important part of her job and central to the learning
experience of students in the Family Clinic.
9
In such a large city as Chicago there is a vibrant legal services market and Rhonda
described how she runs a successful practice helping poor and ‘middle-income’ people who, like
firefighters, earn around $70,000 a year. Although this may seem like a lot of money it does not
go far for a family with children who have to split up and survive on $35,000 each, and with
private lawyers charging at least $400 an hour only the well-off can afford representation.
Rhonda said that working in the clinic helps students by allowing them to experience family law
in the real world and recognise that most people do not have the financial means to bring
everything to bear on a case. Indeed, in some cases she said that a client may only have $100
to spend on legal fees and the case could then come down to who is going to pick up the
electricity bill.
Also at the Chicago-Kent College of Law is the Center for Access to Justice and Technology
(CAJT).14 The Director, Professor Ron Staudt, is a pioneer and national leader in the field of
legal technology education. Ron, together with Alex Rabanal, Access to Justice Fellow, talked
about a number of interesting initiatives within CAJT which are explored further below when
looking at technology and clinical work (see Section 3.6).
3.3.4 Chicago Legal Clinic

The Chicago Legal Clinic is of relevance to this study because although not attached to a
university it operates student placement schemes. The clinic was founded in 1981 by Ed
Grossman, who is the Executive Director, and the Most Reverend Thomas Paprocki, both alumni
of a local university. Since setting up the clinic, which now comprises four offices with the main
one in South Chicago, they have provided assistance to tens of thousands of low-income
residents of Chicago.
Veda Dmitrovich, the Pro Bono Programme Director and Director of the Intern Programme,
explained that there are 38 employees and 23 attorneys based over the four offices. The clinic
also supports a number of court-based advice desks which assist litigants in person understand
processes and prepare documents. A pro bono programme matches people on low incomes with
meritorious civil legal problems with private attorneys who are willing to represent them on a
voluntary basis. The clinic also operates a virtual advice desk where litigants can seek advice in
relation to family, housing and consumer law by speaking to an attorney over the telephone.
Through its neighbourhood offices and advice desks the Chicago Legal Clinic dealt with around
24,000 clients during 2015/16.
Veda said that some law schools credit volunteer law students for work undertaken in the
clinic; this is known as an externship. She also explained that the Public Interest Law Initiative
(PILI) helps by funding law students work in legal service organisations. This includes funding of
$5,000 each for three students to work at the clinic for 10 weeks over the summer. There are
also the PILI Fellowships which are available to students who have graduated and been hired by
large law firms. The firms pay the Fellows a salary to work at a legal aid agency during the
summer months. The Fellows work five part-time weeks, take time off for the bar exam, and
return for five full-time weeks. Coordination is evidently an important part of the clinic’s
contribution to the legal services network operating in Chicago.
14
See further Chicago-Kent College of Law (2016b).
10
3.4 Recent changes in legal education and legal services

CLE in the US has to be understood in the context of developments that indicate traditional
means of access to the legal profession are unsustainable. These include the high costs of legal
education and a radically changed job market following the financial crisis of 2008. This has led
to the retrenchment of law firms, reduced salaries and many new attorneys struggling to find
work. In pursuing their education it is not uncommon for law graduates to accumulate $125,000
to $150,000 in debt. Goldfaub (2012:281) notes that the emerging concern is that “law schools
cost too much and deliver too little of what our brave new world requires”. Even after having
paid for their law degree, on average, around 40% of students fail to pass the bar exam, which
is required to obtain a licence to practice as an attorney. In 2015, for example, just 59% taking
the bar exam passed (National Conference of Bar Examiners, 2016). 15 Over the years the pass
rate has dropped and is now at the lowest point since the 1980’s (Kitroeff, 2015).
Media reports suggest that this trend is due to high costs of education, which discourages
students from applying to study law. Across the US, for example, enrolment in law schools was
down 24% from 2010 to 2013; as high as 38% in New York (Weissmann, 2013). Academics
point out that by enrolling an increasing number of students with lower grades and LSAT (Law
School Admission Test) scores it is not surprising that a higher proportion fail the bar exam. In
effect, the majority of law schools in the US are not only shrinking in size but also admitting
less qualified students (Rivard, 2015). The media blames universities for this decline in student
numbers because since the introduction of tuition fees they have been criticised for treating
legal education as a ‘cash cow’. In an attempt to attract students some universities are offering
compressed programmes, an innovation pioneered by North Western School in Illinois in 2009,
and Brooklyn Law School launched a two-year option for the J.D. (Loftus, 2015).
It is interesting to reflect that while there are concerns in the US about unmet legal need
there is no shortage of lawyers. Janelle Orsi (2013) seeks to address this by encouraging
innovations in the delivery of legal services. Orsi is a cofounder of the Sustainable Economies
Law Centre which promotes a new legal landscape based on community resilience and
grassroots economic empowerment. A mismatch, she says, has developed over the years
between the legal needs of society and the way in which legal services are targeted at the most
wealthy group. In the 1970s, for example, the ABA identified that the middle 70% of society
were not getting their legal needs met. With attorneys focusing their attention on the 20% of
people who hold 93% of wealth, and the poorest 10% of society relying on legal aid, advice
clinics and pro bono attorneys, the 70% of the population holding just 7% of the wealth have
difficulties in accessing legal services (Orsi, 2013; 2014).
A ‘perfect storm’ appears to be on the horizon in the US. It is estimated that there will be
around 300,000 new lawyers before the year 2020 and only 73,000 jobs created (Orsi, 2014).
In California it was noted that in 2014, 55% of law graduates did not have a full-time job in law.
The solution for Orsi (2013) is for law schools to support graduates in setting up their own
practices and provide services to the 70% of people who cannot currently afford representation
15
70% passed at their first sitting and 33% at a repeat sitting.
11
by private law firms. Some law school are seeking to help new attorneys set up in practice, the
‘Incubator scheme’ (Krantz and Millemann, 2015), for example, and at this time of uncertainty
other innovations are being encouraged which are explored further below.
With the legal profession in the US under pressure the key regulators are intervening to
encourage the expansion of CLE initiatives and experiential learning. From 2014, for example,
the ABA has placed new responsibilities on law schools to better prepare students for practice
and require them to satisfactorily complete one or more experiential courses of at least six
credit hours (ABA, 2014a). CLEA (the association of clinicians) considers this insufficient and
recommends that that every J.D. student complete the equivalent of at least 15 semester credit
hours (Krantz and Millemann, 2015). The New York State Court of Appeals took this further
when introducing a new rule in 2015 which requires candidates seeking admission to the bar of
the State of New York to file documentation showing that they have completed 50 hours of
qualifying pro bono work.16 While Krantz and Millemann (2015) welcome some of the
recommendations made by regulators they urge legal educators to oppose externally generated
proposals that they consider to be ill-advised. Instead, they encourage law schools to assert
leadership in both proposing and making necessary changes, a useful lesson perhaps for legal
education reform in England and Wales.
On the ‘seismic shift’ facing the legal profession, Goldfarb (2012:279) notes that it is
difficult to see where it is headed as “it is animated by changes in social, economic, and cultural
forces such as the internationalisation of markets, the incursion of technology, and a series of
economic and global cataclysms occurring since the turn of the millennium”. In Goldfarb’s
(2012:280) opinion the traditional law school model appears to be economically and
educationally unsustainable, a view shared by Rebecca Sandefur, a Fellow of the American Bar
Foundation. In looking to the future, Rebecca highlights the need for innovation, which could
include clinics charging fees on a sliding-scale for the purpose of becoming more resilient to
other financial pressures within the university. She also comments on what academics refer to
as the ‘market failure’ of legal services and points out that with an excess of unemployed
lawyers and millions of people with no access to legal advice, there is latent demand which the
legal profession ought to be connecting with.
16
As required by Rule 520.16 of the Rules of the Court of Appeals.
12
3.5 Innovations in clinical legal services

There have been a number of innovations in CLE in response to the financial, educational and
legal challenges; some of which have been initiated by regulators. The ABA (2014b:26-27)
recommended that law schools should more effectively teach “core competencies needed by
people who will deliver legal services to clients” and that the ABA should revise its standards to
encourage law schools engage in more experimentation and innovation. In the State of New
York, for example, students are allowed to take bar exams early, in February instead of July. In
return they provide legal services for the poor during their last semester under supervision of a
legal services provider, law firm, or corporation in partnership with the law school (Lippman,
2014). At Northeastern University in Boston, the main model is now based on dividing the year
into ten or eight week terms. The first term comprises course work and the next an
outplacement with a legal employer. A student has three or four different placements over the
course of their J.D. degree and they ‘tack back and forth’ against book learning and applying it
in the real world (Northeastern University, 2016). In the State of California, which has the
highest proportion of lawyers in the US, by 2017 the regulators have imposed a bar licence pre-
condition requiring students to undertake 15 units of practice-based experiential case work or
apprenticeship during law school (State Bar of California, 2013).
Following the 2008 recession there have been innovations in CLE during the final year of
J.D. programmes and the first year of practice which involve partnerships with other legal
organisations (Krantz and Millemann, 2015). One university, for example, in partnership with a
commercial company – Cisco – offers students completing their second year of study paid intern
opportunities with the company’s legal department for seven weeks (Cisco also pay their tuition
fees in the fall).
Some law schools in the US are creating post-J.D. opportunities for their graduates. These
programmes have variously been described as ‘incubators’, ‘fellowship’, ‘residency’,
‘apprenticeship’, and ‘job corps’.17 It was noted above when examining the Chicago Legal Clinic
that some student interns had been placed under a fellowship scheme. The incubator/residency
programmes are becoming increasingly popular, albeit on a small-scale at present there were
21 programmes affiliated with law schools in 2015.18 Having set up ‘Incubator for Justice’ in
2007, a more recent City University of New York development is Civil Justice, Inc., which
provides a no-cost model of post-J.D. education and job opportunities (Blom and Robinson,
2014). This is a non-profit law office that supports an online network of solo and small-firm
17
Once again see Krantz and Millemann (2015).
18
A prototype is the ‘Incubator for Justice’ Programme in New York, which has a ‘Community for Legal
Resource Network’. This provides training over an 18-month period in basic business issues such as billing,
record-keeping, technology, bookkeeping and taxes, while also facilitating participants’ involvement in
larger justice initiatives (CUNY School of Law, 2014).
13
lawyers. Affiliated with a local university its purpose is to increase the delivery of legal services
to clients of low and moderate income while promoting a state-wide network of solo, small firm
and community based lawyers who share a common commitment to increasing access to justice
through traditional and non-traditional means. In addition to providing much needed support to
new attorneys, this type of civil justice project also has the potential to develop clinical
components so that students can be placed in solo and small firms to work under the joint
supervision of private lawyers and clinical professors.
3.6 Technology, clinics and the delivery of legal services

When visiting the Chicago-Kent College of Law, Professor Ron Staudt and Alex Rabanal talked
about their work on various technological initiatives which provide access to justice. One
initiative involves a collaboration between CAJT, CALI and the Idaho Legal Aid Services in the
Access to Justice Clinical Course Project (A2J Clinic Project). This project includes work on the
A2J Author, a software tool which enables users to build and implement customer friendly web-
based interfaces for document assembly. 19 The project produces course kits created by law
school clinics which are intended to encourage the growth of future A2J Clinics and at the same
time deliver new automated content to legal aid websites across the country. Ron said that the
aim of the project is to introduce law students to the skills required by a lawyer in a 21st century
law office and to produce guided interviews and other technical resources that legal
organisations can use to lower the barriers to justice for low-income people. Although developed
primarily for use in the US, Alex said that the A2J Author has made inroads into Canada and
Australia, but not as yet into the UK.
The CAJT also works with legal aid organisations to develop self-help resources. Working
with Illinois Legal Aid Organisation, for instance, has led to the setting up of the Illinois Online
Initiative which helps to improve access to legal advice for people on low-incomes.20 The A2J
Author can be used by litigants in person as it allows them to complete and print court
documents. With CAJT students identifying access to justice issues they can then use
“document assembly and the A2J Author software to solve the problem for low-income people
who face that problem every day” (Staudt and Mederios, 2013:711). This service is invaluable
to the high proportion of people who are unrepresented at court when important matters are
being dealt with, such as their home and immigration status. The initiative can also assist
attorneys who offer pro bono services which are not in their specialist area of law. In a number
of web-based seminars Ron and others comment on how technology can address some of the
unmet legal need.21
Rostain et al. (2013: 743-745) describe a similar technology and innovation law practice at
Georgetown Law Centre which has students build web-based applications that help people
identify and understand legal problems they may face and assess their legal options. At
Michigan State University College of Law there is a ReInvent Law Laboratory through which
students create business plans and develop improved business models that match appropriately
qualified lawyers with clients (Hornsby, 2013).
Developments in technology have led to ‘gaming’ being used to help people understand
legal problems and how to resolve them. In a conference video, for example, Stephanie Kimbro
talks about how to educate and encourage people to engage by using ‘gaming’, which can also
help gain access to justice (Stanford Law School, 2014).22 Working with the Illinois Legal Aid
Online initiative, for example, she has developed a game which helps to educate people about
eviction issues. The person playing the game takes on the role of the landlord and they are
taken through different situations which can arise with tenants which helps them to learn about
19
This software tool was developed by CAJT in collaboration with the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal
Instruction (CALI).
20
For details see Illinois Legal Aid Online (2016).
21
See further Staudt and Lauritsen (2013) and also the web-based seminar at Stanford Law School
(2014).
22
Stephanie Kimbro is a Fellow at Stanford Law School Centre on the Legal Profession and Co-Director of
the Centre for Law Practice Technology.
14
eviction law. As an estate planning lawyer, she has also developed ‘Estate Quest’, a game
designed to help people understand the importance of estate planning. In the game she
introduces important terms such as ‘guardianship’ and ‘executors’ and she uses a virtual time-
machine to take people forwards and backwards in time so that they can appreciate what can
happen if they do not plan ahead and deal with their legal affairs. Kimbro feels that gaming
could be used not only to encourage people to search for legal tools online but also to educate
them and help to prevent problems arising in the first place.23
Through technology clinics students can learn how to operate ‘virtual law practices’ through
which lawyers can deliver services online, help their clients to identify legal problems and
provide information, advice and documents to assist in resolving those problems (Hornsby,
2013). Operating in virtual space, by simply using a laptop and a mobile phone, technology is
seen to assist solo and small firms – and it will also help new attorneys - by reducing overheads
and using ‘computer technologies’ and ‘automated document assembly’ to provide legal
information and limited representation to low-income and moderate-income clients. Through
these ‘unbundled legal services’, Staudt and Mederios (2013) note that clients can determinate
how much attorney involvement they want, need, or can afford.
There are many other examples of innovative practice, and for Krantz and Millemann (2015)
such initiatives indicate that law schools need to both teach the application of technology in
legal practice and research the development of these applications. Further, as Staudt and
Lauritsen (2013:687) state: by “studying – or better yet, building – software systems that
perform some of the tasks that lawyers and judges do”, the next generation of lawyers can
“gain insight into emerging technologies at the centre of modern law practice and also develop
core competencies across a range of new and traditional lawyering skills”. They also comment
that understanding technology increases the potential of employment and success in practice.
Clinical experience in delivering legal services through technology also helps students think
about and participate in important access to justice reforms.
However, there are evidently limitations when using technology. Indeed, as Marc Lauritsen
(2013) notes, mistakes can rise from the impersonal nature of this source of legal help. He
points out, for example, that “Software applications lack common sense. They cannot hear what
is not being said. They do not detect nuance or emotion. Moreover, as with people, they can
operate on unspoken assumptions, create the illusion of expertise and engender unwarranted
trust”’ (Lauritsen, 2013:945-953). By itself, therefore, technology will not solve the huge access
to justice problems in the US but it is an important tool of both change and reform. Indeed,
Krantz and Millemann (2015) argue that law schools should be at the forefront of developing
and evaluating the best legal uses of artificial intelligence, both to narrow the access to justice
gap and also to train students in the uses of technology that will help them to succeed as
lawyers. Accordingly, Staudt and Mederios (2013:697) propose that law schools need to add a
technology clinic to assist law practice and prepare students for a “more technology-driven
workplace”.
The use of technology is likely to be resisted by those who recognise the need for clients
to receive face-to-face advice, particularly when dealing with complex issues and/or with
vulnerable people. However, through advances in technology it is also important to recognise
that this is an area where lawyers need to engage because otherwise there is the potential for
non-regulated websites to capture part of the market for legal services. Since the recession
there has been a rise in the number of commercial online service providers, many of which are
unregulated and thus pose formidable challenges to the smaller firms and solo practitioners who
comprise almost half of the lawyers in private practice (Krantz and Millemann, 2015). While
lawyers are using ‘virtual offices’ to ‘battle back’ against unregulated entities they are fighting
over a lucrative business. LegalZoom is such an entity which is not licensed to practice law but
it reported having more than two million customers and in 2011 revenue of more than $100
million. In addition, the eLawyering Task Force estimates that in an 18-month period more than
50,000 no-fault divorces were processed by online services, translating into approximately
$100,000,000 in lost revenue to family law attorneys nationwide (see Herrera, 2012:887-899).
23
Also see Hornsby (2013).
15
Having examined recent developments and innovations in the US we now turn our attention
back to the UK, and more specifically to England and Wales where there are similar issues
concerning the reform of legal education and in providing access to justice.
16
4 Clinical legal education and experiential learning in

the United Kingdom
How students qualify to practice law is different in the UK to the US. In the UK the traditional
route to becoming a solicitor is to first obtain a qualifying law degree (QLD), which is generally
of three to four years duration, followed by the Legal Practice Course (LPC), a one-year
postgraduate vocational training course. Completion of a two-year training contract at a law
firm is then required in order to qualify.24 It is while undergraduates study for their QLD,
generally in the second year or later, that they first experience CLE. In the US, as noted above
(Section 3), law students are generally in their fourth year of higher education before being
involved in CLE. There are no vocational training requirements for law students in the US and
after completing the J.D. degree and after passing the bar exam they are ready to practice as
an attorney. Another important difference between the UK and the US is that in the former
universities are free to decide whether or not to engage in clinical teaching methods whereas in
the US the ABA (2015) has mandated that a law school “shall provide substantial opportunities
to students for law clinics or field placement(s)”.
4.1 A brief history of clinical legal education - 1970’s to

