ijple 3 (1) 2019 editorial spring has sprungple is blooming! sarah morse northumbria university, uk sarah.morse@northumbria.ac.uk this spring issue of the journal, is first and foremost a celebration of innovative and diverse programmes designed to extend the reach of public legal education (ple) and via different means. we begin with a paper by dr freda grealy, steve collender, john lunney and rory o’boyle who examine how massive open online courses can be designed to align with ple objectives and increase access to legal education to a wider audience. in their paper, briony johnston and shaun mccarthy, also examine the potential value of online resources with reference to their own project, ‘know the law’, which provides international students with online access to legal information. expanding the reach of our work is also a key message in the paper by sarah saunders who illustrates how street law projects can be successfully extended into different arenasin this case in the employment tribunalwith the support of, and in collaboration with, the judiciary. collaboration is also at the heart of rachael kirkup’s paper as she explores the benefits and challenges of partnering with others to deliver ple projects. the benefits and challenges of ple in other jurisdictions also feature in our final two papers with kyoko isoyama exploring the current position and challenges of law related education in japan and hana draslarova contributing important evidence of the benefit to students on a street law programme in prague. for ple to continue to bloom and thrive, it is important that we continue to share our experiences, ideas and best practice. with that in mind, the annual uk and ireland street law best practice conference will take place at queen mary university of london on 9th and 10th september 2019. please let us know of any other upcoming events in the field of ple. 1 ijple 2 (1) 2018 1 editorial design, development and value sarah morse northumbria university, uk sarah.morse@northumbria.ac.uk in this second issue of the journal, we look at the potential design, development and value of public legal education (ple) programmes. we begin with lee arbetman’s paper, which takes us back to the origins of street law inc. and looks at the potential development, reach and sustainability of a street law style programme. this is followed by richard grimes’ paper, which illustrates how a legal literacy programme might be designed to include methods of evaluating impact. both papers complement each other well by considering the opportunities ple programmes present and providing inspiration to clinicians about how success can be achieved whilst also recognising the challenges we face. both writers emphasise the importance of sustainability – whether that is through building effective partnerships or the need to provide evidence of the impact of our work to, amongst other reasons, secure financial backing and support. richard’s article concludes with a call for more research in this area and we would welcome contributions to this journal of that nature. mailto:sarah.morse@northumbria.ac.uk ijple 2 (1) 2018 2 designing an effective ple programme is also at the heart of victoria roper’s article. this provides good insight into the pro’s and con’s of a blog based legal education project from the perspective of the clinician/academic, student and audience. an ‘in conversation’ piece with marilyn cover and jennifer bloom also provides the perspective of two experienced clinicians considering the benefits of street law when compared to other law school classes. this issue ends with frances ridout’s review of the second edition of street law: democracy for all – learner’s manual and street law: democracy for all – educator’s manual by david mcquoid-mason, lloyd lotz, and lindi coetze. as frances concludes, the manuals are thought provoking and provide a valuable resource for students and educators alike who are involved in a street law programme in and outside of south africa. in this issue, there is a great deal to inspire us whether we are designing a new ple programme or developing an existing one. do let us hear about your own programmes to share ideas and best practice. please also let us know of any upcoming events in the field of ple. the 3rd annual street law best practice conference will take place at sheffield hallam university, uk on 13 and 14 september 2018. this year’s theme is ‘impact and influence’ which dovetails nicely with the discussions in this issue. editorial “i’m so glad that i live in a world where there are octobers.”[footnoteref:1] [1: l.m. montgomery, anne of green gables] sarah morse northumbria university, uk sarah.morse@northumbria.ac.uk the opening quote is from my favourite childhood book and it seems very fitting today because, far more so than january, autumn has long since felt to me like the start of the new year, a time for new beginnings and full of endless possibility. it is therefore with considerable excitement for this new beginning that i introduce the first issue of the international journal of public legal education. welcome to this journal which is the creation of like-minded people wishing to celebrate and promote work in this field. public legal education (ple) is the umbrella term we have adopted to cover the many activities carried out worldwide aimed at educating members of the public in relation to legal rights and responsibilities. in different jurisdictions, we appreciate that the term ple is less well recognised. for example, in the us, these activities fall within the wider remit of law-related education and might also be badged as community legal education or as part of the civic learning movement. in australia, they might more readily be recognised as community legal services and in other jurisdictions simply as legal literacy. whatever the term of art, in this journal we would like to harness, examine and support this valuable work. there are also a wide variety of activities undertaken under this banner. a significant part of ple is of course street law and this issue, and i am sure future editions of the journal, will deservedly explore these programmes however our brief is wider and we would welcome contributions regarding any programmes which share similar aims and ideals. for example, your work may utilise interactive methods commonly associated with street law or the production of information leaflets or use of technology. ple activities can involve law students, practitioners, ngos or others and can be aimed at school pupils or adults within different learning environments. we welcome all incarnations of ple and would like this journal to embrace a broad remit. in this inaugural issue, we have a paper by sean arthurs, melinda cooperman, jessica gallagher, freda grealy, john lunney, rob marrs and richard roe. this is a follow up to their superb article in the july edition of the international journal of clinical legal education which evaluates how effectively their unique street law orientation programme achieves it aims of building belief, capacity and community. we also have a fitting tribute by may o’brien to the work of her late husband, ed o’brien, who many will know as the co-founder of street law in the us. in her article, may also credits the achievements of others in this field. finally, we have contributions from some of our editorial board describing what role street law or ple has in their own jurisdictions. we hope that this serves as an introduction to the journal and an illustration of our hopes about the role and importance it could play. as well as sharing best practice, we wish to examine programmes across jurisdictions, consider the underlying pedagogy and importantly include rigorous research to provide evidence of impact for the stakeholders involved. i hope it can provide a forum for creating a network of colleagues and support our activities such as conferences and workshopsplease do let us know of anything happening in your area. we hope this journal will be successful long term and will become a valuable resource which is accessible for all. to achieve this we need your support and we would welcome submissions from you all for our next issue which will be published in spring 2018. our next issue will have a particular focus on different models of ple however all submissions are welcomed. i hope that you enjoy this issue and look forward to your contributions. 