Presenter: Fiona Boyle
A variety of forms of clinical legal education are widely recognised as providing both community and educational benefits. Under the UK’s current legal system there is a clear role for a variety of pro-bono activities to go some way to address unmet legal need.
Potential solutions to this legal need have been categorised as including ‘new money, new forms of delivery or new providers’[1]Student law clinics are always the third; a new provider, and can be argued to potentially encompass the second; new forms of delivery. Innovative delivery utilising technology including web-based information sources is being developed in a number of areas[2] within the broad public legal education framework. While some of these innovations might be technically complex, the importance of basic methods has been highlighted as of key importance[3].
This paper will focus on a modest
experiment in utilising web based information within a clinical module to
provide legal information to a local community group and its service users.
[1] Malcolm M. Combe (2014) Selling intra-curricular clinical legal education, The Law Teacher, 48:3, 281-295, DOI: 10.1080/03069400.2014.965950
[2] See for example advicenow.org.uk is a second general advice website run by the charity Law for Life and presenting itself within a public legal education framework.
[3] The 2017 report on Digital Delivery of Legal Services to People on Low Incomes at https://www.thelegaleducationfoundation.org/digital/digital-report