2014
The Law School at the University of Kent opened the first clinic in 1973, followed by the
University of Warwick in 1976. However, the Kent Law Clinic closed in 1976 25 and by the
1980’s, just four clinics were in existence at Birmingham, Warwick, South Bank and
Northumbria. In the 1990’s, Grimes (2000) noted that there was a “flurry of activity on the
clinical front”, led by the University of Northumbria at Newcastle and followed by Sheffield
Hallam University, and these ‘in-house’ clinical programmes continue to be recognised as
exemplary models of CLE. It was also in the 1990’s that the nationwide Clinical Legal Education
Organisation (CLEO) was formed.26
24
There is a similar route to qualification in Scotland with postgraduate students taking the Diploma in
Professional Legal Practice and then completing a period of in-office training. In Northern Ireland students
have to complete a law degree but thereafter the vocational study and practical training aspects are
combined.
25
After a number of controversial cases were taken on.
26
CLEO was set up to help support law schools develop CLE and pro bono work, advance the law
curriculum and teaching methodologies and promote research and other scholarly activities. The
Northumbria Law School publishes the International Journal of Clinical Legal Education, which is a peer-
reviewed open access journal, and organises the International Journal of Clinical Legal Education
Conference.
17
Towards the end of the 1990’s, more law students were involved in practical legal work, yet
the model of the in-house real client clinic based in the law school and acting as a solicitor’s
office was only operating at Northumbria, Sheffield Hallam, Queen’s Belfast and Kent
Universities (Sylvester, 2003). It was only at the University of Northumbria that the clinical
course was, and remains, a compulsory element of their exempting degree with all fourth year
LLB students participating in an assessed clinical course of study. At the other three universities
CLE programmes were offered to students on an optional basis as part of their undergraduate
degree programmes.
4.2 LawWorks findings of clinical activity and pro bono

work
Regular surveys of law schools are undertaken by LawWorks (formerly the Solicitors’ Pro Bono
Society) in order to assess the extent to which CLE and pro bono activities are supported. In the
first 1994/95 survey it was noted that 23% of the new universities (the former polytechnics and
colleges of higher education that were given university status in 1992) in England and Wales
offered real client clinics and 5% of old universities doing the same (see Grimes, 2000).
Subsequent surveys show there has been an increase in CLE activity over the years.
Pro bono and clinical activity is continuing to expand. In the most recent LawWorks survey
(Carney et al., 2014) the 80 responses received represented 73% of all law schools surveyed:
96% did pro bono work and, on the assumption that those law schools who failed to respond did
not carry out such work, at least 70% of all law schools were involved in pro bono and/or
clinical activity. The 2014 survey revealed a greater range and number of pro bono clinics in law
schools compared to previous years. The number of advice-only clinics increased from 12 in
2006 to 56 in 2014 and the number of law schools offering more than one clinic also increased:
35% had more than one clinic and 24% offered three or more distinct clinic types. Just over half
of clinics reported that they offered generalist advice-only help and 40% provided more
specialist services, and 20% went beyond advice in generalist cases rising to just over 30% for
subject-specialist clinics.
Specialist advice was most prevalent in the categories of employment, family, welfare
benefit and housing law. Although few clinics offered specialist advice on commercial and
intellectual property law, 17 reported they offered services to small businesses and 20 offered
other areas of commercial work. While providing advice is their main activity, law schools
reported that placements and Streetlaw (and other public awareness programmes) were also
popular. In addition, 21 institutions reported that they ran an Innocence Project (addressing
miscarriages of justice); down from 24 in 2010. Just 14 institutions reported student
involvement in representation on social security, employment and housing cases.
The 2014 LawWorks survey revealed 6,119 students were involved in pro bono activity: an
incomplete picture as only 48 of the 80 respondent law schools gave figures. If the average
number of students involved in pro bono work was adopted across all respondents, Carney et
al. (2014) estimated that over 10,000 students were engaged in voluntary activities. More
clinics also reported that work was assessed as a credit bearing part of the curriculum: rising
from 10% in 2010 to 25% in 2014. The amount of money provided by external donors,
however, decreased in relative terms: 80% of clinics reported that they received no external
funding in 2014 (Carney et al., 2014:5).
Seeking to identify the extent to which university law clinics provide access to justice, a
survey was recently undertaken by Drummond and McKeever (2015) of 62 university law
schools which run clinics. 32 responded and the findings point to the increasing popularity of
clinical work with 16 of the clinics set up between 2011 and 2015. Interestingly, the survey
showed law schools trying to encompass multiple ambitions within CLE – such as delivering
access to justice, providing high quality teaching and research, improving the student learning
experience and employability – so as to justify additional resources (Drummond and McKeever,
2015:14). The survey also showed clinics cover a diverse range of areas of law, including
18
housing, consumer, family, employment, health and social care, immigration, criminal,
education, social security, asylum, human trafficking, property, probate and wills.
In the survey, 13 out of 22 clinics reported that they provided an advice-only service and
nine provided advice and representation. On average clinics carried a caseload of 104 cases a
year, although the median figure was 70, and the mode 100. Three-quarters of respondents
reported collaborating with external partners on client cases, mainly with solicitors, independent
advice organisations and barristers, through both formal and informal arrangements.
Collaboration was seen to be particularly important for enhancing casework supervision,
expertise and capacity, and enabling clinics to extend their services (Drummond and McKeever,
2015:5). While clinics identified the value to external partners of increasing the capacity of
publicly funded organisations to meet need, opinion differed among clinicians about the role of
CLE. Some clinicians argue that universities should do more to improve access to the law and
others are adamant that it is the responsibility of government rather than universities to ensure
adequately funded services (Drummond and McKeever, 2015:13).
4.3 Assessment of clinical activity

The word ‘clinic’ or ‘clinical’ is applied where real or realistic situations serve for students to
engage in legal casework or address and analyse legal issues. It follows that learning of this
type is experiential, and involves both the experience and a structured facility for reflection and
(possibly) re-application (Grimes and Gibbons, 2016). Without having some form of structured
opportunity for reflection, most clinicians agree that student exposure to real or realistic cases
is little more than ‘work experience’. Clinic also describes a constructivist teaching methodology
in which learning is not something that happens passively but requires students to participate
actively and construct their own knowledge (Ledvinka, 2006:34). According to Sylvester
(2016:37), although constructionist teaching methodology facilitates discipline and procedural
legal knowledge it is recognised more for teaching legal and intellectual skills and inculcating
professional values and ethics as a result of involvement in social justice.
There is much debate among clinicians about whether clinical and pro bono activity should
be assessed (Kerrigan and Murray, 2011). Sylvester (2003) notes that law schools which
facilitate voluntary student participation offer different experiences to in-house, real client
programmes which are incorporated and assessed as part of a course of legal study.
For Grimes and Gibbons (2016) ‘assessment’ refers to measurement of both the quality and
extent of student learning and the perceived value of what is being delivered, irrespective of
whether academic credit is gained. A pre-requisite of assessment is the setting out of clear
learning outcomes. Clinicians then have to decide how to ensure that outcomes/competencies
are expressed so as to embrace the range of experiences and fit the clinical programme offered
(Grimes and Gibbons, 2016; Sylvester, 2016). Particular forms of assessment have a certain
19
resonance in experiential learning and Grimes and Gibbons (2016) identify these as follows:
learning portfolio; simulation tasks; oral examination; and on-line assessment of the
appreciation of applicable professional standards.
Teaching reflective practice, which is seen to integrate intention, thought, specific action
and self-appraisal within a professional context, is not easy. It includes giving consideration to
rules and norms in a given field and provides guidance for the skilful application of professional
ethics (Schön, 1983). Reflective practice requires an ingrained habit of constant reflection and
Moon (1999:23) first described ‘reflection’ as “a form of mental processing with a purpose
and/or anticipated outcome that is applied to a relatively complex or unstructured ideas for
which there is not an obvious solution”. Casey (2014) notes that there are two problems
typically associated with introducing a reflective component into a law school course. The first is
resistance from students who consider reflection to be ‘touchy-feely’ and that it does not
contribute to substantive knowledge; and the second is the tendency of teachers to be
disappointed with what they perceive to be fairly low levels of performance in this area.
Reflection is seen by some to be a vital part of the learning process. Indeed, Ledvinka
(2006:29) describes it as “the magical ingredient which converts legal experience into
education”. By encouraging students to be reflective, Moon (2001) explains that clinicians help
them develop the habit of processing cognitive material which may lead to ideas that go beyond
the curriculum, learning outcomes and their teachers. In similar vein Añón (2016:48) notes that
“reflection about learning is an exercise that promotes life-long learning” including among future
lawyers.
Clinicians are not in agreement on assessment of reflection, particularly as it is difficult to
assess and student resistance may lead to validity problems (Sylvester, 2016). For Ledvinka
(2006), students take a learning journey from beginning to end of their course and written
reflection provides evidence of this journey. Grimes and Gibbons (2016) include a learning
portfolio as a component of assessment which they see as a vehicle for reflection. At the
Northumbria Student Law Office, Sylvester (2016) describes how assessment comprises two
reflective reports: one on skills in practice and the other selected from a range of optional
subject areas.27 Moon (2006) takes the view that if reflection is not assessed then some
students will view it as less important than work that is assessed, which makes it less likely that
they will engage in this process when in practice.
Quality control is another important element of the CLE debate. In some law schools pro
bono work is student-led with little or no supervision and is seen as the provision of a service
rather than education. These schools focus on raising student awareness of pro bono work and
instilling professional habits, including providing pro bono services, in preparation for practice.
The Quality Assurance Agency (QAA, 2015) in their benchmarking report on law sets out key
attributes and minimum requirements for undergraduate law students. Although the QAA
emphasises knowledge, skills and values it does not deal with how to ‘teach and learn’.28 The
programme of the Student Law Office at Northumbria University was designed to meet the
Quality Assurance Framework for undergraduate programmes. For Sylvester (2016) the
intention is to reflect the panel’s view that “a law graduate is far more than a sum of their
knowledge and understanding and is a well skilled graduate with considerable transferable
generic and subject-specific knowledge, skills and attributes” (QAA, 2015:4).
Finally, there is the question of whether clinics should assess themselves. In clinics where
students provide legal advice to live clients, Grimes and Gibbons (2016:133) point out that one
measure of assessment is clinicians compliance with professional standards.29 For in-house
clinics which provide legal advice there is also a route to accreditation through the ‘Advice
27
These include ‘clinic and my career’, ‘clinic and legal education’, ‘justice and ethics’, ‘clinic and public
discourse’ and ‘law in action’.
28
Despite some objections the review panel did not address delivery (personal email communication from
Professor Richard Grimes who was a member of the review panel (4 July 2016)).
29
It is the operational rules which should provide the framework and these need to be monitored to make
sure that any relevant changes to professional practice are taken into account and disseminated to
everyone working in the environment.
20
Quality Standard’. This is the quality mark for organisations that provide advice to the public on
social welfare issues. In order to achieve the standard clinics have to demonstrate to the Advice
Services Alliance (ASA, 2016) that they are “easily accessible, effectively managed, and employ
staff with the skills and knowledge to meet the needs of their clients”. Also, for assessed clinical
modules there is a ‘quality check’ as they are subject to institutional scrutiny (Grimes and
Gibbons, 2016).30 Interestingly, there appears to be no requirement check on the quality of
legal advice provided, although some clinics do ask clients to complete satisfaction surveys. A
research study could usefully interview clients in order to establish to what extent the advice
they received was helpful and if their problem was resolved. It would also be helpful for
students to be asked to complete exit surveys allowing their views to be obtained on issues of
quality, engagement, assessment and how clinical work may be improved.
30
See Kerrigan and Murray (2011:12) for differences between intra and extracurricular CLE and pro bono
activities.
21
5 Exploring clinical models and pro bono practices on

the ground in the United Kingdom
Law clinics vary in terms of staff, student profiles and numbers, and tend to be bespoke
creations set up to meet needs defined by individual law schools (Drummond and McKeever,
2015). This section begins with a thematic examination of some of the different types of law
clinic operating in the UK: a key theme is whether the primary goal is the education of students
or social justice. Next, we consider the ‘teaching law firm’ model, which is able to generate fees,
and explore how financial pressures could lead to some clinics becoming more commercially-
oriented. An examination of some relatively new law clinics, set up by law schools following the
economic downturn and retrenchment of legal aid follows, and we then explore CLE initiatives
supported by traditional law schools in the Russell Group of universities. We end this section by
examining different pro bono services supported by a number of law schools and look at some
of the recent winners of the LawWorks and Attorney General’s pro bono awards.
5.1 Legal education or community service?