3 1 editorial approaches and impact sarah morse northumbria university, uk sarah.morse@northumbria.ac.uk with the start of the new academic year, many of us will have hoped for a return to some ‘normality’ in terms of our teaching and ways of working. unfortunately, however, in light of the continuing pandemic, this is likely to look different for some further time to come and whilst some will be experiencing a move back to predominantly face to face teaching, others might be taking a more blended approach or seeing a continuation of online work. regardless, and despite the many challenges, it is evident that invaluable and innovative teaching and research in the field of ple has continued over the last 18 months. i anticipate that others, like myself, might be considering how what we have learnt over this period can potentially benefit or translate to our teaching and research this year and beyond. with that in mind i hope that this issue of the journal provides food for thought and encourages you to continue to share details of your worksomething which is so important for development in the field. our first article is a fascinating exploration of the relationship between legal capability and the capabilities approach. the concept of legal capability (with its focus on mailto:sarah.morse@northumbria.ac.uk 2 possessing knowledge, skills and attitudes to recognise, deal with and resolve law related issues) is central to our understanding of ple. professor dawn watkins reflects upon the commonly held view that this is closely linked to the capabilities approach (which, in broad terms, is stated to evaluate human wellbeing with reference to individual freedoms rather than in monetary or material terms) and examines the history of this, the true nature of the relationship and, in concluding that the relationship is in fact more disparate, considers the pros and cons of ‘reimagining’ the relationship to bring these two fields closer together. there is much for the reader to ponder here including the desirability of this, with potential scope for further discussion and exploration. our second article provides an evaluation of the impact of street law programmes on the law student instructors. brandon golob explores whether participation impacts upon students’ mastery and performance orientated goals as well as providing evidence of the impact on law students self-efficacy for communicating legal information to non-lawyers, public speaking, developing lawyer/client relationships and soft skills (such as empathy). evaluation relating to the impact of ple is of interest and importance to us allpotentially providing an evidence base upon which to sustain and develop our programmes and work -so this article is a welcome addition to that. 3 further discussion regarding the benefit of ple programmes for law students is found in our third article. here, keren lloyd bright, with maria mcnicholl, reflect upon the ple in prisons programmes operated by the open university (through its open justice centre). as well as providing insight into the benefit for law students the authors also explore the benefit for prisoners in the context of rehabilitative prison culture. the article considers why these opportunities have been offered to students, why the projects are designed as they are, what has been achieved and scope for future development. a variety of methods and programmes are explored here the prison radio project and charity collaboration will, i’m sure, generate interest and ideas for those who work in this environment or are considering doing so. finally, amy wallace provides a review of public legal education: the role of law schools in building a more legally literate society authored by richard grimes and published by routledge in may 2021. this thoughtful review will undoubtedly leave you wanting to read more and the information and resources provided within the book will prove useful to many of our readers. 1 editorial sarah morse northumbria university, uk sarah.morse@northumbria.ac.uk as ever, this issue of the journal provides wonderful examples of work in the field as well as highlighting continuing scope, and need, for further progress and development. we see the possibility of utilising different approaches to teaching and learning in public legal education (ple) and considerations to take into account when drawing on existing pedagogy and resources. our issue starts with an article by latia ward which looks at the origins of law-related education in the united states and its interpretation at state level in k-12 education, which is predominantly as a means of preventing violence. the author looks beyond this asserting that law related education is a branch of civics with a wider brief to be taught in schools (and indeed also outside of the classroom), across all states and beyond the remit of violence prevention. ward makes a strong case for its inclusion as part of k-12 education and explores this within the context of her own experience developing programmes and reflecting upon lessons learnt and key resources. our second article, by abiodun michael olatokun, explores the importance of access to justice with a focus on the ability of citizens to challenge public decisions. the author addresses barriers to achieving this which includes, but does not end with, the mailto:sarah.morse@northumbria.ac.uk 2 availability of legal aid and emphasises the importance of legal capability, and the role that public legal education can play in achieving this, as a means of increasing this access. we are provided with valuable insight into the limitations of government progress or support in promoting or prescribing ple and the shortcomings of initiatives to date, whilst also recognising potential means by which more can be done and a call for increased ple provision. we then move to sean molloy’s article which explores the history of training and education of police recruits and the drivers towards change. the author draws upon his own experience of teaching police recruits addressing the challenges of doing so and proposing an alternative human rights-based approach to achieving technical legal knowledge whilst also developing critical thinking skillsboth of which are considered fundamental to the role. there is a fascinating discussion here about approaches to education which will resonate, and merit further thought for many readers. we then turn to a practice report by jane secker, chris morrison and frances ridout, which highlights the value of using open educational resources within our street law programmes. this is illustrated by a case study which reflects upon and evaluates the experiences of students involved in a street law project in which they adapted and developed such a resource, copyright the card game. the authors explore the skills and abilities which can be gained by this and the challenges in asking students to engage in this way as well as the value of expanding street law into a range of perhaps 3 less commonly covered areasin this case the topic of copyright. as the article notes, the street law community welcomes the sharing of information and resources and this article seeks to consider the possibilities for doing so by also utilising open educational practices. we close this issue with a review of the uk and ireland street law conference which took place in april 2022. this review, told from a student perspective, provides a valuable summary of street law activities across this jurisdiction and beyond and includes important considerations and practices for this work. on the topic of conferences, many of our readers will have attended the european network for clinical legal education conference in brescia in july 2022 or be planning to attend the gaje/ijcle/saulca worldwide conference in december. undoubtedly the themes of these conferences are relevant to our work in the field of ple. i would encourage you to consider whether your delivered or planned presentations could be translated into papers for inclusion in our next issue of the journal. we would welcome contributions including regarding best practice, pedagogy underpinning ple and evidence of the need and impact of this work in your jurisdiction. further details regarding the focus and scope of the journal can be found at https://www.northumbriajournals.co.uk/index.php/ijple/about. https://www.northumbriajournals.co.uk/index.php/ijple/about ijple 2 (1) 2018 81 book review street law: democracy for all – learner’s manual (2nd edition 2017, isbn 9871485119692) street law: democracy for all – educator’s manual (2nd edition 2017, isbn 9781485119708) david mcquoid-mason, lloyd lotz, and lindi coetze price: free download. hard copy r240 (approx. conversion of £14.10 at time of publication) frances ridout acting director of the legal advice centre and barrister, queen mary university of london. street law may have originated from the east coast of america, but there is no doubt its growing popularity and effectiveness as a public legal education tool spans the globe. this learner’s manual and accompanying educator’s manual is aimed at young people, students and teachers. the combination of books serve as a functional street law tool far wider than the jurisdiction of its south african authors. it explains how democracy is widely viewed, the formation of governments, abuse of power, elections and the concepts and practices in citizenship. the