The Law Clinic at Strathclyde University is now in its fourth successful year offering access to justice to those that need it the most. However, far from basking in its success the Law clinic’s founder Professor Donald Nicolson is looking to raise £60,000 to take the Law clinic out into the community. Richard Draycott hears all about his ambitious plans.

A charge often levelled at the door of the legal education system is that academic study doesn’t prepare students for the rough and tumble of life in the real legal world. While completing a university law degree can, and does, make a student ‘book smart’, it is still unable to make that student ‘street smart’, able to offer any practical insight and experience of the day to day workings of a live case, or perhaps more importantly, to provide the social skills to deal with the expectations of real clients whose lives and livelihoods will, one day in the near future, depend on them.
Since 30 October 2003 the University of Strathclyde has been providing its law students the opportunity to experience real live legal cases by getting involved with The Law Clinic, founded by Professor Donald Nicolson. In the coming months Professor Nicolson and his Law Clinic students are looking to raise enough funds to expand the Law Clinic’s services out of the University’s Lord Hope Building and into the community, in order to offer even better access to justice for those that need it the most.
Professor Nicolson says: “We are looking to raise up to £60,000 so that we can employ a full-time solicitor to advise students on their cases, or to job share with the part-time solicitor Kate Laverty we have on board at the moment, so that we can realistically expand outside the university.
“We want to grow and take the Law Clinic out into the community, setting up drop-in clinics at particular times and in particular areas of Glasgow so that people can come to us with their legal problems. The drop-in centres will happen later in 2007 and they will be manned by four students and one solicitor doing real pro bono work. The drop-in centres will act as satellites to the main centre at the University.”
Sitting in the Law Clinic’s third floor offices in Strathclyde University’s Lord Hope Building, Professor Nicolson is clearly passionate about the role and the function that the Law Clinic plays in both the lives of the university’s students and the local community it serves.
“I suppose part of the reason I came to Strathclyde from Bristol University was to establish a Law Clinic,” says Nicolson. “I was heavily involved with Law Clinics as a student back in Cape Town and I believe they provide vital social justice for those people that do not qualify for legal aid and cannot afford the services of a lawyer. When I came to Strathclyde the door was open to do this; in fact I had Professor Alan Patterson pushing me through the door when I approached the Law School to set up the clinic.”
In year one Nicolson had around 30 students sign up to advise the clients that came through the Clinic’s door. That number has now risen to 133 advisers who are split into six separate firms, each with a case manager who allocates cases. In the last year alone the Law Clinic has taken on 140 cases, a rise of 67 per cent on the previous year, and that growth looks set to continue as Nicolson and his students work to expand their service deeper into the community.
Consumer, employment and housing issues are the main areas of work that come into the Law Clinic, which is open to the public on a Wednesday and Friday evening at the Lord Hope Building. At these times the public can come and talk to the students about their particular problem and from there decide whether they wish to take their case forward. Students always work in teams of two, more if it is a bigger case, and interviews are always conducted by an experienced student; no student is ever put into an interview situation without full support.
Hands-on is very much the maxim at Nicolson’s Law Clinic, as he explains: “The Clinic is very student run and that is absolutely necessary both in terms of cost effectiveness and I feel it is also important that the students have a real sense of ownership of the Clinic. “Each of the six firms are run by their cases manager and there is a different ethos in each firm. Essentially we leave as much up to the students as we can. Obviously it is important that they are supervised and adequately trained to deal with clients and cases, which is why we have people such as Charles Hennessy and Gerry Kelly involved with our training and we appointed solicitor Kate on a part-time basis earlier in the year.”
The Clinic received an initial £15,000 grant from the Law School at Strathclyde when it set up and the University covers its hidden costs such as Nicolson’s salary, office space and administrative help. But essentially the Law Clinic is now self-funded through sponsorship deals with Scottish law firms and a number of grants from charitable foundations, such as the Clark Foundation, which is administered by law firm Tods Murray. However much of this money is ring fenced and only available for educational purposes such as buying books, training and so on, hence Nicolson is at the moment very focused on raising money.
“I really think the Government should be giving us some money to help with what we do,” he says. “The Legal Aid Board is very narrow, it doesn’t get any bigger, and solicitors, as we know, cost a lot of money. The problem of access to justice continues to grow and we fill that gap very economically. The students are giving up their time, as are the solicitors that we work with, so we are an incredibly cost effective way of improving access to justice for the people of Scotland. We would also appeal to all law firms to offer what financial help they can so that we can buy in what we need to continue to function. I am keen to make as many contacts with as many law firms and support organisations as possible so that we can fulfil our ambitions.”
Other ambitions that Professor Nicolson and his students are keen to fulfil are the establishment of regular outreach centres in places such as Stranraer and Oban, where local people can access the Clinic’s services and expertise, and a shared office in Glasgow city centre with the Citizens Advice Bureau, where students again can offer a holistic approach to legal services. However, Nicolson is realistic that ambitions such as these will require funding from perhaps the National Lottery Fund to help them come to fruition.
The students that advise within the Law Clinic do not receive any academic credit for the work they do, however, those that put in a lot of time and work can enrol on the Clinical Legal Practise course as a reward. It is this aspect that Nicolson believes is an important part of the promise made to the Clinic’s clients. No cases are ever taken on purely for academic merit. And likewise, no cases are ever refused or dropped just because they don’t have an academic benefit for the student or students involved. As Nicolson says: “Students get a lot of benefit from working within the Law Clinic, but cases are never chosen on their educational benefits. The education bit for the student is their own personal satisfaction that the student gets from helping somebody. We are the last resort for many people. We act as a safety net but we do not take work away from other law firms. Our students and the Law Clinic is simply meeting an unmet need, and that is why the Law Clinic is so important.”

For more information on the work of The Law Clinic visit www.lawclinic.org.uk.

What the students say

Stuart Kelly
Executive Committee Member
“I have been involved for around two years now and my first case is still ongoing as it is quite a complicated one. It seems quite bizarre at first when you have a real life person sitting in front of you telling you their problems. After that the role plays seems quite synthetic. You cannot divorce the fact that as a by-product of being involved with the Law Clinic you actually become a better student as you understand the theory better as you have seen it and done it in practice.”


Caroline Gray
Executive Committee Member
“I became involved with the Law Clinic for a number of reasons. It gives you some great experience and it allows you to put what you learn in the classroom into action. It gives you the chance to deal with real people and real cases quite early on in your legal career. It definitely helps you as a student as it forces you to research subjects and areas that you may never have come across through a traditional legal degree. It is very rewarding on a personal level to be able to help people who really need help. We do not know everything obviously, as we are still students, but having that access to knowledge is very rewarding and helpful.”

Lindsay Bruce,
Student Director
“My first client was a woman who had bitten into a pin in a sandwich and she was in a lot of discomfort. It ended up in the small claims court. That was quite a frightening experience but it was really just the fear of the unknown. Once I had done it that fear was gone. The Law Clinic helps you get out of your comfort zone and forces you to do some of the things you might be anxious about doing. At first I found myself questioning whether I had the relevant skills and ability to help this lady, but with the advice and guidance of the solicitors here they reassured me that I was doing everything right and the lady got what she was entitled to in the end.”