The tension explored here is whether the primary goal of CLE is education, skills teaching and
exposing students to the law in action and legal ethics, or whether it should be the provision of
legal services to those in need. Nicolson (2006) argued that putting the educational needs of
students first reduces a clinic’s potential to serve the community and instil an altruistic ethic in
students, and also runs the risk of unethically treating clients as means to educational ends.
Other clinicians, however, promote clinic work as being about the process of learning and not
about running a service for financial, political or altruistic reasons (Grimes, 1996; Brayne et al.,
1998). When exploring tensions between clinics, Nicholson (2006) identified those which have a
primary goal of educating students as being ‘education-oriented’ and those wanting to serve the
community’s legal needs, being ‘social justice-oriented’.
5.1.1 Northumbria University Student Law Office (SLO)

The SLO has been in operation for over 20 years and the education of students is its primary
goal. Northumbria’s M Law degree is unique in that it incorporates all of the elements of
academic and vocational study needed to train as a solicitor or barrister. Instead of being a
separate entity within the law school the SLO is integrated into the curriculum. Director Carol
Boothby described the SLO as a ‘legal practice model’ run by a core team of six members of
staff and two full time administrators. As a full casework legal service the SLO provides advice
and representation to clients “just like any other firm of solicitors”.
While the primary goal of the SLO is education-oriented, a full casework model is supported
which involves entering into a retainer with the client to deal with all aspects of their case.
There evidently is a social justice dimension, and the primary emphasis is on providing a good
22
service to clients whilst providing valuable learning opportunities to students. This full casework
model can put supervisors under increased pressure when students finish working at the SLO,
between May and October, and they and the core team of six supervisors have to continue
working on retained cases. However, the approach adopted means that the SLO attracts
interesting cases and students can gain experience of all aspects of case work, including
representation at tribunals and court. With CLE incorporated into the curriculum, the
Northumbria SLO has adopted a resource-intensive approach which can be described as a ‘Rolls
Royce’ model.
Carol said that the SLO is run as a law office with students allocated into teams of six, each
representing a ‘firm’, and around 30 firms are active during each academic year. There are 22
supervisors, all of whom were formerly legal practitioners (and still hold their practising
certificates) and now work as lecturers and/or supervisors. A supervisor is allocated to each
firm, and their role is to work closely with students and ensure that clients receive a
professional service. Each member of staff may supervise up to a maximum of three firms.
Based on procedures in private practice, the SLO manual sets out the procedures required of
students, including guidance on recording time spent on cases, opening case files, notes of
interactions with clients, and so on.
The 2014/15 annual report revealed that in that year 415 students were involved in the
SLO (217 in year three of their studies, 174 in year four and 24 elective students), 853
enquiries were received, and 306 new and existing cases were worked on. It was also reported
that in excess of £92,000 was recovered in compensation claims for clients. The main areas of
law covered by the SLO include civil litigation, crime and criminal appeals, employment,
housing, welfare benefits, planning, family, business and commercial law. Over the years, Carol
Boothby said that the SLO had dealt with many thousands of cases and achieved compensation
for clients in excess of £1 million.
5.1.2 York Law School Clinic – University of York

The approach to CLE adopted by York Law School is unique in that the law curriculum is based
on problem based learning. Professor Richard Grimes, former director of the York Law Clinic,
explained that students are guided and supported by tutor-facilitators through simulation
exercises. Students are presented with problems which encourage them to reflect on deeper
social and theoretical issues, including questions concerning justice, fairness and human rights.
Students work on simulated problems throughout their law degree and when allocated to the
Law Clinic they have the opportunity to work with ‘live’ clients.
The Law Clinic provides an opportunity for second and third year undergraduate students to
engage with clients, and since 2014 postgraduates on a new LLM on the theory and practice of
‘clinic’, under the supervision of a qualified solicitor. Adopting Northumbria’s SLO model
students are allocated into law firms, which comprise groups of five to six students, and they
deal with real problems presented by clients in a realistic way.
In the 2014/15 annual report it was noted that 67 students were involved in the clinic as
part of their studies and they assisted 54 clients (University of York, 2015). The Law Clinic is
said by Richard to offer a simple advice-only service and from the outset clients are made
aware of its limitations. Nevertheless, cases are turned round quickly. In the two-year period
from 2011 (when the clinic opened) to 2013 student advisers helped over 250 clients on a wide-
range of issues, including civil litigation, family, immigration and business set up, landlord and
tenant, housing, welfare benefits, employment and criminal matters, and recovered or saved
clients in excess of £200,000.
The model adopted by both Northumbria and York Law Schools is based on academic staff
with practising certificates closely supervising advice given by students. This model allows law
schools control over the law advised upon and, because it is not reliant on external supervisors,
helps create a sustainable clinic (Bleasedale-Hill and Wragg, 2014). The model also helps
ensure that students are supervised in a way which enhances their learning opportunities. The
model does, however, carry significant resource implications as staff time needs to be allocated
23
to overseeing students and cases. While this model of supervision is important educationally,
enabling students to support each other and work together as a team, it is not an efficient
model of caseload management. With a ratio of cases per student at around two, rather than
deal with a high volume of cases, the intention is to enhance the educational experience of the
student.
5.1.3 Kent Law Clinic – University of Kent

Kent Law Clinic was the first law clinic in the UK, set up in 1973 by Adrian Taylor a pioneer of
CLE. Following disagreement on the role of universities in the provision of legal advice, the
University closed down the clinic in 1976 (Winkler, 2013), but students and staff continued to
provide pro bono legal support to people in the community.
The Law Clinic was relaunched in 1992 under the directorship of Professor John Fitzpatrick,
who continues in this post. Based on our observations the clinic has an overarching social
justice orientation: it is noteworthy that the Director and five other solicitors involved in the
clinic previously worked in law centres. John commented that a successful clinic requires
‘lawyers with attitude’ who are prepared to push cases in order to get a successful outcome.
However, providing a first class legal education is of equal importance, as is underlined in the
twofold aims and ethos of the Law Clinic: a) to provide a legal service to local people who need
but cannot afford to pay for such a service, and b) to enhance the education of students in the
Kent Law School.
John explained that the Law Clinic was established as an unincorporated association within
the Law School. This allows staff, students and volunteer lawyers in private practice to work
together, and identifies those staff and student members of the legal practice for client
confidentiality and legal privilege purposes. 31 The cost of the clinic is borne by the Law School.
Two large capital donations were recently received from alumni enabling construction of a
‘state-of-the-art’ building, into which the clinic will move in autumn 2016.
Six solicitors work in the clinic office, all must obtain a practising certificate and a post
graduate certificate in education. The office is open weekdays during office hours, for telephone
advice and client appointments. All student participation is voluntary. Around 65 assessed
students work on cases. Places are allocated by annual ballot. A further 250 students work on
an extracurricular basis on reception, advice sessions, cases, projects etc. In 2015, the clinic
dealt with 1,442 telephone enquiries, covering a wide range of legal issues, and 380 clients
received legal advice; 115 new cases were also taken on, in addition to many cases still active
from the previous year.
Students working on cases assist solicitors by researching the law, interviewing clients,
drafting proceedings, submissions and applications, negotiating with opposing parties and, from
time to time, advocacy work. This sometimes includes students advocating, under supervision,
in local county courts, employment tribunals, public inquiries and mediation proceedings.
Specialist teams address certain topics including immigration and asylum, mortgage
repossession and eviction proceedings, criminal justice and public access to land.
The proximity of Kent Law School to the Port of Dover prompted the Law Clinic to respond
to unmet legal need by raising funds in 2012 to cover the costs of an immigration solicitor and
part-time administrative support. The lawyer appointed, Sheona York, is a specialist solicitor
who has worked in this area for over 30 years. She works with the Immigration and Asylum
team in the clinic previously established by Catherine Carpenter. Commenting on unmet legal
needs, Sheona said that there were around 900 failed asylum seekers in Kent each year and
that annually she deals with around 100 children in relation to asylum issues. In this area of
work she describes how it is important to work with other specialist advisers and support
agencies, including local legally-aided lawyers, the Kent Refugee Help, the Red Cross and
others. Between 2012 and 2014 the team dealt with 59 new cases, including five judicial
reviews and five appeals. Highlighting the dominant social justice aspect of this area of work,
31
Issues concerning client confidentiality are covered by the SRA’s (2011) Code of Conduct.
24
Sheona said that she will take on test cases and is involved in lobbying to raise awareness of
important issues (see, for example, Bowcott, 2014).
Over the years John reports that the Law Clinic has helped hundreds of clients remain in
their homes, keep their jobs or gain asylum in the UK. It has also helped clients secure
monetary gains totalling over £2million in sums obtained or retained, by court order or
settlement.
5.1.4 Strathclyde Law Clinic – University of Strathclyde

The Strathclyde Law Clinic was set up in 2003 and is the largest in Scotland. The Law Clinic’s
website states: “While its main priority is providing access to justice to its clients, the Law Clinic
also serves as a valuable learning resource for the Strathclyde law students who help to run
it”.32 Kate Laverty, Acting Director,33 advised that it is a student-run clinic overseen by a large
Executive Committee. There are six ‘firms’ within the clinic, each with an appointed Coordinator
who is a member of the Executive Committee. Much emphasis is placed on training and
students must complete four four-hour sessions at the start of the academic year, some of
which are student-led.
The staff of the clinic are funded by the Law School and other costs are met by a legacy and
other donations. Extending the student-run ethos of the clinic students are involved in
fundraising, including planning and hosting alumni and donor events as well as applying for
grants.
Places in the clinic are highly sought after and students have to apply by submitting a CV
and going through an interview process. Students also have the opportunity to apply for nine
part-time paid internships, which allow the clinic to maintain its caseload over the summer.
Kate said that there are over 300 student advisers working in teams of three in the Law
Clinic and supervision is provided in-house by a team of legally qualified employees. All letters
and emails must be checked before they are sent out to clients and all advice run past
supervisors, who do not directly advise or participate in the transactional side of the cases.
Strathclyde recently introduced a Clinical LLB which runs alongside their four year
undergraduate LLB: they also offer a post graduate diploma in legal practice. Kate said that the
clinical programme was developed because students were devoting a considerable amount of
time to their clinic roles and wanted academic credit for their efforts. Now in its fifth year the
programme has around 40 students across all years. Students are trained in the legal theory of
cases and required to complete a percentage of their work clinically. In their third year Clinical
LLB students have to prepare a portfolio of five cases for the Clinical Legal Practice module, and
keep a reflective diary throughout their degree programme. Innovation is encouraged in the
clinic: for example, coordinated by a third year student the Small Business Project is in the
early stages of development.34
Technology is used to help improve access to justice. The online advice clinic provides initial
legal advice and assistance to people seeking to solve common legal disputes (but not complex
or urgent matters),35 and video-conferencing is used as a way of communicating with clients in
the Small Business Project. The clinic also uses an electronic case management system devised
by a former student.
5.1.5 Discussion
With different but effective models of CLE, whether the primary goal of the above four law
schools is education or social justice appears to depend on the background of the clinicians
32
See University of Strathclyde (2016a).
33
Professor Don Nicholson, the founder and current Director of the Law Clinic was on sabbatical at the
time of this study.
34
Fergus Lawrie won a 2016 LawWorks/Attorney General Student Award for this work.
35
See University of Strathclyde (2016b).
25
involved. The important point from our analysis is that CLE is not ‘either or’ education or social
justice: education has to be at the core of teaching methods delivered by a university. By
focusing on social justice issues, law schools help provide access to justice and expose students
to law in the real world when helping vulnerable people and those living in deprived
communities. Such experiences may influence a student’s career choice and their future
involvement in pro bono work. While the aims of education or social justice are at different ends
of the spectrum various management techniques can mean that that both objectives are met
even if one might outweigh the other in terms of priority.
Another issue which has arisen in our discussions with clinicians is whether they have a
responsibility as ‘trainers’ of future lawyers. At present, many clinicians do not see themselves
as ‘trainers’ of lawyers when dealing with students on a law degree. Kent Law Clinic’s aims and
ethos paper stresses that CLE is “firmly on education rather than training” and that clinical legal
work “is by no means only for those students who intend to practise law”.36 Sylvester (2016:37)
comments on a prevailing misconception that the integrated approach to legal education is only
relevant for those wanting to become lawyers: “clinic is a constructivist teaching methodology –
it can deliver discipline and procedural legal knowledge but more often its role is emphasised in
terms of teaching legal and intellectual skills and as a method of inculcating professional values
and ethics through its traditional involvement in social justice”. There are many ways in which
students can be given experience of law in the real world and provided with transferrable skills
which they can then use in occupations other than being a lawyer.
5.2 ‘Teaching Law Firm’ - A fee-generating model?

The Law Clinic at Nottingham Trent University (NTU) was set up in 2006 and following
substantial investment by the University in 2014 was renamed the Legal Advice Centre (LAC)
and moved into new purpose-built premises. Nick Johnson, Director since 2006, said that
initially only postgraduate students on the Graduate Diploma in Law,37 LPC and Bar Professional
Training Course (BPTC) were involved in the LAC but increasingly undergraduate and other
postgraduate students became involved. By year two of their LLB studies students could do
outreach work, provide advice, write letters and tribunal work under supervision.
Since 2006, Nick reported that the LAC has advised over 700 clients and more than 1,000
students have participated in some form of pro bono work. After the LAC was opened in 2014
up until October 2015 over 220 law students have provided more than 10,000 hours of free
legal advice and represented clients at tribunal cases, recovering around £40,000 in
36
This ’in-house’ document was shown to the researchers.
37
This is a law conversion course for non-law graduates before going on to take the LPC.
26
compensation in employment claims. The clinic has traditionally dealt with legal problems in
relation to housing, property and environmental cases, as well as welfare and employment
issues. More recently, Nick said that the work of the LAC has extended to small business advice,
work which has partly grown out of the LAC being a resource for staff and students as well as
the local community. For example, an increasing number of recent design and fashion
graduates, a strength of NTU, have sought legal advice on intellectual property issues relating
to their designs and how to set up in business.
In 2015 NTU successfully applied to the SRA for Alternative Business Structure (ABS) status
and the LAC became a teaching law firm. Nick said that the main reason was to expand into
new areas of law, and ABS status addresses regulatory issues associated with reserved work
and provides opportunities to explore other ways of delivering access to justice (by bringing
together legal advice and education, for example). ABS status also enables the LAC to generate
fees for legal services. When Nicholson (2006) wrote about tensions over education and social
justice goals in CLE the potential for law clinics to charge fees was unthinkable. As Nick
explains, they do not intend to charge for legal advice to clients on welfare benefits or on low
incomes38 but for services to middle-income clients and those involved in small and medium-
sized enterprises (SMEs) where there is currently unmet need. The ABS vehicle is a charitable
entity and any fee charging would only be a small proportion of the LAC’s work and the vast
majority of funding will continue to come from the University.
For NTU the primary goal of having ABS status is to increase opportunities for experiential
learning within a regulated environment. In continuing to provide legal advice on social welfare
issues to people unable to afford legal services and exploring different methods of delivering
access to justice, the LAC also has a social justice orientation. In the current economic climate it
will be interesting to see if other law clinics come under pressure to charge fees to people who
can afford to contribute to their legal costs, particularly when providing legal services to SMEs.
5.2.1 Discussion
The teaching law firm CLE model with capacity to generate fees, seen to be successful at the
Law Offices of Chicago-Kent College of Law, is just emerging in the UK. In discussion with some
clinicians the thought of charging clients was anathema, mainly because the perception was
that this would involve imposing legal fees on the poor. In the UK as in the US, however, there
are increasing numbers of people on middle-incomes who cannot afford high legal fees but can
afford to contribute to their legal costs. Having obtained ABS status, NTU’s LAC now has the
potential to charge fees. Strathclyde Law Clinic does not seek to generate fees, but the Small
Business Project applies a rough means test before offering support to people who are not
eligible for legal aid and unable to afford the fees of private practice.39
An important issue for law schools that may be considering a fee-generating model of CLE
is the impact this could have on the legal services market. This is a developing area and it is
envisaged that soon to be implemented legal education reforms will increase the role of
universities in supporting work-based elements of students’ route to qualification, and it will be
critical that they engage with legal providers in so doing. Successful relationships will require
trust and engagement which is of benefit to both the university and legal provider. For solicitors’
firms, a positive effect of engagement with law schools may be the opportunities that arise to
represent clients that are eligible for legal aid. Given the cut backs in legal aid, on the other
hand, it is important for universities to work with private practice lawyers and address ‘advice
deserts’ where there has been a sharp decline in the number of solicitors providing advice on
issues including mental health and social welfare law (Taylor-Ward, 2016). In areas like small
business and family law, when generating fees in assisting people on middle-incomes it is
important that a law school clinic would not be seen to undercut the fees of lawyers in private
practice that they may be in competition with.
38
Nick acknowledged that it was conceivable that they would charge someone appealing a non-means
tested benefit (e.g. a PIP) but this would depend on their means and they have no plans to do so as yet.
39
Some clinics do means-test potential clients but this is in order to identify those clients who would not
otherwise be able to access justice due to their inability to pay (Kerrigan and Murray, 2011:17).
27
5.3 New models of clinical activity

A number of law clinics have been set up in recent years. Below, three different approaches
adopted by law schools in the climate of austerity following the 2008 recession are presented.
5.3.1 London South Bank University’s (LSBU) Legal Advice Clinic