refreshing simplicity and user friendliness of this manual is its strength. far from undermining it’s depth as a ijple 2 (1) 2018 82 resource, this straightforwardness is an asset allowing the text to be given to a diverse age range of learners and a diverse experience range of educators. the book aims to improve the understanding of the reader on principles of democracy and it certainly does this in a beautifully simplistic way using pictures, diagrams and examples from south africa and at times other jurisdictions. at the heart of this publication is a series of interesting activities in every chapter, which can be tailored to suit the students. it is easy to think of simple adaptations which would make these exercises suitable for students from 11-21 years of age. the accompanying educator’s manual takes each exercise in the learner’s manual and provides a detailed breakdown of the objectives of the exercise, the procedure to run the exercise, the timings of doing so, and what materials are needed. chapter 1 focuses on the different types of democracy and the fundamental principles behind it. the exercise ideas for students in this chapter go beyond thinking about constitutional situations. they look at people’s actions and whether they are considered to be a feature of democracy (e.g. exercise 10: do you think democratically?). this is also an example of the book subtly attempting to foster justice tolerance and fairness within its readers. chapter 2 describes the workings of a government in a democratic society including the role of constitutional legislation, and the structure of the court system in south africa. the section on courts was one of the few sections where the manual was less transferrable between jurisdictions. however, one student exercise gives a valuable ijple 2 (1) 2018 83 set of guidelines for setting up a mock parliamentary debate on the death penalty and it is easy to see how university students running a street law project could adapt the topic but follow the structure of this exercise. chapter 3 looks at abuse of power, what it is, and domestic and international methods of keeping it in check. what is particularly timely in this chapter is the role of media in highlighting and potentially preventing that abuse. chapter 4 is about human rights (what they are and what categories they may fall into). there are also interesting sections on how they fit into a democracy, whether they should appear in a bill of rights and how to resolve situations where they conflict. there are a number of good situational exercises for students to consider whether it is ever justified to suspend a human right. the focus of chapter 5 is voting and elections. the different types of voting, and principles and practices of free and fair elections are outlined. the interesting topic of funding political parties is brought into exercise 8 of this chapter. this chapter promotes political tolerance including an exercise asking students to consider the benefits of a multi-cultural society. the final chapter in the manual is dedicated to citizen participation; how to be an informed citizen, participation, changing policies and responsibilities to other citizens. there is a great exercise asking students to think about how they would obtain further reliable information on a range of topics / rumours they hear, as well as more ideas for students to role play debates. ijple 2 (1) 2018 84 the manual also contains a useful glossary of terms and appendices which include an abbreviated version of the universal declaration of human rights, the african charter on human and people’s rights, the south african bill of rights, and part of the electoral code of conduct. this book lists as two of its aims; ‘fostering justice, tolerance and fairness and developing students’ willingness and ability to resolve disputes and differences without resorting to violence.’1 while giving the appearance of being neutral, this book has a graceful undertone which leads the reader to a place grounded in the ethical principles of fairness and tolerance. at times the student exercises and answers in the corresponding manual may feel too prescriptive. however, they can be easily adapted and do provide a nice base to be used by a clinical legal education student perhaps lacking in confidence or experience. the book is unsurprisingly rooted in south african examples, situations, and documents but this can also serve to enhance the learning of clinicians and clinical legal education students outside this jurisdiction. overall, these manuals are succinct, clear, and thought provoking. they will make a valuable contribution to any student group who are considering running street law programmes on issues of citizenship, democracy, constitutions or other matters of public law. at a reasonable cost, it is a worthwhile edition to any street law library collection. 1 https://juta.co.za/products/street-law-democracy-for-all-educators-manual/ (as of 12.01.18) https://juta.co.za/products/street-law-democracy-for-all-educators-manual/ the genesis of street law in south africa professor david jan mcquoid mason professor of law, director of the centre for socio-legal studies, university of kwazulu-natal, durban and president of the commonwealth legal education association in 1984, while dean of the faculty of law at the university of natal, during a visitor’s programme sponsored by the united states information service (usis), i met ed o’brien of georgetown university law faculty, washington dc, a co-founder of the american street law programme. i invited him to south africa in 1985 and his trip was paid for by usis. it was an inauspicious time as president pw botha declared a state of emergency the day ed arrived in the country to conduct non-racial street law workshops with me. he and i brainstormed a curriculum with a multi-racial group of high school teachers and pupils and then persuaded the president of the association of law societies, graham cox, with assistance from the attorneys fidelity fund, to provide financial backing for a pilot street law programme for south africa the first such programme outside of the united states. in 1986 a pilot street law programme under mandla mchunu was set up at the university of natal (durban) to operate in five schools according to the apartheid context: two african and two white schools and one indian school. the programme was a success and soon expanded to 16 other universities with financial assistance from the attorneys fidelity fund. the fund continued to sponsor the programme until south africa’s transition towards democracy in the early 1990s, when funding ceased. after the release of nelson mandela in 1990, the south african street law programme decided to introduce south africans to the universal declaration of human rights. with assistance from an american civic education school teacher, eleanor greene, and field-testing by the 16 street law coordinators, ed and i produced a workbook, together with an instructor’s manual, in the south african street-law format, entitled human rights for all. i was the general editor and coordinator of the project which was done in partnership with lawyers for human rights (of which i was durban chairperson at the time) and street law inc. (then the national institute of citizen education under the law (nicel)). an american version of the book was subsequently published in 1996. in 1992, with assistance from the united states agency for international development (usaid), the centre for socio-legal studies (csls) in partnership with nicel decided that it was necessary to introduce south africans to the principles of democracy in preparation for the country’s first democratic elections. the local street law team met with the 26 ngos involved in voter education in kwazulu-natal and they agreed to work together to produce a workbook on democracy. the ngo contribution was to help design the curriculum for the programme and to fieldtest the materials in their constituencies. over a period of a year the csls coordinated the process and student text on democracy was produced, together with an instructor’s manual, entitled democracy for all. there was consultation with, and field-testing by, the 26 ngos and 16 street law coordinators throughout the process. the writing team consisted of two americans (ed o’brien and mary curd larkin of nicel and three south africans (mandla mchunu of csls, karthy govender and myself – i also acted as editor – all of us from the then university of natal, (now the university of kwazulu-natal)). one spin-off from the book was the development by chuck scott and the centre for socio-legal studies of the democracy challenge game which required players to identify and define 13 different signposts of democracy using interactive techniques in a board game involving quizzes and debates. the game was field-tested in over 500 high schools in south africa