Student Contributions Exchanging Places: Experiences of the First Irwin Mitchell International Clinical Scholar Martin Wilson1 What do most people think of a law degree – plentiful amounts of hard work, endless reading, an expensive Legal Practice Course or Bar Vocational Course followed by an extremely competitive application process to secure a job in the graduate’s respective field of work? What if students were given the opportunity to work in another jurisdiction, such as Australia, for one month in a student-run law office during the summer, with £1000 to get them on their way? ‘Sounds good’, I thought. ‘So what do I have to do to get the chance’? And then the one catch is divulged – the student must complete a compulsory piece of coursework and achieve one of the top 10 marks in their year. (The writer expects a few raised eyebrows at this stage!) Last summer, Northumbria University in partnership with Irwin Mitchell2 and Monash University, in Melbourne Australia, offered one Year 33 Northumbria student a pro bono scholarship to work in the Springvale Monash Legal Service (SMLS) for one month. Irwin 66 Journal of Clinical Legal Education August 2005 1 Martin Wilson graduated from the Northumbria University Exempting Law Degree in July 2005 with First Class Honours. The previous summer he had been the first Irwin Mitchell International Clinical Scholar, undertaking a month’s experience at the Springvale Legal Service at Monash University in Melbourne. 2 Irwin Mitchell are a leading national law firm in the United Kingdom, with a long-standing commitment to the support of pro bono work. 3 The Northumbria Exempting Law Degree is a four year undergraduate programme. The compulsory one year clinical module (the Student Law Office) is in the final (fourth) year. The IM Scholar therefore has the opportunity to undertake a month’s clinical work- experience at Monash before starting their clinical work in the Northumbria clinic. Mitchell kindly sponsored this scholarship and provided £1000 to the lucky student. To get the chance of participating in this pro bono scholarship, the chosen student had to complete a compulsory piece of legal research coursework and attain one of the top ten marks in the year. The top students were then invited for interview before a panel of three comprising two Northumbria Student Law Office staff and one partner from Irwin Mitchell, whose selection criteria proved to be which student demonstrated a commitment to pro bono work in the Student Law Office. Technically, when I was selected for the scholarship, I should not have been anxious at all. I had spent a great deal of my undergraduate studies in preparation for working in Northumbria University’s pro bono Student Law Office and besides, Australia’s legal system is a common law system partly based upon our system, what could be so different? But I was about to travel to the other side of the world alone and work in a completely different jurisdiction where I knew nobody. The experience however proved to be very different to my anxieties. Working in the Springvale Monash Legal Service was unique in terms of the diversity of experience I managed to encounter and the skills I acquired regarding working in a law office, client care and giving advice to live clients. Each day provided a different experience to any other. For two days of the week, I worked in the Springvale Monash Legal Service in a client drop in session, in which four hours student time was dedicated to meeting members of the community on a one to one basis. The legal problems that students were confronted with proved to be more extensive than those that a busy high street law firm would be presented with daily. These ranged from fencing disputes, matrimonial matters, child residency issues, minor criminal offences, employment matters, through to a request to complete a change of address form due to language difficulties. Springvale Monash Legal Service, in terms of the diversity of legal and non-legal matters presented on a daily basis had similarities with a Citizens Advice Bureau in Britain. Moreover, a significant proportion of clients required the assistance of a telephone interpreter due to language difficulties, which posed its own interesting problems when interviewing and advising a client. During another day in the working week, I had the opportunity to work at the Family Law Courts in a suburb in Melbourne through another Monash University pro bono programme aptly named the Family Law Assistance Programme (FLAP). Students and qualified solicitors provided a mainly advisory service to any Family Court attendees who required it and this could occasionally extend to representation if circumstances so required. Through this programme, students not only had to deliver immediate advice on a quick turnover basis but also had the opportunity to observe the procedural workings of the Family Courts. During the fourth day of the weekly programme, I was sent to participate in Monash’s Intervention Order Support Scheme (IOSS) at the Criminal Law Courts in another suburb in Melbourne. Through this excellent programme students and qualified solicitors manned a drop in session for unrepresented applicants who often found the entire experience of applying for an intervention order extremely distressing and traumatic. It was through this scheme that I gained the greatest amount of personal accomplishment specifically when I sat with an applicant in court providing emotional support for her in the traumatic experience of meeting the respondent in open court. The final day of the week saw me engage with other students in various lectures and seminars regarding their pro bono course of studies. 67 Exchanging Places: Experiences of the First Irwin Mitchell International Clinical Scholar 68 Journal of Clinical Legal Education August 2005 Overall, the Monash pro bono programme, encompassing SMLS, FLAP, IOSS and other schemes, proves to be of significant value to both the local community and students who participate in it. Irrespective of the warmth and friendliness of the staff and students at Monash, the programme of events that I experienced during the scholarship were excellent in terms of the professionalism of those involved, the sheer diversity of experience one can take from it and the benefit to all who came into contact with it. However, to make a like-for-like comparison between Northumbria University’s pro bono programme and that at Monash University would ignore the fact that the two programmes seem to be aimed at achieving different objectives and are situated in two wholly different legal climates. On the one hand Springvale Monash Legal Service is situated in a suburb in Melbourne and is aimed at providing a high turnover of advice to members of the local community, with varying degrees of language difficulties, and is also intended to take on those more in-depth cases requiring more detailed levels of research and student input. There are numerous similar University-run schemes around Australia, such as those run by neighbouring Melbourne University. Furthermore, Victoria Legal Aid (the Australian state legal aid provider) sees work such as that undertaken by Victorian student-run law offices as strategic in delivering legal services to the general public and consequently appear to be much more involved in the funding of certain aspects of the schemes than occurs at Northumbria’s Student Law Office. The students at Monash elect to work in the pro bono law office and spend a period of 3 months in doing so, which differs further from its English counterpart. Students also encounter an exceptionally varied range of legal problems spanning numerous areas of law. In comparison, Northumbria University’s Student Law Office is situated on campus in the City Centre and seeks to serve a very different legal need. Drop-in ‘advice on demand’ style centres already exist in England and Wales, through organisations such as the Citizens Advice Bureau, and therefore the Student Law Office has not been set up to provide such a service. Another marked difference between the two law pro bono programmes is that the Northumbria model is unique in England and Wales, in terms of the depth of the programme. Australia already has caught onto the idea of student run law offices but England and Wales are yet to follow suit. For students studying on the exempting law degree at Northumbria the Student Law Office is a compulsory and extremely important part of their final year. Cases can be taken on and sometimes followed through to fruition due to the greater time available over the nine-month span of the academic year. Additionally, students are placed into firms of students with one supervisor that specialises in a particular area of law and they subsequently focus on one area of law rather than experiencing the wide-ranging areas that the SMLS students will encounter. This provides a distinctly different educational experience to that gained at Monash and that is the thrust of the writer’s conclusion. Monash and Northumbria University’s pro bono programmes are different; they both intend to serve different legal and educational needs. The Monash model is typically Australian in the way that it has a student atmosphere about the law office, but that it still retains its professional outlook. Upon entering the office one can hear the chorus of ‘G’day mate’ as the customary welcome, along with discussions of where some students intend to go surfing later. Whereas the Northumbria office has a typically English feel to it – a more self-consciously professional outlook coupled with a desire to sound professional and look professional in every task. And it is these closing points that ensured that my experience was so interesting; to be able to see, hear and experience the differences between two student run law offices at opposite ends of the world!