The Legal Advice Clinic (LAC) at LSBU was set up as a drop-in centre in 2011. Both the Director
and former Director, Catherine Evans and Alan Russell, respectively, who are solicitors and
lecturers in the School of Law, explained that they previously worked in law centres. Alan was
recruited to set up the LAC and develop the CLE provision at LSBU. To ensure the LAC was
manageable when combined with teaching Alan decided that a drop-in centre would be the most
effective way of providing CLE and addressing unmet need locally. Catherine and Alan said that
annually they have 35 undergraduate student volunteers work in the LAC on a merit-based
application process and there are a small number of placements specifically dedicated to
Dispute Resolution LLM students. Students have to complete a two-day training event before
they start and are supervised by solicitor/lecturers who have practising certificates. The LAC
gives students the opportunity of working with ‘live’ clients and acquiring a wide range of legal
and transferable skills. The work of undergraduate volunteers is assessed by way of a reflective
work placement log. Placements in the LAC are mandatory for LLM students, credit bearing and
assessed by way of a reflective log and a mock interview. Working in the LAC gives students the
opportunity to demonstrate their interest and commitment to law in furtherance of their career
development.
When dealing with clients’ problems, Alan explained that students set out to identify the key
issues, conduct research (using professional subscription materials and on-line legal text books)
and provide advice. In some cases the client might be attending a court hearing without legal
representation and the advice may involve referring them to a solicitor or, if this is not possible,
the student may advise them on discrete issues such as disclosure and court procedure.
The unique feature of the drop-in centre at LSBU is that clients can be interviewed, their
problem researched and advice given within a one-hour session.40 Catherine explained that
providing advice in this tight timescale is only possible when dealing with relatively non-complex
issues and having a high ratio of one supervisor to two students. For more complex cases
involving family, housing and employment issues, the LAC may refer clients on to their
specialist advice service which is staffed by local solicitors one evening a week. Solicitors
interview clients and provide advice, and students sit in and observe.
With Catherine and Alan’s law centre backgrounds it is not surprising that they are both
concerned that legal aid and public interest law should be used in a way which helps promote
the interests of poor or marginalised people and effect change in public policy. One aim of the
clinic is to achieve social justice and dealing with relatively straightforward issues quickly
40
This innovation in providing legal advice by LSBU’s LAC was highly commended recently at the
LawWorks and Attorney General Student Awards.
28
illustrates the emphasis placed on service provision. The LSBU’s approach is innovative,
particularly as most clinical models rely on providing advice through an advice letter which is
sent some days after the initial consultation. Alan explained that the LAC model also has the
pedagogic advantage of making students the first point of contact with clients and having them
contend with clients’ problems unmediated by the prior assessment of a supervisor. During the
drop-in sessions, however, he also commented on there being a high level of supervision and all
advice and information provided by students is checked with a legally qualified and experienced
supervisor.
This is a clinic operating in its early days and in the future Catherine and Alan said that they
would like to develop an assessed casework module. Alan also commented on the importance of
the Law School linking up with local community advice agencies, such as law centres. He said
that the LAC is now established as a key member of a local legal advice network and the London
Borough of Southwark has continued to invest and support local legal advice services which has
helped to mitigate some of the devastating impact that LASPO and cuts in public spending for
legal advice have had on reducing the number of local services London-wide.
5.3.2 Warwick Law Clinic – University of Warwick

The University of Warwick was the second law school to set up a law clinic in 1976, but due to
the problems which led to the closure of the Kent Law Clinic Warwick outsourced its clinics and
distanced the service element from the campus and University (Giddings et al., 2011). Around
that time Professor William Twining (1994) focused on the intellectual qualities required by the
good lawyer and transformed legal education at Warwick towards an active, situational,
student-centred, independent and skills-based learning. Professor Avrom Sherr (1995) also
showed how the legal clinic could be used as an educational and research tool, with the main
objective not to provide a service but to provide a different and more effective education
experience. The Law in Practice course, which involved students in cases, was set up in the
1970’s as part of this fresh approach to teaching. Warwick developed distinctive programmes
intended to explore and develop alternative approaches to student learning and development
and to understand the possibilities and pitfalls of lawyers’ work. The distinctive element was
their inclusion in the curriculum as ‘for credit’ modules. 41 Human Rights in Practice replaced the
Law in Practice module in 2012 and different approaches adopted include the Death Penalty
Internship programme, Discrimination Awareness Campaign, Community Justice Project, and a
long-established simulation clinic (Giddings et al., 2011).
It was in this context that law students and others set up the Student Law Society with the
intention of finding opportunities to intervene in the local community. A recent initiative has
included setting up a ‘law clinic’ with students working in collaboration with a law firm to
provide legal advice to live clients. Advice is available during term time to residents through a
drop-in centre held at a local community centre. Both law students and trainee solicitors ask
residents about their legal problems, which the students research and their proposed advice is
checked by a supervisor (a qualified solicitor at the law firm), prior to being sent to the client.
The clinic provides advice on divorce and family law, property relations, negligence claims,
employer/ employee liability. This is not assessed work, but the experience is seen to help
increase students’ employability within an increasingly competitive graduate job market.
5.3.3 Ulster Law Clinic – Ulster University

In 2011 Ulster University set up the LLM in Clinical Legal Education, which is a one year full-
time (two years part-time) course which trains postgraduate law students to provide advice and
representation to the public on social security and employment law. Dr Gráinne McKeever,
Reader and Director of the Law Clinic, said that the Law Clinic was created as a vehicle for
students to provide free legal advice to the public under staff supervision and with placements
available for students at the Law Centre (Northern Ireland), Citizens Advice as well as the Law
41
Information provided by Professor Roger Burridge (personal email 1 August 2016).
29
Clinic. Gráinne said that the LLM Clinical Legal Education programme is an innovation in the UK
and Ireland in setting up a unique postgraduate legal education course.
According to the 2014/15 Annual Report (Ulster University, 2015), in that year students on
the LLM Clinical Legal Education course provided over 350 hours of free legal advice and
representation; the clinic dealt with 16 cases, which were closed or substantially completed, by
ten student clinicians and a further eight cases remained open to be taken over by the 2015/16
student cohort. Gráinne explained that the Law Clinic arose out of Nuffield Foundation funded
research she had conducted with Brian Thompson (University of Liverpool) for the Law Centre
(NI) on the needs of tribunal users in Northern Ireland. In developing its case load, some of
which is complex, the clinic has become a victim of its own success in attracting more cases
than it has the capacity to absorb. Ideally, Gráinne said they would like to extend the clinic to
include undergraduates, and that this development is currently being planned by colleagues.
Similar to the model identified at Northumbria and York, therefore, the primary goal of the
Ulster University Law Clinic is education with CLE mainstreamed into the curriculum. By focusing
on social security and employment law the clinic also has a social justice orientation by seeking
to address unmet legal need.
5.3.4 Discussion
Different approaches are observable in the three relatively new schemes outlined above which
reflect the bespoke nature of clinics on the ground. Only a limited amount of information can be
gleaned from a brief visit, a telephone call, email and/or by searching the internet for
information. Accordingly, this study highlights the need for social scientists to engage with
clinicians in an attempt to better understand some of the complexity and nuance of clinical
practice.
5.4 Clinical activity within traditional Russell Group law

schools
In this section we examine some of the CLE initiatives supported by traditional law schools
which are part of the Russell Group.
5.4.1 Manchester’s Legal Advice Centre – University of Manchester

The Legal Advice Centre (LAC) was set up by the School of Law at the University of Manchester
in 2000 by Dinah Crystal OBE, Director of Clinical Legal Education with support from LawWorks
(formerly Solicitors Pro Bono Group). It was an innovative project which arose out of employers’
concerns that law graduates did not have the skills required when entering into practice.
LawWorks at that time were looking for a university to pilot a new initiative and Dinah said that
it is still going strong 16 years later.
30
Students in the LAC interview clients under the supervision of local lawyers, they research
the law, draft letters of advice, which have to be approved by the supervising lawyers -
including trainee solicitors and paralegals, and when approved, the letters are signed off by the
LAC’s Director or her Deputy Directors. The aims of the LAC include giving both undergraduate
and postgraduate law students clinical experience in a ‘real life’ setting and to encourage them
to develop skills when applying the ‘black letter of the law’ into practice.
The main LAC office is close to the Law School (to be integrated into the School when it
moves to new premises). The East Manchester Legal Advice Centre was the second site to be
opened in 2009.
In 2014, with funding from Manchester Legal Services and supported by LawWorks, Dinah
developed Manchester Free Legal Help (MFLH). This is a unique project based in the Civil Justice
Centre (CJC) in Manchester. The initiative involves the LAC providing legal advice, mainly
through solicitors who volunteer to work with students, running a drop in family law clinic and
immigration clinic, providing pro bono representation and liaising with lawyers, the Personal
Support Unit (PSU) and other voluntary organisations based at the CJC. As Manchester Legal
Services is no longer being able to cover costs, the School of Law funds a postgraduate intern to
assist in the running of this service. In the first year MFLH dealt with 730 clients.
In 2014/15, over the other two sites, the LAC dealt with a total of 590 enquiries and 387
student volunteers worked on cases. The three main types of legal problem dealt with
concerned property (including landlord and tenant issues), family matters (including divorce)
and employment issues.
An Advocacy and Law course was set up by Deputy Director Neil Allen (barrister) in 2013 in
which workshops are conducted in the School of Law’s mock courtroom and students’ advocacy
performances are filmed, with one-to-one feedback given. Skills are taught through a
combination of lectures, practice in workshops, reflective observation of videos, Crown Court
attendance, and reading materials.
Neil Allen also set up the Dementia Law Clinic in 2015. This clinic enables students to
provide advice under his supervision to clients on a range of dementia issues. Cases are
referred by Dementia UK and the Alzheimer’s Society, and students mainly provide advice to
carers and sometimes to clients with dementia. The Dementia Clinic has incorporated Skype so
that clients may communicate with student advisors from their homes. The LAC has also been
working recently with the Deaf Centre and they are setting up a special clinic in British sign
language.
First year law students may work as receptionists in the LAC, and then go on to provide
advice in their second and third years. All students in the LAC undergo compulsory training and
the LAC runs three training sessions per year, each of which is over one day. Although not
sufficient, Dinah explained that without additional resources it was all that could be managed.
Students work at the LAC on an extracurricular basis. Dinah said that in the past an
optional assessed module was available, and she felt that this provided a more extensive
experience for students as it gave them the opportunity to examine problems in more detail. In
an ideal world, Dinah would like to see CLE as a compulsory part of the law curriculum with
more training on clinical skills and practice management.
The LAC runs a vacation scheme for two weeks in the summer. This year, 2016, Dinah said
that 60 students signed up to work in the LAC, with each taking on a minimum of two cases in
the first week. In the second week there is an employability workshops programme on topics
such as commercial awareness, preparing CVs, mock interviews etc. This scheme is supported
by law firms, both locally, nationally and internationally. Students also participate in a Dragons’
Den programme which is judged by lawyers and run by sponsoring law firms.
31
5.4.2 Clinical legal education at the University of Sheffield

In 2006 law students set up the pro bono initiative ‘Sheffield Volunteering’ and in 2008 the Law
School set up its ‘Pro Bono Unit’ which offers undergraduate and postgraduate students
opportunities to do clinical work. There are two well-established projects, FreeLaw and the
Miscarriages of Justice Review Centre (set up in 2008 and 2007 respectively) which offer
students credit-based modules. CLE activity is supported by a small group of people in the Law
School and the two main projects are based in the Lodge, a building which is separate from the
Law School. Usefully, there is an entrance to the Lodge just off the main road which makes it
easier for members of the public to attend drop-in sessions.
The student run FreeLaw Clinic operates an open door drop-in advice session twice a week.
It is managed by the coordinator Gill Hutchens (solicitor) and two Student Managers. Gill and
Professor Sarah Blandy (formerly a solicitor) supervise the student volunteers.
Gill advised that there are 90 student members of FreeLaw 42 who work in eight groups of
ten, two of whom are Group Leaders (required to have at least one year of experience in the
clinic). Group Leaders are responsible for the day-to-day organisation of the clinic and liaison
between student members. New members are required to attend six one-hour skills sessions at
the start of the semester. The FreeLaw Handbook outlines procedures for students when
interviewing clients, undertaking legal research and drafting advice letters. FreeLaw dealt with
135 clients in 2015/2016 and the areas of law covered include consumer, employment,
property, family law and wills and trusts.43 An electronic Case Management System has been
introduced this year to assist the supervisors check work progress and manage risk. Gill
stressed the importance of managing from a distance due to the unique student-led nature of
FreeLaw, and Sarah explained that advice letters are not sent to clients until checked by legally-
qualified members of Law School staff.
The Miscarriages of Justice Review Centre is also a student-led pro bono project which
started out as an Innocence project in 2007.44 The centre is managed by two directors, Dr
Andrew Green and Professor Claire McGourlay, who are both based in the School of Law. The
2014/15 annual report stated that 34 students dealt with 14 cases in that year.45 Case files can
be enormous, and one of the first tasks for students is to scan the information so that they can
manage this electronically. Students then have to rigorously pour over cases and painstakingly
go through bundles of evidence. Claire said the reality in undertaking case reviews requires
tenacious investigation and often involves students visiting clients in prison, liaising with family
members, working with expert witnesses and legal practitioners, as well as conducting hours of
library based research.
Director of Civic Engagement, Professor Sarah Blandy, is responsible for other pro bono
activities. In 2015/16 the School of Law added the Criminal Justice Initiative and Commercial
Law pro bono advice to its in-house projects. These and student voluntary advice work for six
local agencies including the Refugee Law and Justice projects are soon to be incorporated into a
general Pro Bono credit-based module.
5.4.3 Cardiff’s Law Clinic – Cardiff University

CLE at Cardiff University also centres around pro bono activity, although unlike Sheffield there is
a Head of the Pro Bono Unit – Professor Julie Price (also Director of Engagement and
Employability). There are three substantive CLE initiatives: the NHS Continuing Health Care
42
Student members are taken in the first, second or third year of undergraduate study, or from
postgraduate courses.
43
The clinic does not deal with crime, debt or immigration issues because there are no members of staff in
the Law School who could supervise these areas of law. See the Annual Report 2014/15 (University of
Sheffield, 2015).
44
Set up in 2004 the Innocence Network UK was an umbrella group that assisted over 30 universities
manage ‘Innocence Projects’: the network was disbanded in 2014.
45
A copy of the annual report is available from the Miscarriages of Justice Review Centre.
32
Scheme (NHSCHC), the Welsh Rugby Union Legal Advice Scheme and the Cardiff Innocence
Project.
Julie explained that the NHSCHC scheme46 involves working with the families of people
suffering from Alzheimer’s disease who are paying privately for a nursing home when they may
be entitled to have the cost met in full by the NHS. 47 Relying heavily on a partnership with Hugh
James solicitors, the leading UK law firm in this area of practice, paralegals are paired with
students to progress cases.
Julie is the driving force behind the Welsh Rugby Union/Cardiff University Legal Advice
Scheme which was set up in 2012. The Pro Bono Unit works in partnership with the Welsh
Rugby Union and students, supported by a law firm and barristers’ chambers, provide free legal
advice to amateur Welsh rugby clubs, and in due course plan to prepare basic legal information
packages.
Set up in 2006, Cardiff Law School Innocence Project, with Dr Dennis Eady as Case
Consultant, has been responsible for submitting more than half of all university Innocence
project applications to the CCRC,48 and is the only UK university innocence project to have had
a conviction overturned by the Court of Appeal. In total, Julie explained, 22 high-quality
evidence-based pieces of work, many involving years of painstaking research, have been
prepared largely by students under staff supervision, and submitted to the CCRC.49
Furthermore, Cardiff is one of six law schools that work in a partnership with the Centre for
Criminal Appeals, which offers a different model to innocence project casework.
Following a successful pilot in 2014/5, three years’ funding has been secured from the
Welsh Government to extend another pro-bono scheme in partnership with Mencap Cymru from
2016/7. Supervised by academic staff students will design and update Mencap ‘toolkits’ to help
the charity when providing legal advice to adults with learning disabilities.
CLE initiatives at Cardiff University are extracurricular, and student volunteers may be
given a reference which confirms their involvement in the pro Bono Unit. Students are also
encouraged to submit a reflective portfolio, for which they receive a Personal and Professional
Development Certificate, and discussions are ongoing about the desirability of converting some
of the schemes into assessed clinical modules.
In addition to the above projects, a range of other pro bono activities are supported. For
example, students assist litigants in person in partnership with the PSU; serve as appropriate
adults and attend police stations with the mental health charity Hafal; and assist asylum
seekers with Asylum Justice, Cardiff Asylum Support Advocacy and have participated in some
observational research for the Bail Observation Project. Cardiff has also recently piloted a
successful ‘Global Justice’ partnership with human rights law firm Deighton Pierce Glynn, and in
the coming year will pilot a Cardiff Environmental Law Foundation clinic. Julie considers that
these schemes have the potential to become long-term partnership initiatives that complement
existing provision.
46
Originally inspired by Professor Luke Clements who has moved to the University of Leeds.
47
The scheme won a project award at the LawWorks and Attorney General Student Pro Bono Awards in
2008 and was shortlisted for Best Contribution by a team of students in 2012.
48
15 applications in all, including three re-applications.
49
See further Price (2016) and the University of Cardiff (2013).
33
5.4.4 Liverpool Law Clinic – University of Liverpool