and has been translated into swahili. it has also been adapted to embrace the convention of the rights of the child in nigeria. a new edition of democracy for all is being published this year. in 1997 i began assisting, together with ed, mary curd larkin and bebs chorak of street law inc. and the ford foundation and open society institute, to develop street law programmes and materials and provide workshop training in eastern and central europe, central asia and the former soviet union. the countries involved in the project were albania, belarus, croatia, the czech republic, estonia, hungary, kazakhstan, kyrgyzstan, latvia, macedonia, moldova, mongolia, romania, russia, slovakia, ukraine and uzbekistan. the programme was aimed at assisting the countries to develop cadres of school teachers, law students and law teachers who could teach and develop indigenous curricula and materials on street law, human rights and democracy for inclusion in the formal school curriculum. my experience in dealing with the transition from apartheid to democracy in south africa resonated strongly with the countries that were undergoing the transition from communism and dictatorship to democracy. by the end of 2001 street law, human rights and democracy materials had been published by belarus, croatia, the czech republic, estonia, kazakhstan, kyrgyzstan, latvia, macedonia, moldova, mongolia, russia, slovakia, ukraine and uzbekistan. in addition human rights for all and democracy for all were translated into croatian, mongolian and russian. democracy for all was also translated into french for use in haiti by civitas international, and later adapted into arabic by street law inc. the street law books, human rights for all and democracy for all have also been used in street law, human rights and democracy workshops in egypt, haiti, lesotho, zimbabwe, zambia, namibia, mozambique, tanzania, uganda, ghana, nigeria, morocco, ethiopia, india and bangladesh. in addition they have been used in british commonwealth secretariat human rights workshops in tanzania, lesotho, uganda, mozambique and in an annual african human rights education camps in different parts of africa. street-law programmes in one form or another exist in kenya, uganda, nigeria and ghana. the support given to the initial founding of the south african street law programme by the attorneys fidelity fund, and the subsequent funding of the south african democracy for all street law programme for the decade since 1992, primarily by the usaid, has paid handsome dividends. in 2003 street law south africa (street law sa) was established as a not-for-profit company and has been accredited by the sector education and training authority (seta) as a service provider. lindi coetzee, the current street law national coordinator, is applying to the south african qualifications authority (saqa) for approval of a street law unit standard. these steps are being taken to ensure that street law sa becomes more self-sustaining and less dependent on donor funding. the south african street law programme has produced valuable tools for the teaching of law, human rights and democracy to civil society, particularly school children, university students, school teachers, prison officials and police officers, as well as community groups. aspects of it have been successfully replicated in a number of developing countries ranging from africa, asia and the caribbean to eastern and central europe, central asia and the former soviet union, as well as the united states itself. the consolidated south african street law learner’s and educator’s manuals (2015) published by juta & co. ltd., are now in their third edition, and the street law sa materials and learning methodologies remain a valuable resource that could be mainstreamed into the south african school curricula in line with the country’s international obligations. 94 “knowledge is power. information is liberating. education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.”[footnoteref:1] [1: kofi annan, united nations press release sg/sm/6268 23 june 1997] sarah morse[footnoteref:2] [2: sarah morse is a solicitor tutor and senior lecturer based in the student law office at northumbria university, uk.] northumbria university, uk in recent years, in england and wales, we have seen an increasing number of challenges to access to justice. most notably, was the passing of the legal aid, sentencing and punishment of offenders act 2012 which significantly restricted the availability of legal aid to individuals across all areas of law including family, housing and employment as well as contributing to the closure of legal advice centres due to the resulting loss of income[footnoteref:3]. we have also experienced a large number of court closures[footnoteref:4] and the introduction of fees in the employment tribunala forum that was previously free for those wishing to pursue a claim based upon the infringement of their employment rights.[footnoteref:5] all of these measures, to name only a few, have impacted upon the ability of individuals to access legal advice and the court system and has resulted in the creation of “advice deserts”[footnoteref:6]. for many, the process is increasingly unaffordable and “there are knowledge, skills and confidence gaps in the population”[footnoteref:7] in relation to even the most basic legal information regarding rights and responsibilities “which are barriers to achieving legal capability”[footnoteref:8]. [3: owen bowcott, (2013) the guardian available at https://www.theguardian.com/law/2013/mar/11/legal-aid-cuts-shelter-offices (accessed: 25 september 2017)] [4: following her majesty’s courts service’s court estate reform programme (2010-2014) and her majesty’s courts and tribunals service’s estates reform project (2015-) which have resulted in 243 courts or tribunals being closed or scheduled for closure over this period http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/cbp-7346/cbp-7346.pdf ] [5: in july 2013 the employment tribunals and employment appeal tribunal fees order 2013 (si 2013/1893) introduced fees in the employment tribunal meaning that claimants seeking to protect their employment and anti-discrimination rights were now required to pay fees in order to pursue a claim when previously this would have been free. in the first year following their introduction, there was a 78% reduction in claims (review of the introduction of fees in the employment tribunals, consultation on proposals for reform document (2017) accessed at https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/587649/review-of-introduction-of-fees-in-employment-tribunals.pdf) (accessed:25 september 2017). a significant reduction in claims continued before the fees were revoked in late july 2017 following the supreme court decision in r (on the application of unison) (appellant) v lord chancellor (respondent) [2017] uksc 51. in this case the supreme court concluded that the fees were unlawful (and indirectly discriminatory) and did effectively prevent access to justice.] [6: monidipa fouzder (2016), the law society gazette available at https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/legal-aid-cuts-creating-new-advice-deserts/5054789.article (accessed: 25 september 2017).] [7: balmer, n.j., buck, a., patel, a, denwir, c, pleasence, p. (2010) ‘knowledge, capability and the experience of rights problems’ legal services research centre/plenet. available online at: http://lawforlife.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/knowledge-capability-and-the-experience-of-rights-problems-lsrc-may-2010-255.pdf (accessed:25 september 2017).] [8: ibid n.7] more and more there is a significant level of unmet need in our society with no foreseeable prospect of improvement. it would be impossible for universities or other education providers to fill this gap (and indeed many would agree that it is not appropriate in any event to try to do so) however there is certainly an important role that they can play to the benefit of their students and community alike. many universities in the uk offer pro bono advice and assistance to individuals[footnoteref:9] via legal clinics. a report from lawworks showed a 21% growth in pro bono legal clinics in their network and a 24% increase in enquiries to those clinics in the period april 2015-16[footnoteref:10]. such clinics are a valuable resource to the community as well as affording students real experiences in which they can learn legal practice first hand. [9: as well as individuals, many clinics offer advice to small businesses, social enterprises and charities.] [10: 36% of clinics in the network are law school clinicslawworks clinic network report april 2015march 2016 available at https://www.lawworks.org.uk/solicitors-and-volunteers/resources/lawworks-clinics-network-report-april-2015-march-2016 (accessed 25 september 2017).] in this jurisdiction, we have also seen a rise in public legal education (ple) programmes, such as streetlaw, being delivered by law students, academics and legal practitioners. these, grassroots level, programmes aim to educate individuals about legal rights and responsibilities. programmes are targeted schools, prisons, charities and other community-based organisations. as with other forms of experiential learning, ple provides an opportunity for students to develop their practical skills (such as communication and problem solving skills) whilst involved in authentic experiences. the primary objective of ple is however to educate the public in order to “empower” individuals to achieve solutions[footnoteref:11] and promote “compl[iance] with obligationsin three words this is designed to encourage active citizenship”.[footnoteref:12] there are many excellent examples of effective ple programmes in the uk and worldwide and we hope that this journal will harness and promote these activities. there is also credible evidence (anecdotally and, to a lessor extent, empirically) to suggest that those without access to legal advice or information are less likely to pursue legal action and enforce their rights and that such ignorance costs the state a considerable sum[footnoteref:13]. a recent example in practice can be drawn again from the introduction of employment tribunal fees. far fewer claimants applied for help with fees (a full or partial exemption to pay these fees) than was anticipated which was attributed in part to a lack of awareness about the availability or eligibility requirements of the scheme. the correlation between education, awareness and action has also been found in other disciplines such as healthcare and nutrition. if indeed ‘knowledge is power’ the value and impact of providing education through ple programmes is limitless however, in my view, this requires a greater evidence base. [11: mcquoid-mason, d. (2008) ‘street law as a clinical program’, griffith law review, 17:1, 27-51.] [12: grimes, r. (2003) ‘legal literacy, community empowerment and law schoolsome lessons from a working model in the uk’, the law teacher, 37:3. 273-284.] [13: pleasence, p., balmer, n., patel, a. and denwir, c (2009) civil justice in england and wales 2009, report of the 2006-9 english and welsh civil and social justice survey. available online at: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110216140603/http:/lsrc.org.uk/publications/2010csjsannualreport.pdf (accessed: 25 september 2017).] there is some impetus to this in england and wales as in the last 18 months we have seen an increasing focus on ple from other interested parties. notably, in a series of recommendations in the civil courts structure review: final report published in july 2016, lord justice briggs called for “continued improvement in the provision in public legal education… following the lead given by the courts and voluntary agencies in california and british columbia, as a joint activity by hmtcs and the voluntary agencies”.[footnoteref:14] also, in july 2017, solicitor general robert buckland qc mp launched a new ple panel to “enable public legal education to flourish and to encourage initiatives which improve legal capability”.[footnoteref:15] personally, and in our role as editors of this new journal, we await with interest further developments resulting from this. [14: available at https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/civil-courts-structure-review-final-report-jul-16-final-1.pdf (accessed: 25 september 2017).] [15: attorney general’s office (2017) available at https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-panel-launched-to-drive-legal-education (accessed: 25 september 2017).] those of us involved in ple are strong advocates. i hope that by sharing best practice and providing evidence of impact this journal will contribute positively to the empowerment story. 104 advancing legal education for all – the role of a journal richard grimes editorial board member, international journal of public legal education promoting legal literacy is nothing new. there have been many initiatives, stretching back to the mid 1970s at least, to improve the public’s understanding of their rights (and responsibilities).[footnoteref:1] [1: for example the (then) pioneering and (still) highly influential work of the georgetown law school, washington dc, street law team under the direction of richard roe and of street law inc, which evolved from this earlier initiative. for an account of this and other street law programmes see: r. grimes, e. o’brien, d. mcquoid-mason and j. zimmer street law and social justice education, in the global clinical movement: educating lawyers for social justice, f. bloch (ed.), oup, 2010.] if i can generalise it is with few, if any, exceptions now universally accepted that access to justice is a basic human right[footnoteref:2] . to achieve this it is not only necessary for a person to be able to obtain legal advice and be heard by an independent set of courts and tribunals when required, but an awareness of law as it affects people in their day to day lives is also needed. recognising when one has a legal problem and then appreciating what can be done about it are fundamental tenets of access to justice. [2: this has many iterations, national and international. see for example articles 6 – 11 of the universal declaration of human rights, united nations, 1948, which contain a set of rights all of which affect aspects of access to justice from equality before the law to the right to a fair trial. for a detailed discussion of access to justice more generally see: d. rhodes d., access to justice, new york, oup, 2004. ] there have been a number of attempts in recent years to focus attention on the need for and value of public legal education (ple) encompassing both governmental and other stakeholder investigations and projects.[footnoteref:3] this development has centred on an access to justice agenda but has also seen the importance of ple in terms of self-help and constructive forms of dispute resolution. even if one is slow to be persuaded of the importance of these principles the cost of having a legally-ignorant public is, in itself, problematic particularly so far as the cost to the individual and the public purse of unresolved legal disputes.[footnoteref:4] [3: see for example: l. cader, evaluation of public legal education and information, research and statistics division, department of justice, canada, 2002 pleas task force, developing capable citizens: the role of public legal education, russell press, 2007.] [4: for an analysis of the cost of unresolved legal disputes (presumably based, at least in part, on ignorance of rights and responsibilities, see p. pleasance et al, causes of action: civil law and social justice, second edition, lsrc research paper no. 14, the stationary office, 2006; and for an impression of what public attitudes are of using the law see: h. genn, paths to justice: what people do and think about going to law. hart publishing, 1999. ] if legal literacy is so important how can this concept be defined and then programmes designed, delivered and evaluated? when termed together law and education immediately suggest the involvement of educators. the potential of involving legal education providers (schools, colleges and universities) has long been identified as one way in which to deliver ple. as will be seen in this inaugural issue of the ijple there are many impressive, impactful and sustainable examples of ple involving law schools and the wider community. there are, of course, many ways in which legal awareness can be promoted and supported. this might consist of education classes (one-off to deal with particular issues or a short course perhaps leading to a qualification), promotional posters, reference materials, and, of course, in this day and age electronically generated resources (including interactive chat-lines and blogs). what however has been missing up until now has been a conduit through which accessible but robust discussion around ple can take place. as an editorial board we maintain that whilst there have been many articles appearing in a range of academic journals on ple issues, up until now none of these have focused explicitly on ple and that there was a consequential gap in the market. the ijple therefore is an attempt to provide an outlet for serious debate on the need for, value of and ‘best practice’ surrounding ple. if we are serious as lawyers, academics, activists and members of the wider public, in improving access to justice we need to focus, at least in part, on the need to improve levels of legal literacy. we expect our children and future adult citizens to be able to read, write and add up (even subtract, divide and multiply!) and why not be able to know when a legal problem is present and what to do if it is? schools, in different parts of the world, often incorporate legal awareness in the