Located in the School of Law and Social Justice, the Liverpool Law Clinic places great emphasis
on promoting access to justice and widening access to education and the legal profession.
Providing free legal advice in a number of areas of law, including family, employment, consumer
rights and statelessness, immigration and asylum, final year law students work under the
supervision of qualified lawyers.
Originally modelled on the Manchester Legal Advice Centre, the University of Liverpool
reviewed and reformed CLE provision five years ago, and Dr Sarah Woodhouse (solicitor) and
Frances Meyler (non-practising barrister) were appointed Clinic Co-Directors. Immigration law
specialists, Sarah and Frances dramatically increased the capacity of the clinic and in 2013
another solicitor, Christine Ball, was appointed. From September 2016 the clinic will have five
full-time lawyers: three of which work full-time on immigration and asylum cases and two full-
time in other areas of advice work.
The Law Clinic currently offers two third-year assessed modules, Clinical Legal Skills and
Human Rights and International Law Practice, which are run by the General Advice and
Specialist Immigration and Asylum Services, respectively. Clinical Legal Skills is run and
assessed by an in-house solicitor, although cases are supervised by external solicitors. The
module begins with training lectures and workshops on topics such as client confidentiality and
the SRA Code of Conduct, practical legal research skills, file management, letter writing and
client interviewing.
Law Clinic administrators arrange appointments over an intensive four-week period, and
students are given basic information about the case and any paperwork which the client may
have provided beforehand. Working in pairs students open a file and start research in
preparation for a case meeting with the module leader, who will decide if they may interview
the client. They meet with their supervising solicitor to discuss the case shortly before
interviewing the client, which usually last about 30 minutes. Students have one week to
produce a draft letter of advice, which is sent directly to their supervising solicitor who has two
days to provide initial feedback. Further feedback is provided by a member of clinic staff, and
students must submit the advice letter for assessment within a three-week period. The case file
has to be kept fully updated and in good order at all times as students are not told at what
point during this process it will be checked and assessed.
The Law School also provides pro bono opportunities for undergraduate students, some of
which are run by academic members of staff not based in the clinic. The Law Clinic’s Summer
Placement scheme ran for two weeks and there were places for 30 students each week on an
intensive programme of legal training and activities. Students can apply for administrative jobs
within the clinic or work on the Litigation Project supporting judicial reviews and appeals. The
clinic also offer a Criminal Appeals Project as well as the chance to work on pro bono projects
with local lawyers, including the now concluded Hillsborough Inquests and the ongoing Orgreave
34
Truth and Justice Campaign. In 2014 the Law Clinic won the LawWorks and Attorney General
Student award for Best Contribution by a Team of Students.
The Liverpool Law Clinic team have contemplated applying for a legal aid contract to cover
the specialised work undertaken, but due to the bureaucracy and regulatory requirements and
competing academic obligations, decided against such a move. Sarah said that they do
occasionally apply for legal aid for judicial review proceedings in immigration cases but all other
work is pro bono. General advice work is limited to providing a letter of advice and it is only in
immigration and asylum cases, where the clinic has significant expertise, that litigation is
pursued.
In contrast to many other traditional universities it is clear that Liverpool have put
considerable resources into developing their CLE programme and it is an important selling point
for the University. They have received national awards and much positive publicity for their
work in recent years, particularly on the Hillsborough Inquests.
5.4.5 Discussion
The Russell Group universities selected for this study have traditional law schools and a
reputation for supporting CLE activities. What is striking from this analysis, particularly in
comparison to the support for CLE in some of the more recently founded universities within the
Russell Group (York and Warwick Universities, for example) and with some of the ‘new’
universities (former polytechnics) is the relatively low level of support for CLE activities provided
by traditional law schools. Part of the reason for this could be due to traditional law schools in
the Russell Group being more likely to adopt the conventional doctrinal or the black-letter
approach to legal scholarship. In addition, many of the ‘new’ universities offer postgraduate
training courses, which attract funding for clinical initiatives as well as bringing into law schools
practising (and former practising) lawyers. Vocational courses can facilitate clinical work and
this may be a reason why Sheffield and Cardiff Universities support successful clinical initiatives.
The extent to which CLE activities are assessed is another important indicator of the
commitment of law schools to this area of work: the universities of Sheffield and Liverpool run
assessed courses and Cardiff and Manchester do not.
Without assessment (irrespective of whether academic credit is gained) there is a risk that
universities may market themselves as CLE providers when this is not necessarily the case. In
addition to the experiences and opinions of clinicians presented in this study, we spoke
informally to clinicians and academics at other Russell Group universities. An important issue
raised by a number of people concerned the lack of financial support coming from law schools
for their clinical work. Indeed, as mentioned by a couple of clinicians, while their universities
seem keen to market CLE activity as a way of attracting students, when it comes to the issue of
resources clinical work was not prioritised. A similar situation is reported in the US where law
schools celebrate and even extoll experiential learning but, on closer inspection, Porter
(2015:79) notes that “the experiential learning movement in law school may be more
marketing and spin than an honest shift in pedagogy, curriculum and culture”. Despite this
cautionary tale, there is evidence that law schools in the UK are struggling to integrate the
innovative possibilities brought forward by CLE and experiential learning.
Another factor which can lead to the marginalisation of clinical work by law schools in the
Russell Group of universities, mentioned by a number of clinicians, is the dominance of the
Research Excellence Framework (REF). A relatively new system for assessing the quality of
research in UK higher education institutions the REF is seen to influence decisions over the
allocation of resources. Submissions by law schools are ranked on the basis of quality in
research outputs, environment and impact. In the 2014 REF the law subject panel (which
conducts the quality ratings) welcomed the inclusion of research on legal education but noted
its concern that the “methodological rigour and significance exhibited by some of these outputs
was uneven” (REF, 2015:71). As Drummond and McKeever (2015) note, such variations or gaps
in the quality of legal education research has the potential to stymie research in this area if
universities are not convinced that the quality threshold cannot be met. While there is the
potential to develop rigorous, high quality research based on clinical legal work this will not
35
happen unless law schools recognise the value of this work and provide resources to clinicians
to enable them to contribute to the research agenda. They are well placed to do so. As
Drummond and McKeever (2015:11) point out, clinics provide a microcosm of the legal advice
landscape and the potential to identify systemic barriers to justice, and thereby provide rich
data on which research can build and contribute to policy agendas while meeting both quality
and impact research targets.
The next assessment, following on and drawing conceptually from the REF, is to be based
on the quality of teaching within the ‘Teaching Excellence Framework’ (TEF). With the proposed
reforms of legal education it would be helpful if the TEF were to include a focus on the
pedagogic strengths of CLE. As Drummond and McKeever (2015:14) put it, this could make an
important contribution to demonstrating high quality, student focused and professionally
relevant teaching, and would help to provide stability for the future of law clinics. Without such
a focus we could see the same problems arising as occurred with the REF, with some law
schools not recognising the potential value of CLE’s contribution to the REF agenda. An
important issue arising, therefore, is the extent to which assessments under the TEF will take
into account decisions made by law schools, and particularly from the Russell Group, in the
wake of the legal education reforms.
5.5 Law schools and pro bono initiatives

A number of pro bono initiatives have been commented on above when considering the
involvement of clinics in a number of extracurricular activities. Here, some of the interesting pro
bono work supported by law schools is highlighted. At Sheffield Hallam University, for example,
there is the successful HKC Law Clinic and the Law School also run a number of pro bono
initiatives. Their website states that Streetlaw is one of the main projects, where students work
in a team to research and deliver advice and guidance about particular areas of law (Sheffield
Hallam University, 2016). There is also a Law in Practice project, where students apply to spend
one day each week with a legal service provider in order to gain experience in a professional
setting. The Criminal Appeals Clinic enables students to work with a supervisor on alleged
miscarriages of justice, and in the Human Rights Project students choose an organisation to
work with on human rights issues or equality law, including a local authority or a charity. There
is also the Prison Clinic where students can work on live cases in collaboration with an external
firm of solicitors. In addition, advocacy and mooting are supported activities, seen as an
essential for students wanting to train as a barrister. Law in Practice (International) is a project
where students can apply to spend the summer working at law firms across the US, usually on
36
criminal law cases and mainly through the public defender’s office. Students can also apply to
study overseas in their second year, which counts towards their final degree. Many law schools
will provide similar opportunities for students but rarely on such a large scale. Indeed, Sheffield
Hallam’s pro bono work was recently praised by the former Attorney General as ‘outstanding’
(Sheffield Hallam University, 2012).
At the University of Warwick pro bono work supported by the Warwick Law Society, in
addition to the Law Clinic and other credit-bearing modules commented on above, is also
noteworthy.50 Volunteers working on the Death Penalty Project support US attorneys and UK
human rights charities defend men and women across the world who are on Death Row. The
Women's Project aims to raise awareness of sexual abuse and domestic violence, and
volunteers are involved in campaigns, talks and fundraising events in aid of Coventry Rape and
Sexual Abuse Centre. In the Law Trek Project students talk to pupils from secondary schools
and the neighbourhood about legal education and how to become a lawyer. You*th Inspire is a
project which aims to inspire young people to take part in society and encourage them to
engage in making the world a better place. For providing such support for pro bono activities,
Warwick was the winner of the ‘Best Law Society’ awarded by LawCareers.Net in 2016.
Launched by Keele University School of Law in 2012, the Community Legal Outreach
Collaboration Keele (CLOCK) is a new and interesting initiative. Together with a number of
partners, CLOCK creates a platform for Keele law students to provide help and support to
disadvantaged communities through legal research, policy work and community legal education.
Students receive extensive training and are given the opportunity to work with partner
organisations ranging from charities to legal firms. The skills they learn through the interactions
with clients and partners help to strengthen their key employability skills. 51
We have highlighted a number of interesting pro bono initiatives supported by law schools
but while such activity is important in giving students’ access to clients in some cases it is
important for law schools to consider what level of support and/or supervision is required,
depending on the type of work involved. While pro bono schemes offer students a different
experience to the in-house, real client programmes which are assessed as part of a course of
legal study, they have gained the attention of the legal academy and the profession alike.
Sylvester (2003) notes that while resourcing clinical programmes remains an issue it is helpful
that the commitment of law schools to pro bono initiatives can give CLE a huge impetus in the
UK. Nevertheless, she also comments that CLE should be recognised as an essential element of
legal education and that its inclusion should be an addition to, not a distraction from, rigorous
and specialist legal education.
5.5.1 Discussion
There are a number of interesting and exciting pro bono initiatives which are supported by law
students and which improve access to justice. Importance attaches to the level of help and
support which law schools provide to students in these voluntary schemes. In some law schools
support is available as part of the clinical team, but in others students are left to their own
devices. For some clinicians pro bono is not clinical activity unless it is assessed but for others
this is not the case. If pro bono initiatives do involve students in providing legal advice to the
public, however, it is important that supervisors check the quality of advice and information
provided. The extent to which CLE is distinguished from pro bono work could usefully be
explored further when considering a classification of different types of activities.
5.6 LawWorks and Attorney General Student Awards

These awards are run annually in order to celebrate innovation and excellence in CLE and pro
bono activity, and also to raise awareness of the valuable contribution made by students and
law schools (LawWorks, 2016). A number of clinicians pointed out that the awards were helpful
in promoting CLE and pro bono activity and we highlight some recent winners. In 2016,
50
See Warwick Law Society (2016).
51
See Keele University (2016).
37
Nottingham Trent University won the award for the best contribution by a law school for the
work of the Legal Advice Centre.52 The award for the best contribution by a team of students
was Queen Mary Legal Advice Centre for their work on sharing and publishing images to
embarrass (SPITE project), which provides advice to people who have had private sexual
images of themselves shared and campaigns on surrounding issues.53 The Dementia Law Clinic,
based in the Legal Advice Centre at the University of Manchester won the 2016 award for best
new student pro bono activity.
6 Proposed legal education reforms in England and