curriculum in the form of ‘civics’ classes or, in the case of the uk, a citizenship component. in our view this is to be encouraged but, where it does exist, does it maximise the learning opportunity and is it enough? experience suggests that legal awareness is most effectively raised when there is an operational context – when the need for an understanding of rights and responsibilities has relevance and meaning through everyday experience. research is much needed in this context and on the effectiveness more generally of different approaches to ple. this journal will focus on giving a voice for ple – to allow for an exchange of ideas, experiences and research findings. each issue will focus on identified themes. we intend to invite guest editors, with expertise in these specific subject areas, to contribute to each issue giving direction and meaning to content. in this first issue may o’brien provides important background on the need for ple and places, in context the pioneering work of her late husband ed who contributed so much in his work on street law – one of the most significant forms of ple established to date. we very much hope that as well as meeting the required standard of any credible academic journal that the contributions appearing in it stimulate debate in both a theoretical and practical way. we are acutely conscious of the need for empirical research to test the hypothesis that ple is a ‘good thing’ and that resources expended on ple are indeed well spent. we particularly encourage academics and practitioners in the relatively early stages of their careers to submit material for possible publication. the future relies on their input. we also urge colleagues from across the globe to contribute. whilst there may be many differences between us in terms of custom, culture, politics and religion access to justice is a global consideration albeit affected by context. we strongly believe that a more legally literate population is a potentially fairer one and that a greater appreciation of what we might expect from and owe to the wider world impacts on the nature of the society we live in. goodness knows we could all do with improvements on that score. 86 so what is street law anyway – a u.s. perspective margaret e. fisher[footnoteref:1] [1: margaret e. fisher is a distinguished practitioner in residence, seattle university school of law, seattle wa, usa.] introduction this article briefly explores the current problems surrounding young people’s knowledge, skills and engagement in the civic life of the democracy in the united states and the contributions that public legal education or civic learning[footnoteref:2] can make to improving youth engagement as members of a democracy. the article will acknowledge the contribution made by the law-related education movement of the 1950s. more specifically, the article will explore the history of a law school based program street law -that describes the most important way that law schools in the united states contribute to civic learning. finally, the article will reveal the actual source of the term “street law” and the ongoing impact that street law has on the young people and the law students who teach it. [2: i will use the term “civic learning,” instead of public-legal education, which is the more common term in washington state and in many other states in the u.s.] 1. the problem in the u.s. in recent years, study after study has shown that most young people in the united states have poor knowledge of, and are disconnected from, the basics of our democracy. for example, in 2014 only 23% of 8th graders (13 year olds) in the united states tested "proficient" on the nation's report card civics exam[footnoteref:3]. in 2016, only one third of americans could name the three branches of government and another one third could not even name one branch of government.[footnoteref:4] this is not important as a test of rote memorization. however, if there is no basic understanding of the role of the branches of government in the lives of americans, there is no way for citizens to access government and government is no longer in the hands of the people. [3: the national assessment of educational progress’s national report card, https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/hgc_2014/ (2014).] [4: kathleen hall jamieson, americans’ knowledge of the branches of government is declining, annenberg public policy center of the university of pennsylvania, (september 13, 2016), http://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/americans-knowledge-of-the-branches-of-government-is-declining/] there is also less tolerance as the checks and balances work out issues in public life. this leads to more strident objections and incivility as uninformed persons react to the branches of government playing out their roles. for instance, the federal judge who ruled that the president of the united states’ first travel ban of 2017 was unconstitutional, received 47,000 pieces of mail; 1,000 of which were death threats.[footnoteref:5] this reflects a great ignorance of the role of the judicial branch in deciding whether government actions comply with the u.s. constitution and laws. [5: senior u.s. district judge james l. robart, address at u.s. district court for the western district of washington (july 12, 2017).] 2. importance of civic learning we know that quality civic learning is the most important factor in determining whether young people will actively participate in their communities as adults. a democracy thrives when its citizens vote, show up for jury duty, engage in public life, join neighborhood groups, are aware of current civic issues, identify and listen to viewpoints other than their own, attend local government meetings, or voice their concerns to lawmakers. 3. street law: the history the first national movement for improving civic learning in the united states began in the 1950s in reaction to u.s. senator joe mccarthy’s rabid anti-communism movement to impose orthodoxy of thought, eliminate critical examination of issues, and maintain rote learning methods of learning and teaching. in 1952, in reaction to mccarthyism, dr. isidore starr led a movement that introduced the study of controversy in the examination of the u.s. constitution and bill of rights. as important as the content, he insisted is the interactive methods for teaching. this law-related movement had many spin-offs, including street law[footnoteref:6]. [6: isidore starr, leading a revolution in civics, tvw, 2015, https://vimeo.com/146685644. dr. starr served on the board of the national street law institute in its early years.] street law involves law students teaching practical law classes, using interactive methods, to high school students, prisoners, mentally ill individuals and others. the program was launched in 1972 at the georgetown university law center. jason newman, attorney for the new world foundation in washington, dc, obtained funding to offer a first-ever non-advocacy clinic at georgetown university law center. one component of this non-advocacy clinic was the teaching of a practical law class to the inner-city youth of washington dc. jason newman approached vincent reed, deputy director of the dc public schools, with the proposal. on hearing him out, vincent reed responded, “oh, you mean ‘street law’.” the term was coined. in organizing his first class, professor newman asked for volunteers to work on street law. ed o’brien, johnny barnes, stephen glick, and david wilmot stepped forward. these four law students and professor newman worked nights to create the lessons for the first street law program. that first year, the law students taught in teams in two high schools, in four the next year, and by the third year, the program was in all of the dc high schools. at the same time, professor newman successfully approached the d.c. city council to fund a corrections street law clinic[footnoteref:7]. this clinic involved law students teaching inmates of the d.c. jail and prisons. a later development was including the criminally insane at st. elizabeth’s hospital. [7: interview by margaret fisher with professor jason newman, director and professor of the d.c. project that included street law and harrison institute, georgetown university law center (august 19, 2017).] upon graduation from law school, ed o’brien requested continuing to work on street law. he was able to raise funds from the robert f. kennedy foundation for his position and that of ed mcmahon. this resulted in the creation of the national street law institute[footnoteref:8]. [8: later the name was changed to the institute for citizen education in the law and later to the current street law, inc. in 1983, the georgetown university law center created a separate faculty position for the director of the georgetown street law clinic and this led to the eventual separation of national street law institute and the street law clinic.] efforts were then made to expand to other law schools. with help from the robert kennedy foundation, the university of minnesota law school was the first law school to join. other law schools came on board[footnoteref:9], although the idea of clinical education, much less street law, was quite controversial with many deans and law faculty. [9: see directory of registered law school street law programs, http://streetlaw.org/en/page/858/directory_of_registered_law_schoolbased_street_law_programs. ] 4. impact of street law anecdotally, law school professors who teach street law know that students who have no prior success in school become greatly engaged in class. students’ impressive performances in the culminating mock trials inspire them to raise their expectations for their own lives. students learn basic law and how to discuss controversial issues in a civil manner. they learn how to avoid legal problems and how to stand up for themselves when they have been wronged. they also learn which government bodies to approach with a problem. a study[footnoteref:10] of the georgetown university law center’s street law program had these main findings of the impact of street law on the law students from their perspective as lawyers three to fifteen years after graduating: (1) they had very fond and vivid memories of their experience with street law, many describing it is as their finest thing they did in law school; (2) it exposed them to the realities of life faced by people they would not otherwise have interacted with; (3) it helped them be more understanding and compassionate with clients; (4) it helped them explain the law in practical terms to clients and others; and (5) it gave them confidence in speaking publicly. [10: birnbaum, marcia, a case study of the georgetown university law center street law program, 2000 (unpublished).] as someone who has taught street law at georgetown for five years and more than 35 years at the seattle university school of law, i can attest to these same impacts on my students and law students. former law students report that street law has helped them take on training roles in law firms, propelled them into volunteering with mock trial and other programs, and for some, caused them to switch their careers and become teachers. 88 why there is a need for street law programmes? michal urban editorial board member, international journal of public legal education winston churchill famously noted that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.[footnoteref:1] he was talking about constitutional liberal democracy in fareed zakaria’s terms,[footnoteref:2] combining classical liberalism with the rule of law, and he had no illusions about its weaknesses. after all, he was a witness to fall of many of those european democracies under the pressures of nazism, fascism or communism in 1930s and 1940s. however imperfect system this kind of democracy may be, it is the system that most european countries currently have, for better or worse, and all the alternatives to it we are currently observing across the world, be it in china, russia, hungary or turkey present no tempting substitute. on the contrary, these more or less illiberal democracies evoke pleasantly positive feeling towards our version of democracy, even with all its flaws. [1: see https://www.winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/the-worst-form-of-government.] [2: zakaria, fareed. the future of freedom: illiberal democracy at home and abroad. w.w. norton & company, 2003.] what makes constitutional liberal democracy worth preserving? it, at least in theory, more than any other system, believes in the people and their potential to govern themselves. it has faith that citizens are in the end good, possess the power to grow and learn from mistakes[footnoteref:3] and, with sufficient systemic support, are able to handle their liberty and use it for the benefit of themselves and wider society.[footnoteref:4] it invests in institutions that fight for rule of law and protection of human rights, especially against the ruling political power. time and again we experience how difficult it is to put these principles in practice. as we all are experiencing, it is challenging to find reasonable consensus and refrain from using physical or psychological dominance even in families, not to mention larger diverse communities or whole societies. moreover, the natural disadvantage of democracy, as václav havel put it, is that it binds the hands of those who take it seriously while allowing those who do not take it seriously to do almost anything they want.[footnoteref:5] [3: psychologist carol dweck considers our ability to grow and learn from mistakes one of the key elements of human development. see dweck, carol. mindset: changing the way you think to fulfill your potential. little, brown book group limited, 2017.] [4: not everybody believes that people are able to “handle themselves”, not to mention to govern the matters of their community together. for a thought-provoking literary capture of this view, see a chapter “the grand inquisitor” in fyodor dostoevsky’s novel the brothers karamazov. dostoevsky, fyodor. the brothers karamazov: a novel in four parts with epilogue. new york: farrar, straus and giroux, 2002.] [5: havel, václav. conspirators, 1971.] despite the power of democratic institutions, be it courts, local and national parliaments, public administration or schools, no constitutional liberal democracy can be notably stronger than its citizens. since it places so much trust into its members, it would be terribly short-sighted not to care about the depth and extent of initial and life-long education. legally, there are clear checkpoints which we pass and on which we receive proofs of our growing maturity: an id, right to sexual relations and marriage and right to vote to name but a few. typically at the age of 18-21 we become, legally at least, fully-developed citizens, who possess the whole catalogue of rights and duties.[footnoteref:6] typically, we perceive ourselves and are perceived by others as “completed”, fully ready for our role, even “job” as responsible citizens. [6: there are only minor exceptions such as the right to be elected a member of an upper chamber of a parliament, which is typically higher than for the lower chamber.] yes, a job, because to be that kind of a citizen democracies truly need, individuals and communities need to take responsibility and carry out duties as well as assume rights – i.e. to enter into a long-term, often difficult and only sometimes rewarding relationship with the democratic system. we generally understand that to perform any task properly, we need to prepare for it: go to school, study at home, and perhaps take exams. there is one clear exception to that, though. although we do not expect a carpenter to master woodwork by himself, nor a pilot to leave ground without proper training, we still tend to believe that people generally naturally grow into their role of citizens. it is clearly a myth that we develop simply organically and the growing support for populists in europe and beyond is a clear proof of it. we all need guidance and mentors: parents educate their children, more experienced members of a sport team coach newcomers and new employees learn from more senior ones. likewise we need to have overt citizenship education. an essential part of this, especially due to constantly rising number of laws and complexity of the world, is public legal education, aimed at increasing legal literacy.[footnoteref:7] [7: apart from legal literacy, quality citizenship education should also increase political literacy, media literacy, information literacy and financial literacy. ] one ever powerful way of delivering public legal education is through street law. street law programmes now exist around the globe, inspired by the original georgetown law center initiative in washington, d.c. in the early 1970s,[footnoteref:8] and are one way to increase legal literacy of the public, to help them resist manipulation of different kinds and empower them in relation to the law and the legal system as its affects their everyday lives.[footnoteref:9] one of these street law programmes operates at charles university, faculty of law in prague, czech republic, and may serve as one concrete example of a positive contribution to the cultivation of public legal literacy.