Wales
Commissioned by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), Bar Standards Board (BSB) and
Institute for Legal Executives Professional Standards, the Legal Education and Training Review
(LETR, 2013) was the first comprehensive review of legal education and training across the
legal profession in England and Wales for 40 years. Rejecting a radical overhaul of the system
the report calls for ‘incremental reform’, and proposes set standards of assessment across all
education and training providers and more flexibility in how people enter the legal profession.
Allowing for greater flexibility and setting consistent standards, however, are not easily
reconciled with incremental reform. The need for new entrants to be given more training to plug
skills gaps in professional ethics, communication, management and equality and diversity
awareness is also highlighted (LETR, 2013). The report has triggered reviews being undertaken
by both the SRA and BSB and while this has led to Professional Competence Statements being
introduced it is not yet known what impact the reforms will have on the qualifying law degree,
Legal Practice Certificate (LPC) or Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC).
The ways to qualify as a solicitor are diversifying. The traditional route is by obtaining a
qualifying degree, the LPC and, then, a two-year training contract at a law firm. The SRA set up
the first alternative route in 2014. The ‘equivalent means’ or paralegal pathway to qualification
enables LPC graduates working as paralegals to qualify as solicitors, providing that they can
demonstrate that their experiences, skills and knowledge are equivalent to what they would
have gained during a formal period of recognised training.54 The SRA also introduced the
Solicitor Apprenticeship scheme in 2015, which expands on the existing legal apprenticeships
framework to allow school leavers to bypass university and train as legal apprentices to qualify
as solicitors (Smith, 2015). The first apprenticeship is due to start in September 2016.
52
The Strathclyde Law Clinic was last year’s winner of this award and Northumbria’s SLO in 2014.
53
Since early 2015, 25 students have worked on the project dealing with around 10 cases each and
spending around 20 hours per client. The students have also visited secondary schools seeking to educate
young people on online safety. The project has reached 400 school students and 40 law practitioners have
attended seminars on the sharing of intimate images (see LawWorks, 2016).
54
The same regulatory position also allows chartered legal executives to qualify as solicitors, although the
process can be complicated.
38
The traditional qualification route has been criticised for providing inconsistent results. Julie
Brannan, the SRA Director of Education, said that with so many education and training
providers, “it would be remarkable if they all assessed to the same standards”.55 Set out in the
SRA’s (2015) consultation document, ‘Training for tomorrow: assessing competence’ are
proposals for introducing a centralised ‘solicitors qualifying examination’ (SQE). The proposed
exam includes multiple choice tests, similar to those adopted by the New York bar exam, which
has proved to be controversial both for academics and legal practitioners. In particular,
Northumbria Student Law Office Director Carol Boothby raised concerns that a centralised
examination could lead to law schools setting up ‘crammer’ courses which, through commercial
imperatives, could lead to students being taken through the examination ‘quickly and cheaply’.
Professor Anthony Bradney (2016) criticised the SRA’s proposals saying that these reflected a
legal age which has long since passed.
The SRA had intended that if they were to proceed with the SQE they would consult on
entry requirements and pre-qualification work-based experience in the summer of 2016 and by
early 2017 publish guidelines on regulatory changes and transitional arrangements and
announce the organisations appointed to run the SQE in mid-2017 (LawCareers.Net, 2016). At
the end of the consultation period (March 2016) over 240 responses were received and the SRA
acknowledged that there was strong opposition to their proposal, particularly from universities.
Many respondents were reported to want more detail about how the qualification process would
work in practice and others questioned whether the current system was in fact broken.
Accordingly, the timetable was extended and the SRA announced that a final decision on the
assessment has been put back until spring 2017 (SRA, 2016). The SRA will consult again on the
detail of the SQE in the autumn of 2016. Interviewed for this study, Julie Brannan said the
autumn consultation would also cover proposals on how intending solicitors might prepare for
the SQE, and how the training contract might be regulated.
Julie also commented that the SRA proposal includes the potential for combining elements
of the LPC into a three-year law degree. While it will be a matter for law schools to decide
whether or not to incorporate practice-based skills and experiential learning into their law
degrees, this offers the possibility of reducing the time taken to qualify as a solicitor from six to
five years. For students on an integrated degree this might involve assessment at the end of
three years on their functioning legal knowledge (by demonstrating their ability to apply legal
principles and problem solve) as part of the first-stage SQE, and also on their practice legal
skills (including legal research and writing skills). This assessment would integrate substantive
and procedural/transactional law. It could replace the LPC and students would then move on to
the second stage, which involves two years of work-based learning through qualifying legal
experience. At the end of this second stage students would be further assessed on their
practical legal skills – including client interviewing, advocacy, case and matter analysis, legal
research and written advice and drafting. With the introduction of work placements, rather than
training contracts, CLE and pro bono activities may be recognised as counting towards the
period of work-based placement. For Professor Nigel Savage, this will lead to opportunities for
law schools to work with legal providers and provide work-based placements for students.
There are also proposals emanating from the BSB to reform the current training programme
for barristers in order to attract a more diverse group of candidates, and to better equip future
barristers for a changing market and the needs and expectations of users of legal services (BSB,
2016). To qualify as a barrister at present, students have to complete a law degree, pass the
BPTC vocational training course, and complete a one year period of training (‘pupillage’) at a
barristers’ set of chambers. In the autumn the BSB is to consult on three proposed options for
future routes to qualification. These include the ‘evolutionary’ option, which proposes to keep
the current academic, vocational and pupillage sequences but to make the BPTC less
prescriptive and pupillage more flexible. The second route is via the ‘managed pathways’ option,
where the existing route to qualification would remain but three further options would be
introduced: a combined law degree and vocational training; a vocational training programme
that is integrated with pupillage; or a modular approach that enables candidates to commit to
55
There are at present 104 providers of the QLD, 33 of the GDL and 26 PLPC providers and over 2,000 law
firms that take on trainee solicitors (see Harris, 2015).
39
training one step at a time. The third approach is the ‘bar specialist option’ which proposes to
establish a qualifying examination to test legal skills and knowledge. Upon passing the
examination, candidates would be required to undertake a training course, shorter than the
current BPTC, which would focus on developing foundation skills for advocacy and pupillage
would follow the completion of this course (BSB, 2016). The ‘bar specialist option’ would be
open to any candidate, which in theory could include non-graduates.
This is a time of uncertainty: law schools not knowing how the qualifying law degree, LPC
and BPTC might change makes curriculum planning difficult. It was interesting to discuss how
the SRA sees the future of legal education with Julie Brannan. Critically, the SRA want to reduce
the separation that has occurred between the ‘learning and doing of law’. During their academic
degree law students should be introduced to experiential learning and practice-based skills in
addition to the theory of law. There have been similar developments in the US, where
regulators require law schools to encourage students to undertake pro bono activities; but this
has been accompanied by significant capital investment to support such activities.
At present the law schools that have embraced CLE, particularly those that run vocational
training courses and where practising lawyers play a core teaching role, appear best placed to
adapt to the proposed changes. It is interesting to reflect that CLE has effectively been
pioneered by recently established universities. Both Kent and Warwick Universities were
founded in 1965, and subsequently the universities of York (established 1964) and the post
1992 universities of Northumbria, Nottingham Trent, and Sheffield Hallam have embraced CLE.
While employability is a core benefit of CLE, and key to student recruitment marketing
strategies, the emphasis of clinicians is clearly on pedagogy and testament to this are the
numerous articles written in the International Journal of Clinical Legal Education and elsewhere.
With legal education reform on the horizon, law schools have to face up to the possibility of
deciding whether or not to change their curriculum and introduce CLE and experiential learning
into an integrated law degree. For Russell Group universities at the top of the league table for
standards in teaching this will be a difficult decision. While there has been a recent increase in
CLE and pro bono activities in some of the more traditional universities in the Russell Group, the
tendency is to focus on extracurricular activities as a vehicle for enhancing student
employability. Without CLE counting towards a student’s degree, it will be interesting to see in
the future whether increased competition between students puts pressure on law schools to
integrate clinical methods and assess the work undertaken. It is anticipated that top law schools
will seek to continue teaching in the traditional way, and how students respond to the SRA and
BSB reforms may prove to be decisive. Obtaining a law degree from a top-ranked university will
continue to be a priority for students, but student-demand is likely to influence the extent to
which traditional approaches to teaching survive. The attraction to students of an integrated
degree will be that they can study law in the real world and avoid the time and cost of having to
complete a separate vocational training course.
6.1 Clinics and the regulation of legal services

When considering the potential expansion of CLE within law schools it is important to recognise
the restrictions placed on the type of work which can be undertaken by non-solicitors when
dealing with ‘reserved legal activities’.56 In order to liberalise and regulate the market for legal
services in England and Wales the Legal Services Act 2007 encourages more competition by
allowing organisations that are owned or managed by non-lawyers to provide regulated legal
services through an ‘alternative business structure’ (ABS). Nottingham Trent University (NTU)
and the University of Law, both providers of vocational training courses for trainee solicitors and
barristers, are the only two universities which have successfully applied for ABS status to date.
As noted above (Section 5.2), while NTU include undergraduates in its CLE work, it is due to the
clinical demands of running both the LPC and the BPTC that the University has adopted ABS
status for the Legal Advice Centre so that they can expand CLE activities. Accordingly, as Nick
56
Including the exercise of rights of audience, conduct of litigation, conveyancing, reserved instruments
(including land registration and real property), probate, notarial activities and administration of oaths.
40
Johnson from NTU explained: “having ABS status means that we can provide trainee lawyers
with experience of working directly with clients and this then equips them for the legal and
commercial challenges they face when going out to practise law”. Many other law schools are
not sure of what steps they need to take in the future as they are currently in a transitional
grace period, which has recently been further extended by the SRA.
While providing legal advice is not a reserved activity there are 14 law schools which
currently offer representation, which is a reserved activity (Carney et al., 2014:21). There are
concerns that once the transitional grace period ends these law schools will require ABS status
in order to represent clients: not an attractive proposition for some. Elaine Campbell (2014)
points out that some clinicians are of the opinion that if they are required to set up as an ABS,
to stop doing reserved work would be an option. She notes that this would be a backwards step
as clinics would no longer be able to represent clients in court, which would undermine their
work in providing access to justice. This would also be contrary to the aims of the Ministry of
Justice as the regulatory reforms of the Legal Services Act 2007 were intended to reduce the
burdens which hold back the legal industry.
Campbell (2014) proposes two possible ways forward for law school clinics which fall within
the remit of the 2007 Legal Services Act. First, she suggests broaching this topic head on and
engaging with the regulators as much as possible.57 The other suggestion is to wait and see
what will happen as the transitional grace period might be further extended or continue
indefinitely, in which case the problem will disappear. However, when exploring how universities
can conduct reserved legal activities Linden Thomas, a solicitor and manager of the Centre for
Professional Legal Education and Research (CEPLER) at the University of Birmingham, raised
concerns over the current status of law clinics in undertaking reserved legal activities and how
such uncertainty can stifle innovation.58 She identifies five options for university law clinics –
limiting the work undertaken to that which is not reserved; only doing reserved activity that
does not form part of your employer’s business; rely on the exemption at section 23 of the
Legal Services Act 2007; set up an ABS; or partner with external organisations to supervise and
deliver reserved activities.
As a non-executive director of a commercial ABS, Professor Nigel Savage is of the opinion
that the ABS route is inappropriate for most university law schools because “the compliance
issues are huge”. He feels that this would be a distraction from the day-to-day clinical work and
he is optimistic that other options will emerge. This was seen to be the case for law centres
when responding to budget cuts following implementation of LASPO. Before LASPO came into
force law centres were not allowed to charge for their services and they were reluctant to
become an ABS in order to do so. Indeed, the Director of the Law Centres Network commented
that becoming an ABS would have “been cumbersome and costly”. Instead, the SRA agreed
initially to consider waivers for individual centres, before allowing them to charge across the
board (Baksi, 2014a), although this exemption is subject to the transitional grace period. There
have been similar issues arising in the US, with regulators putting universities under pressure to
change and some law schools are taking ambitious steps and creating innovations in clinical
activities. As Krantz and Millemann (2015:1) put it, “Innovation is breaking out all over, and the
pace of change is accelerating”. It is in this context of change that Nigel Savage urges clinicians
in England and Wales to engage with policy makers and regulators in helping to shape the
future of CLE.
Which she states includes bringing to the attention of the SRA the problems, misunderstandings and the
57
reduction in pro bono service that the licensing regime may cause.
Presentation given by Linden Thomas at the CLEO conference in Preston on 1 June 2016.
58
41
7 Public funding, partnership and the delivery of legal

services in England and Wales
England and Wales in the mid-1980’s could claim to provide access to justice due to the
extensive network of not-for-profit agencies, primarily funded by local authority grants and a
generous legal aid scheme. From surveys of legal need we know that most issues, including
problems involving social welfare, debt, family issues, housing and mental health, were dealt
with by advice agencies, legally-aided solicitors and law clinics (Pleasence et al., 2004). We also
know that a number of groups were, and remain more susceptible to justiciable problems
including lone parents, those with long standing ill-health and disability, those living in the
rented housing sector, those living in high density housing, those aged between 25 and 44, the
unemployed, those on means tested benefits and those on very low incomes (Pleasence and
Balmer, 2014). These are mainly the people and type of problems which CLE initiatives target.
Surveys have also helped identify some of the difficulties people face when trying to navigate
the maze of advice providers. Pleasence et al. (2004) note that people can become
disenchanted if instead of having their legal issue resolved they are referred on to another
advice agency. This is referred to as ‘referral fatigue’; people simply give up after having been
constantly referred on to other advisers.
Sommerlad and Sanderson (2013) document how a range of factors have coalesced to have
a devastating impact on legal aid and the advice sector. These include delivery of legal aid
services overwhelmingly by solicitors in private practice, leading to the criticism that it had
become “a hostage to law firms” overheads, hourly rates and inefficiencies (Dyer, 1995). This
led to funding for advice agencies being focused on what is absolutely necessary, which obliges
agencies to make business as well as professional judgements on casework, with priority given
to the former (Sommerlad and Sanderson, 2013). As part of the efficiencies drive, in 2007 the
Legal Services Commission began to introduce fixed fees for legal aid work as an alternative to
paying for the time spent on cases. This was to have a devastating impact on advice agencies
particularly as the change meant that instead of regularly receiving a guaranteed sum of money
they received a fixed fee when billing for work undertaken. In one large Law Centre, for
instance, instead of receiving a guaranteed £90,000 per month, following the introduction of
fixed fees they got just half that amount and the Law Centre reserves were depleted by 70%
(Sommerlad and Sanderson, 2013).
In the context of spending cuts and efficiency savings following the 2008 recession, LASPO
has led to a dramatic curtailment of access to justice which has disproportional impact on
marginalised groups and individuals (Hynes, 2012; Sommerlad and Sanderson, 2013; Low
42
Commission, 2014; Sandbach, 2016).59 The effect of the Act was to remove “whole swathes of
law” from the scope of public funding;60 effectively excluding 650,000 people from gaining
access to legal advice (Baksi, 2014b). For Drummond and McKeever (2015:11), “sectoral
capacity – both private and third sector – to respond to the legal needs of vulnerable individuals
has been impacted in Britain by the implementation of LASPO”. This is due to the undermining
of an ecosystem of legal services which had, prior to LASPO, been built on a complex network of
mutually supporting generalist and specialist advice provision.
In response to LASPO the Legal Action Group set up the ‘Low Commission’ with a brief to
gather evidence and develop a strategy for responding to the cuts in public spending. 61 The Low
Commission’s report (2014:101) subsequently noted some of the consequences of the dramatic
cuts in public spending. In particular, it pointed out that when people get into difficulty in their
daily lives over issues involving their home, job, welfare benefits, immigration status or health,
these issues can often be resolved if they have access to legal advice and representation.
Without this people can become unemployed, homeless or in debt and not only will they suffer
personal distress the state will ultimately incur increased costs when meeting their needs.
The Low Commission (2014) recognises that these are changing times and the drive for
austerity means that there are fewer resources available now than in the past. Accordingly, the
Commission seeks to develop a fresh approach, which involves measures to reduce the need for
advice and legal support in the first place; developing more cost-effective approaches to service
provision; and drawing on a wider range of funding sources. Some of the key principles
underpinning this approach include early intervention and action; investment for prevention to
avoid the wasted costs generated by the failure of public services; simplifying the legal system;
developing different service offerings to meet different types of need; investing in a basic level
of provision of information and advice; and embedding advice in settings where people regularly
go, such as GP surgeries and community centres (Low Commission, 2014:viii).
In a period of austerity, the Low Report notes that this is a time of innovation and rapid
change in the provision of legal services and dispute resolution. It is also a time to question the
effectiveness of relying on a ‘judicare’ model which relies on solicitors in private practice.
Particular problems arise as the overheads and staff costs of solicitors’ firms increase and
reduced fees are paid for legal aid work. This means that while almost £2 billion pounds is
currently spent on legal aid for civil and criminal justice matters (Legal Aid Agency, 2015) far
fewer people are able to access legal help and support. This provides the context for considering
the potential for law schools to tackle unmet need and support innovation in the delivery of
legal services.
Concerns have been raised by clinicians over the potential for law clinics to be expected to
plug some of the gaps in legal service provision following LASPO and the retrenchment of civil
legal aid. The Low Commission (2014:101) notes that while lawyers acting pro bono along with
university law schools make a significant contribution to access to justice, it is unrealistic to
expect that voluntary services could replace publicly funded legal help and representation.
Nevertheless, it is evident from our examination of CLE activities that taken together clinics
have provided access to justice for a huge number of people. In recognising the limitations of
clinics, however, as the Director of the Northumbria Student Law Office Carol Boothby points
out, the educational emphasis and high level of specialist supervision required limits the volume
of cases which can be dealt with.
59
LASPO imposed cuts of £89 million in legal aid each year on social welfare law, as well as reductions in
local authority funding of advice and legal support, estimated to be at least £40 million per annum (Low
Commission, 2014).
60
This includes most private family cases (except those involving evidenced domestic violence, child abuse
or abduction); welfare benefits; clinical negligence; employment; housing disputes (other than serious
disrepair, homelessness or anti-social behaviour); debt; immigration; and education (except special needs
cases).
61
The Commission was named after the Chair, Lord Low of Dalston.
43
7.1 Developing partnerships with legal providers

When considering changes to the ecosystem of advice agencies, Drummond and McKeever
(2015:11) are right to point out that access to justice is not solely dependent on an individual’s
financial circumstances or the provision of free legal services by the state (although these
factors have significant impact). Also required is the delivery of innovative legal solutions which
respond more effectively to what citizens need. They identify some successful initiatives,
including online dispute resolution and information provision62 and the potential to reconfigure
existing and traditional solutions, including CLE. Their survey also highlights the fact that clinics
generally do not have the capacity to respond to the increase in unmet legal need following
implementation of LASPO. While 85% of clinics recorded an increase in demand for their
services from between 2012 and 2015, only 64% registered an increase in their annual
caseload: mainly because the volume of case work is determined by staff numbers rather than
in response to demand.
7.2 The potential for developing local partnerships in

Manchester
It is useful to explore here in a local context the potential for a law school to develop
partnerships with other legal advice providers and consider developments in Manchester. A key
development on the horizon within the Manchester legal market is the forthcoming opening of
the Greater Manchester (GM) Law Centre. John Nicholson, a barrister from Kenworthy’s
Chambers with a distinguished career in the advisory sector, is the Chair of the Management
Committee and is at the heart of the developing organisation (Fouzder, 2016). Having gauged
the level of support for this venture at three public meetings, the Law Centre have secured
premises in Moss Side only a short distance from the University’s Legal Advice Centre (LAC).
John describes the GM Law Centre as a fluid concept and they are open to a number of
options in terms of future collaborations with other third sector organisations and educational
institutions. They are currently working with Salford University Law Centre to develop a model
where students will undertake PIP benefit appeals on behalf of clients of the GM Law Centre. A
similar project in Bristol had over a 90% success rate.
The GM Law Centre would welcome the involvement of students in both campaigning and
fundraising. John aired some frustration with the lack of campaigning by university law schools
in the past, noting that they are not subject to the contractual restrictions which prohibit some
organisations from such activity. He is anxious that the GM Law Centre should serve as a
training ground for the legal aid lawyers of tomorrow, particularly in regard to social welfare
law. He hopes to obtain funding to develop this work within the law centre and clearly feels that
working with students to help engender a passion for the cause of social justice at an early
stage in their legal careers would be highly beneficial to this process.
Rather than doing the majority of work themselves, the GM Law Centre aims to fill the legal
advice lacuna which has developed in recent years by working in collaboration with other firms,
voluntary organisations and educational establishments to provide a comprehensive level of
legal advice across Greater Manchester. The GM Law Centre intends to concentrate initially on
the areas of employment law, welfare rights, housing and benefits sanctions. An early initiative,
which adopts a collaborative approach, is concerned with the provision of welfare rights advice
to be provided by internal caseworkers under the supervision of solicitors from Stephensons
Solicitors, who will be acting on a pro bono basis. The open and collaborative approach of the
GM Law Centre in working with existing advisory organisations, highlights the potential for the
University’s LAC to develop new partnerships and new areas of work.
Having spoken to other local lawyers, another potential area for working collaboratively
with partners is in relation to housing law. Michelle Waite, a Housing Solicitor at Fieldings Porter
Solicitors, expressed an interest in developing a project with the Manchester LAC. Having
62
See also Smith and Paterson (2014).
44
previously worked at Rochdale Law Centre, she is interested in looking at benefit sanction
appeals and there is potential to develop a project within the LAC. This would provide students
with an opportunity to gain advisory and advocacy experience in an area of law with a high
success rate and which makes a significant difference to the clients affected.
Another potential area of law to develop was suggested by Matthew Bown, the Convenor of
the Police Action Lawyers Group in the North of England. This is an area of legal advice which
has not been as badly hit as others by cuts in legal aid and some of the work is still eligible for
public funding. This work would provide students with experience of engaging with the police
and police complaints system as well as providing a valuable service to clients.
45
8 Potential innovations in clinical legal education in

the United Kingdom
CLE and experiential learning in the UK has tended to focus on civil justice and social welfare
issues (with the exception of ‘Innocence Projects’) and clinicians are well placed to consider the
potential for innovation in relation to these areas of law. Below we first explore the potential for
innovation if law schools turn their attention to developing CLE initiatives within the criminal
justice system. In addition, and following on from what is happening in the US in relation to
technology clinics, we explore some technological innovations taking place in the UK in relation
to the delivery of legal services.
8.1 Clinical work and criminal justice initiatives

Clinicians tend not to consider criminal justice issues when developing clinical methods. To a
large extent this has been due to legal aid providing comprehensive cover for suspects at police
stations and in court proceedings. With the introduction of fixed fees for police station legal
advice (instead of paying for the time lawyers spend on cases) lawyers now focus on the police
interview, which means that other important safeguards may be neglected (Kemp and Hodgson,
2016). In addition, and following the introduction of means-testing at court (as part of the
assessment for legal aid), there has been a significant increase in the number of defendants
appearing unrepresented at court, particularly in magistrates’ courts. We also examine the
potential for students to be involved in restorative justice initiatives.
8.1.1 Clinical legal education and police station legal advice

Only solicitors’ firms that hold a criminal contract with the Legal Aid Agency are able to provide
publicly-funded legal advice and both lawyers and non-lawyers providing advice have to be
accredited to do so. In the current situation, therefore, it is not possible for law students to
provide police station legal advice, but this would change if proposed legal education reforms
are implemented (see above Section 6). It can be extremely daunting for lawyers, never mind
students, when first providing legal advice in police custody, not least because of the secure
environment and the adversarial context within which this takes place. Accordingly, it would be
appropriate to first use simulated exercises with students in order to familiarise them with the
environment, criminal process, and roles of practitioners. In their first postgraduate year of
work-based placements, students could shadow legal advisers and, then, train as accredited
representatives in their second year. This would involve them undertaking the assessment and
training programme as a probationary representative and, for up to one-year, they can provide
legal advice under the supervision of a duty solicitor. On qualification they would be able to act
as a police station duty solicitor, a clear advantage in a competitive jobs market.
46
The availability of probationary police station advisers would be a useful resource for legal
advisers, many of whom tend to arrive at the station when the police are ready to conduct an
interview and which may be several hours following a suspect’s detention. When a suspect first
requests legal advice, for instance, a probationary adviser could attend at the station and speak
to the client to advise them of the process and that they, or a lawyer, will be present at the
time of the police interview. Any issues and/or concerns raised by the client at that time can be
dealt with either directly by the probationary adviser or after seeking advice from their
supervisor. Once the police interview has finished lawyers tend to leave the station and it can
be some hours before the police decide on the case outcome. A probationary representative
could remain at the station and advise a client once a police outcome decision has been made.
Again, either directly or through the solicitor, the probationary representative would be able to
advise the suspect about the consequences of the police decision and help uphold their legal
protections. If a caution is on offer, for example, it can be very tempting for suspects to accept
as an alternative to court and after having spent many hours in custody. However, research has
shown that the police sometimes offer cautions illegally; either because the offence is not
admitted and/or there is insufficient evidence to prosecute (Kemp, 2014). A probationary
representative could also make representations to the police over any remand/bail decisions,
including the proposed imposition of any bail conditions.
A different route through which students could assist lawyers in the police station would be
to train as an ‘appropriate adult’ and assist vulnerable suspects. As an appropriate adult the
student would be unable to offer a suspect legal advice but, through their training, may
encourage them to request legal advice. Appropriate adults sit in on the police interview and it
would be interesting for students to observe this part of the process and examine the role
undertaken by the different practitioners involved. If students were to be involved police station
work it would be helpful for them to reflect on what happened when acting either as a
probationary adviser or an appropriate adult, which would be invaluable to understanding the
efficacy of procedural safeguards.
Law students could also have a useful role in assisting criminal defence practitioners by
working on cases in the office. During police investigations, for example, there is a tendency for
the police to pursue prosecution rather than defence leads and the investigative work by
students could help address that imbalance by checking the veracity of the prosecution case
and interviewing possible defence witnesses. Students could also examine how and where
litigation fits into broader efforts to improve police accountability, and ultimately the criminal
justice system, along the lines of the Civil Rights and Police Accountability Project at the Mandel
Clinic in Chicago. They could also follow up on complaints people make about the police and
provide an early alert if patterns of behaviour highlight problems of police corruption. It is
pertinent to consider a similar scheme in the 1990’s when in response to dissatisfaction over the
way the police dealt with complaints a self-help group investigated local police officers. An
investigation by this group helped bring police corruption to the fore, the Court of Appeal
quashed several convictions and a number of officers were imprisoned for offences of corruption
and violence (Smith, 1999).
8.1.2 Clinical legal education and the criminal courts

There have always been unrepresented defendants in the magistrates’ courts, particularly in
traffic cases, but it seems that there has been a significant increase in the number of people
representing themselves who do not choose to do so. Quite remarkably, no statistics are
available on the extent to which people attend court unrepresented, but three reasons have
been identified for people not having a lawyer: they are ineligible for legal aid due to their
income or the type of offence; their lack of awareness of the rights to legal aid; or lack of
organisation in arranging a lawyer (Transform Justice, 2016:2). There is the potential for
students to assist unrepresented defendants in magistrates’ courts, but first students would
have to familiarise themselves with court proceedings and the roles of the different practitioners
involved.
47
Once again it would be during the postgraduate stages of the proposed new law degree that
students would be able to provide assistance in magistrates’ courts. They could start by helping
unrepresented defendants complete court forms and explain the process to them; checking
their eligibility for legal aid at the same time. As part of their work-based placement, there is
the potential for students in a criminal practice to gain the knowledge and skills required to
assist unrepresented defendants and, under the supervision of a solicitor, provide legal advice.
The role of the student in assisting unrepresented defendants could be similar to that of a
‘McKenzie Friend’.63 There has been some controversy over people charging a fee for this role
and who are unregulated, uninsured and mostly unqualified (Bar Council, 2016). Students
approaching qualification, on the other hand, would be regulated and insured and while under
the supervision of a lawyer would be qualified to give advice.
There is also the potential for law students to gain experience of Crown Court work. Prior to
the introduction of fixed fees, for example, it was common for a solicitor’s clerk to attend from
the instructing solicitor’s firm to assist counsel in court. In undertaking this role, students would
gain a valuable insight into the daily routines and procedures at the Crown Court. They would
also be able to observe counsel’s interactions with their clients and their performance when
advocating in court. It would be important in upholding the client’s trust in his/her legal adviser,
for the solicitor’s firm to ensure that only experienced and competent students would take on
this role.
8.1.3 Clinical legal education and restorative justice

The government are keen to promote the use of restorative justice initiatives both as an
alternative to cases being prosecuted and also, for cases being dealt with at court, particularly
when dealing with young offenders (Taylor, 2016). When dealing with young offenders the
police can impose a youth caution and this can include a referral to the local youth offending
team for an intervention to address the offence and/or the offending behaviour (Ministry of
Justice, 2013). The intervention can include a restorative justice approach, which involves the
offender and the victim seeking to restore the harm caused by the offence and/or the offending
behaviour. Law students could be involved by helping to facilitate meetings and/or discussions
taking place between victims and offenders. In addition, most first-time offenders in the youth
court receive a ‘referral order’ which requires an intervention by a ‘youth offender panel’.
Student volunteers could be part of that panel which has to agree with the young offender a
programme of behaviour, including adopting a restorative approach, which is coordinated by the
local youth offending team (Ministry of Justice, 2015).
63
A ‘McKenzie Friend’ does not have to be legally qualified and is entitled to provide assistance in court to
unrepresented defendants.
48
8.2 Innovation and the use of technology

For many years now, Professor Richard Susskind (2010) has encouraged lawyers in the UK to
change the way they work by embracing digital technology. When looking to the future,
Susskind (2013) makes a plea for legal education and training to take on board how technology
is changing the role of lawyers. At present, he argues we are teaching lawyers to be something
they no longer need to be, which are traditional, one-to-one, bespoke face-to-face consultative
advisers who specialise in individual jurisdictions and charge by the hour. He argues that the
legal profession can no longer ignore the march of technology, particularly when the average
desktop computer has more processing power than all of humanity put together. While the
internet is transforming all corners of society and the economy, Susskind (2013) notes that it
does not yet apply to lawyers.
When looking into the future legal services the Legal Services Consumer Panel’s report
(2014) stated that technology will be central to all aspects of legal services, it will change how
legal problems are identified, people and businesses resolve their disagreements, the way
consumers choose providers, how legal services are delivered and law firms run their
businesses. Technology, it has also been noted, has the potential to greatly enhance access to
justice. Thanaraj and Sales (2015) recognise that the concept of digital lawyering as a
theoretical framework within legal education is a reasonably new idea in the UK and that there
are, therefore, many uncertainties. Such as what does the legal professional need to know
about how technology functions to be competent in the practice of law - and what methods can
be employed to educate law students entering a legal field which is technology-driven. Both the
legal profession and law schools have been slow to embrace the use of technology in the
delivery of legal services, particularly when compared to developments in the US.
The need for reform of courts and tribunals has also been highlighted recently by a Working
Party coordinated by JUSTICE (2016), a UK based human rights campaigns organisation. With
the current system being recognised as “outdated and underperforming”, the Working Party
recommends a radical rethinking of what constitutes a court and what the delivery of justice
demands in the modern-day; with a particular emphasis being placed on providing technology-
driven solutions to access to justice problems.
There are innovations taking place in CLE through the use of technology. We have seen how
the Universities of Manchester and Strathclyde are respectively using Skype and video-
conferencing and other online ways of communicating with clients while they remain in their
own home. Bramall (2016) notes that research has found advice agencies which provide contact
via a webcam and online booking of appointments is particularly beneficial to elderly and
disabled clients who find it difficult to leave the house. A client experiencing domestic abuse
might also find it difficult to leave their home and the webcam appointment offers a discreet
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alternative. Through electronic communication legal advisers can more easily provide access to
people living in rural communities.
At the forefront of using technology in clinical legal education in the UK is the University of
Cumbria Law School, which recently launched ‘The Cumbria Virtual Law Clinic’ (VLC). The VLC is
an online clinic partnership between students, supervising tutors and local pro-bono solicitors.
Set up as a ‘virtual law office’, it has been designed to enhance the legal education of students
through direct experience of legal practice. It provides access to justice for people who need
legal advice but cannot afford to pay the legal fees charged by solicitors in private practice.
Similar to other law school legal advice clinics, the VLC students are expected to take full
responsibility for cases, undertaking such tasks as legal research, corresponding, drafting
statements of case, interviewing clients and expert witnesses and to undertake online dispute
resolution under supervision (Thanaraj and Sales, 2015).
The VLC offers students insights into an emerging way of lawyering and it gives them the
opportunity to develop, understand and experience online dispute resolution, using the practice
of digital lawyering skills and e-practice management, gaining an insight into the future of legal
services and the profession. It also helps students to understand the role of technology, privacy
and security and how it affects legal ethics and limits associated with this, gaining transferable
skills in maintaining personal responsibility and accountability online, working efficiently with
others online and undertaking decision-making (Thanaraj and Sales, 2015).
There are a number of ‘virtual law firms’ being set up in the UK with the intention of
bringing together a number of lawyers but without the overhead costs of running an office. Lucy
Scott-Moncrieff, for instance, a former president of the Law Society, founded the virtual law firm
‘Scomo’. The firm now has more than 50 self-employed consultants, undertaking both legal aid
and privately funded work. In return for payment under a fee-sharing arrangement, the
consultants have access to Scomo’s case management system (which is accessible from
anywhere in the world); PII cover; guidance on meeting compliance requirements; back-office
services and referrals gleaned through its website (Rayner, 2014). Michael Mansfield QC, a
leading barrister, set up ‘Mansfield Chambers’ as a ‘virtual’ chambers which only has small
premises at which the three QC’s and ten barristers involved can ‘hot-desk’. Improvements in
technology will no doubt lead to more lawyers setting up ‘virtual law firms’ in the future. Such
arrangements will encourage lawyers to communicate with their clients and other bodies
through email, text, blogs, Twitter or other media. In addition, there are now many court and
government bodies which are prepared to communicate over the internet and increasingly this
will lead some of the court tasks performed by lawyers to be dealt with over the internet.
Students in technology clinics could usefully learn from developments in the US when
considering how emerging technologies can be at the centre of modern law practice (see above,
Section 3.6).
It is evident that technology will increasingly have a role to play in the way in which
clinicians communicate with their clients as well as on how legal advice is delivered. Indeed,
Smith and Paterson (2014) have shown how harnessing the communications power of the
digital revolution can go a long way to filling the access to justice gap created by legal aid cuts.
In particular, innovations in the private sector have shown how low-cost legal services are
possible and that government-led initiatives could bring significant improvements and provide
viable alternatives to face-to-face legal advice. Janis (2014) predicts that available computing
power is likely to increase up to three times by 2020 and this increase in power and introduction
of new devices is likely to improve lawyering technologies such as document automation,
decisions engines, e-discovery tools, communication and collaboration tools, legal research
tools, and legal expert systems. These are likely to continue to mature and progress in
functionality and availability over the coming years.
This trend will continue and it is considered that by 2020 most of the viable solutions will be
available either exclusively over the internet or with very limited desktop interfaces. Trending
industry concepts, such as ‘big data’ and ‘unstructured databases’, will allow vendors to provide
more robust, higher performance, and increasingly feature-rich applications (Janis, 2014).
When looking at the implications for CLE and providing access to justice we can see how the
50
lawyers of the future need to understand and embrace developments in technology in order to
access clients and stay competitive.
Students could also usefully get involved in initiatives designed to communicate with people
about their legal rights. Dr Vicky Kemp, for example, is currently working with the Computer
Science Department at the University of Nottingham to develop a web-based application which
will inform people of their legal rights. Working with the police, Home Office, Ministry of Justice,
Law Society, Youth Justice Board, children’s rights groups and other academics, the intention is
to use the ‘app’ within police custody, so that people can be advised of their rights in an
interactive way through the use of a computer tablet. The ‘app’ will be available publicly and the
use of ‘gamification’ is being explored as a way of encouraging people to engage and improve
their knowledge and understanding of their legal rights (see Kemp, 2016).
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9 Recommendations
We have only been able to scratch the surface of what is happening with CLE and pro bono
activities when looking at activity on the ground. We are at a time of change and a number of
factors have the potential to revolutionise legal education and transform the delivery of legal
services. The proposed legal education reforms are intended to encourage law schools to
integrate clinical methods and experiential learning into the law degree in order to achieve a
mix of theory, doctrine and practice.
There are cost implications for law schools when adopting clinical programmes. This is
particularly the case for in-house clinical courses which require low student-to-staff ratios where
students are closely supervised by clinicians: ratios as high as one supervisor to six students
compared to one lecturer to 150 or more using traditional didactic teaching methods. Joy
(2012), however, is critical of those who question the cost of in-house clinics for often failing to
compare its cost to other costs within the law school. He notes that critics tend not to take into
account the law school’s mission to prepare students for effective and ethical legal practice, the
role taken on by in-house legal education or student demand for real-life educational
experience.
Emerging global factors have implications for change, including the ‘internationalisation of
markets’, ‘incursion of technology’ and a ‘series of economic and global cataclysms’ (Goldfarb,
2012:279). The impact of such factors since the 2008 recession in the US has led to a sharp
decline in the number of students applying to law schools, fewer jobs available for new
attorneys in law firms and an increase in unmet legal need. Goldfarb (2012) warned law schools
that their choice was either to go into the future “without a deliberate sense of purpose”, or to
join those who have begun to consider what the likely changes in society and the legal
profession will mean for the future of legal education. It is our opinion that with a ‘perfect
storm’ brewing in the UK a similar warning should also be heeded by law schools on this side of
the Atlantic.
It is in this context of change, and particularly with the proposed legal education reforms in
England and Wales, that we make a number of recommendations.
9.1 Law Schools to engage with the legal education

reforms
We recommend that law schools engage with the SRA over the proposed legal education
reforms. The SRA would benefit from having the knowledge and expertise of clinicians working
in established law clinics. We also recommend that law schools consider working with the SRA
as an ‘early adopter’ of the proposed reforms, including the more traditional universities in the
Russell Group where there tends to be a conventional doctrinal approach to legal scholarship.
52
This would help to ensure that the adoption of clinical methods complements rather than
detracts from high-quality teaching methods.
9.2 Conducting an empirical study into clinical legal

education
With the potential for expansion in CLE, we recommend that an empirical study is undertaken
as a baseline of current practice and which can be used as a benchmark for future evaluations
of CLE. Clinicians are best placed to inform the research agenda but there will be limits to what
can be learned about clinical practice from people studying their own programmes. We
therefore propose that a study is undertaken in which clinicians and social scientists collaborate
to address key issues arising out of this study as detailed below.
9.2.1 Creating a taxonomy of clinical legal education

It has been noted how law clinics vary in terms of staff and student profiles and numbers, and
this shows them often to be bespoke creations set up to meet needs defined by individual law
schools (Drummond and McKeever, 2015). A research study, therefore, could usefully create a
taxonomy of CLE by including a ‘thick description’ of the content of clinical work and the context
in which clinics operate. This would assist in developing taxonomies of institutional form that
allow for these to be assessed and further developed (Asher, 2012). Creating a taxonomy of
CLE would need to involve clinicians in documenting what they are already doing and for them
to identify, describe and measure important aspects of their work and how it is funded. This
research could produce new knowledge about clinical training by: a) identifying the specific
lawyering skills and civic attitudes and behaviours that clinical instructors seek to teach; b)
describe the methods deployed; and c) measure how effectively clinics achieve these
instructional goals.64
9.2.2 Bolt-on clinic or integrated curriculum

The proposed legal education reforms are intended to encourage law schools to integrate CLE
and experiential learning into the law degree. This is likely to be resisted by traditional law
schools in the Russell Group of universities, particularly those with an international reputation
for excellence. There is a danger that instead of the reforms leading to CLE being integrated
into the curriculum, law schools resistant to change could simply bolt-on a law clinic and/or
extend pro bono work. A similar situation was noted in the US where law schools were seen to
celebrate and even extoll experiential learning but on closer inspection it was seen to be more
marketing and spin than an honest shift in pedagogy, curriculum and culture (Porter, 2015). It
is also important, particularly within traditional law schools in the Russell Group, to consider the
positive impact which CLE can have on the research agenda. In addition, it would be helpful for
the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) to include a focus on the pedagogic strengths of CLE
as this could help to make an important contribution to demonstrating high quality, student
focused and professionally relevant teaching (Drummond and McKeever, 2015).
9.2.3 Measuring the quality of legal advice

There are quality frameworks for in-house clinics which provide advice to live clients.65 In this
study, however, a number of clinicians raised questions about how helpful advice letters are to
clients and the extent to which they are able to follow the advice received. This is an important
point but, to date, there has been no research study which has examined the quality and impact
of clinical legal advice. A couple of clinicians did raise concerns over advice letters being too
64
This was the approach adopted by Sandefur and Selbin (2009) in their longitudinal study of US law
students and the impact of the ‘clinic effect’.
65
Solicitors have to comply with professional standards when involved in clinical work and there is a route
to accreditation through the ‘Advice Quality Standard’ awarded by the Advice Services Alliance for social
welfare issues.
53
long and ‘legalistic’, particularly if the concern was to protect the university from any complaints
that could arise. It is also not known to what extent clients are able to follow advice set out in
the advice letters.
A research study could usefully undertake a survey of clients who have received legal
advice from students at a number of law clinics. They could be asked questions about the
advice: How was it received? Did they understand the advice? What action was taken? Did this
resolve their legal problem? If not, was further action taken? Did their engagement with the law
clinic help to enhance their legal capability? The research study could also usefully explore
whether clients had sought advice from other advice providers, either before or after visiting the
clinic, and the impact of that advice. This will assist our understanding of people’s advice
seeking behaviour and whether or not the advice provided was effective in helping people
resolve their legal problems. An outcome of the study could be to develop a generic ‘client
satisfaction survey’ which clinics could be invited to use in adopting a standardised approach to
gathering information on clients in the future.
A survey could also usefully explore the effectiveness of legal advice depending on the way
in which it was received. Drummond and McKeever (2015:12), for example, note that clinical
legal advice tends to be based on the traditional model common in legal practice of an individual
attending a legal advice point to engage in advice seeking “that adopts a standard legal
interviewing technique which itself tends to rely on a hierarchical, paternalistic approach”. It
seems that the ‘advice letter’ model is used in most law clinics, and the impact of this mode of
advice delivery could be compared to others, such as drop-in advice centres and on-line legal
advice providers. This will assist understanding of the efficacy of the different ways in providing
legal advice and how legal problems may best be resolved.
When considering the quality of legal advice provided by law clinics it would be helpful to
examine what arrangements are in place, or could usefully be adopted, in order to routinely
monitor and evaluate clinical work with live clients. One approach, for example, could be to use
‘peer review’, where independent lawyers review case files in order to assess the quality of legal
advice provided.66
9.2.4 The student perspective on the ‘clinic effect’

The experience of students involved in clinical activities, and the effect of that experience later
on in their careers and involvement in pro bono work, could usefully be explored. In an ‘exit
survey’, for example, students could be asked about their experience in the law clinic and their
views on what they considered to be some of the strengths and weaknesses of the clinical
approach adopted. This information would not only be helpful when examining clinical activity
from the students’ perspective, it would also assist clinicians improve clinical work. Sandefur
and Selbin (2009) examined the ‘clinic effect’ when conducting a longitudinal study of students
both when they were in the law school and subsequently as new attorneys. They considered this
research focus to be important because CLE is intended to be a pedagogic corrective to
perceived deficits in law schools which teach lawyers to think like lawyers but not to act like
them and noted that “little research exists to inform our understanding of whether – much less
how, when why and for whom – clinics deliver on this promise” (Sandefur and Selbin, 2009:57).
In the US they found that new lawyers rated clinical training more highly for making the
transition to the actual practice of law than many other law school experiences, particularly the
doctrinal core that is commonly the object of the standard assessment.
In considering the different approaches adopted to CLE, Sandefur and Selbin (2009:102)
make the important point that while undoubtedly various models and methods will produce
different effects on students, we cannot begin to investigate these effects until we know what
kind of clinical training students are actually receiving. A prospective study of the impact of
66
This is the model adopted by the Legal Aid Agency (2016) when using independent experienced legal
practitioners to assess the quality of work of other professionals against a set of critieria and levels of
performance.
54
legal education on law students’ careers could usefully follow students from the start of law
school into their future careers. Researchers could compare the lawyering skills (and the
transferability of such skills into other occupations), pro bono, community participation,
employability, job choices and other experiences of students who were otherwise similar before
they did or did not participate in clinics.
9.2.5 Law clinics and the ecosystem of legal advice providers

Within the context of providing legally-aided services predominantly through a judicare model,
which relies on lawyers in private practice, a research study could usefully explore what impact
increasing levels of state retrenchment and cuts to legal aid are having on the delivery of such
services. Pedagogical demands mitigate against law schools managing a high volume of legal
cases, but through clinical activities they can work in partnership with others in the ecosystem
of legal advice. It was interesting to discover that new partnership arrangements between
lawyers in private practice, legal advice agencies and law schools are being considered by the
incipient Greater Manchester Law Centre, for the purpose of providing legal services to clients
who are unable to access legal help from private solicitors. A research study could also usefully
examine the efficacy of different partnership arrangements and how innovations in practice are
helping to improve access to justice.
9.2.6 Technology and innovations in practice

It is evident that technology will in the future play a central role in courts, tribunals and the
delivery of legal services. Having examined developments in the US, we recommend that law
schools consider adopting ‘technology clinics’ so that students can be involved in identifying
technological solutions to a range of problems. These could include students being involved in
studying and even building software systems that perform some of the tasks of lawyers, help
educate people about their legal problems and provide legal advice online. Through technology
clinics students can gain an understanding of the ‘emerging technologies’ which are at the
centre of modern law practice and develop core competencies across a range of new and
traditional lawyering skills (Staudt and Lauritsen, 2013:687).
55
10 Next steps
In the interest of taking forward the findings and recommendations contained in this report
commissioned by the School of Law at the University of Manchester it is proposed that the
School convenes a seminar in association with CLEO, at which clinicians, regulators and
academics can discuss the issues raised in this report. The suggested aim of the seminar would
be to craft a framework for the future that makes sense of the complexities and uncertainties
currently associated with the teaching of law.
56
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65
APPENDIX
Clinics involved in this study
Details of the visits to clinics and/or discussions with clinicians undertaken as part of this study
are as follows:
United Kingdom Clinics

 University of Sheffield – visit and interviews with Professors Claire McGourlay and Sarah
Blandy, Dr Andrew Green and Gill Hutchens – 12 January 2016.
 University of Liverpool – visit and interview with Dr Sarah Woodhouse and Naomi Fathers –
23 February 2016.
 Nottingham Trent University – visit and interview with Nick Johnson – 11 March 2016.
 University of Northumbria at Newcastle – visit and interviews with Carole Boothby and Cath
Sylvester – 23 March 2016.
 University of York – interview with Professor Richard Grimes – 23 March 2016.
 University of Kent – visit and interviews with Professors John Fitzpatrick and Sheona York –
13 April 2016.
 University of Strathclyde – visit and interview with Kate Laverty and Fergus Lawrie – 6 May
2016.
 London South Bank University – visit and interviews with Catherine Evans and Alan Russell –
10 May 2016.
 Ulster University – telephone interview with Dr Gráinne McKeever – 31 May 2016.
 University of Cardiff – telephone interview with Professor Julie Price – 20 June 2016.
 University of Manchester – visit and interview with Dinah Crystal OBE – 21 June 2016.
 University of Warwick – discussions via email with Professor Roger Burridge – 1 August
2016.
United States Clinics

 University of Chicago – visit and interview with Professor Jeff Leslie – 24 May 2016.
 Legal Advice Clinic, Chicago – visit and interview with Veda Dmitrovich – 25 May 2016.
 Chicago-Kent College of Law – visit and interviews with Professors Richard Gonzalez, Ronald
Staudt, Daniel Coyne, Rhonda de Freitas and Alex Rabanal – 26 May 2016.
66
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Clinical Legal Education and Experiential Learning: Looking to the Future

Research · October 2016

Vicky Kemp Tine Munk

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Procedural safeguards for young suspects View project

Police station legal advice View project

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

Clinical Legal Education and

Report commissioned by The University of Manchester, the School of Law, 2016

2 Clinical legal education in a global context ................................................................................................ 3

3 Clinical legal education in the United States .............................................................................................. 5

6 Proposed legal education reforms in England and Wales ....................................................................... 38

8 Potential innovations in clinical legal education in the United Kingdom............................................... 46

10 Next steps ..................................................................................................................................................... 56

With the potential for expansion in CLE,

 Creating a taxonomy of CLE;

1.1 Clinical models, experiential learning and pro bono

 Streetlaw projects – students work as a member of a team to educate community groups

2 Clinical legal education in a global context

3 Clinical legal education in the United States

3.1 A brief history of clinical legal education

3.2 Educational theory in experiential learning

3.3 Three different models of legal advice clinic

3.3.1 The Mandel Clinic – University of Chicago Law School

3.3.2 The Law Offices of Chicago-Kent College of Law

3.3.4 Chicago Legal Clinic

3.4 Recent changes in legal education and legal services

3.5 Innovations in clinical legal services

3.6 Technology, clinics and the delivery of legal services

4 Clinical legal education and experiential learning in

4.1 A brief history of clinical legal education - 1970’s to

4.2 LawWorks findings of clinical activity and pro bono

4.3 Assessment of clinical activity

5 Exploring clinical models and pro bono practices on

5.1 Legal education or community service?

5.1.1 Northumbria University Student Law Office (SLO)

5.1.2 York Law School Clinic – University of York

5.1.3 Kent Law Clinic – University of Kent

5.1.4 Strathclyde Law Clinic – University of Strathclyde

5.2 ‘Teaching Law Firm’ - A fee-generating model?

5.3 New models of clinical activity

5.3.1 London South Bank University’s (LSBU) Legal Advice Clinic

5.3.2 Warwick Law Clinic – University of Warwick

5.3.3 Ulster Law Clinic – Ulster University

5.4 Clinical activity within traditional Russell Group law

5.4.1 Manchester’s Legal Advice Centre – University of Manchester

5.4.2 Clinical legal education at the University of Sheffield

5.4.3 Cardiff’s Law Clinic – Cardiff University

5.4.4 Liverpool Law Clinic – University of Liverpool

5.5 Law schools and pro bono initiatives

5.6 LawWorks and Attorney General Student Awards

6 Proposed legal education reforms in England and

6.1 Clinics and the regulation of legal services

7 Public funding, partnership and the delivery of legal

7.1 Developing partnerships with legal providers

7.2 The potential for developing local partnerships in

8 Potential innovations in clinical legal education in

8.1 Clinical work and criminal justice initiatives