[footnoteref:10] [8: grimes, richard, mcquoid-mason, david, o'brien, ed, zimmer, judy. street law and social justice education. in bloch, frank (ed.). the global clinical movement: educating lawyers for social justice. oxford university press, 2011.] [9: see zariski, archie. what is legal literacy? available here: http://www.athabascau.ca/syllabi/lgst/docs/lgst249_sample.pdf.] [10: i have chosen it as an example for this text not because i consider it the best in the world, but because i am the most familiar with it, since i have been running it from the very first steps. the fact that it does not belong to large, well-established programmes running for decades may serve as an advantage, since on one hand there is still much to improve, but on the other hand its activities expanded quite promptly, which might be inspiring for those who are thinking about starting street law programme at their universities.] found in 2009, it is already a well-established programme. it originally started as a simple elective course for 15 law students but over the years it expanded into a programme of six interlinked accredited courses, which have already sent around 300 future lawyers to teach at public schools, and following activities of the street law alumni. street law activities are run by a team of about 15 alumni of the basic course, consisting of current law school students, young lawyers in practice and academics employed by the university.[footnoteref:11] the original aim, to increase legal literacy of upper-secondary school students has, over the years, been expanded and now involves number of socially-challenged groups – the elderly, members of the roma minority and prisoners. our view is that everyone may need and certainly deserves improved legal awareness and alumni certainly benefit from the experience of working with different groups and in challenging environments. the team offers mock trials for groups of non-lawyers, publishes teaching materials and builds public databases of tested lesson plans.[footnoteref:12] it trains school teachers, helps school classes to attend real court hearings and runs a mock trial competition among czech secondary schools.[footnoteref:13] [11: the head of the programme is a senior assistant and there is one assistant and one ph.d. student. the fact that the programme is co-run by academic staff employed by the university is essential for continuity and sustainability of the programme. many street law programmes, including a previous one at charles university, were opened by an ngo and/or student unions, which for various reasons could not support them longer than couple of years, after which the programmes ceased to exist. ] [12: see http://streetlaw.livepreview.cz/lekce.] [13: for more insight into our street law programme, see our webpage http://www.streetlaw.eu/. although it is mostly in czech, there is a short english version, too.] in its ninth season and now running a record number of projects, the charles university street law team continues to develop its work and still faces numerous challenges. the first and foremost is to keep the team large enough to manage all the work, but yet still friendly and cooperative, keeping the ‘student spirit’, since it runs on a voluntary basis and wants its members to feel welcome in the team. apart from the team members, who are all doing street law for at least couple of years, there are also newcomers joining an extended street law team.[footnoteref:14] both these groups require attention of the head of the team and need to feel that they learn something new and contribute to street law aims. similarly, the programme struggles to find balance between concentrating on working with non-lawyers and investing time and energy into development of the street law team. which target group is the true priority, non-lawyers, or young lawyers doing street law? the answer to this question differs not only among street law programmes, but also within teams. both alternatives are praiseworthy, but to reach true symbioses is not as easy as one might think. either way, as long as the street law programme helps increasing legal literary, it is a win/win situation for all. [14: apart from 15 older members, who form the street law team, there are some 10-15 younger members, who graduated from the basic street law course and are helping with follow-up activities. to recruit more street lawyers allows us to do more for the community, but inevitably changes the atmosphere and manageability of the team.] 98 ijple 2 (1) 2018 71 street law – it is more than just another class an interview with marilyn cover and jennifer bloom marilyn cover, jd, a 40-year veteran of teaching the street law seminar class at lewis & clark law school. jennifer bloom, jd, 16-year-veteran of teaching street law at the university of minnesota law school, following 15 years teaching street law at hamline university school of law q: how is your street law course organized? a-marilyn: the street law program at lewis & clark includes not only the weekly classes between law professor and students, but also weekly meetings with law students teaching in high school classes. the law school class is offered as a credit/no credit class. we use the street law text covering intro to law, criminal & juvenile law and individual rights and liberties in the fall semester and the civil law unitstorts, consumer and family law in the spring semester. between 3040 law students participate each year. ijple 2 (1) 2018 72 a-jennifer: like many other street law courses in the united states, the minnesota street law seminar consists of a small class of 14 students gathering for a weekly twohour seminar. during this time, law students explore the history and goals of street law and participate in engaging teaching strategies (mock trial, moot courts, continuums, small group, ranking, and many others). every teaching strategy is layered over legal content (first amendment, rights of the accused, employment, sexual harassment, consumer, etc.) to create effective and interesting lessons. as we proceed through the semester, the students build their collection of tried and true law-related education tools. students share their engaging lessons when they teach 10 hours in area high schools. they are paired with experienced law and civics teachers and together select topics that complement the teacher’s curriculum. law students review the available lessons in the street law collection and elsewhere, revise as needed, present, and share reflections on the lesson’s success or need for improvement. every law student also creates an original lesson that is tried with classmates during the weekly seminar. q: how is street law different from other law school classes? a-marilyn: i have seen a lot in my 40 years. street law is very different from other law school classes and those differences have far-reaching benefits. ijple 2 (1) 2018 73 street law tends to attract law students who are interested in the practical application of the law, being out in the community, and interacting with youth. my sense is that the law students have a pre-existing sense of altruism. in my street law program, law students have the unique opportunity to have hands-on classroom experiences with youth in their communities, and that helps fill their need to do good works. a-jennifer: when street law students walk out of their first class of the street law seminar at the university of minnesota law school, they know at least one goal of the course1. after learning the course components and requirements through an “each one teach one” and a “jeopardy” game2, they usually can correctly answer the final jeopardy question: “street law is different from most other law school courses for this reason.” answer: “what is fun?” 1 these goals are: 1) understanding of substantive law; 2) knowledge of legal procedures; 3) ability to communicate; 4) skills in solving legal problems and client-centered lawyering; 5) planning and preparation; 6) skills in self-assessing and evaluating; 7) development of a sense of professionalism; 8) development of an appreciation of the role of the lawyer in the community. 2 “each one teach one” is an activity that asks students to teach other students about the facts of the course. jeopardy game is similar to a television show of that name. students compete in teams to be the first to answer a question correctly. the questions concern facts of the course. these two strategies are more fun and more effective than a lecture teaching basic information about the course. the final question reinforces the commitment to make learning fun. ijple 2 (1) 2018 74 q: teaching is hard. how do you prepare students to be successful in the classroom? a-marilyn: unlike the typical law school class, the seminar setting of my weekly class is an intimate one. our discussions focus on how to convey legal concepts in lesson plans and how students learn. one student may describe an enormously successful teaching strategy in one class only to find that it falls flat in another. conversations around situations like this are layered and insightful. i also observe law students teaching in their high school classes. when in high school classrooms, law students’ lessons focus, for example, on search and seizure of students’ backpacks, or reading one’s first apartment lease. whatever the topic, law students experience real dialog about real issues in the daily lives of high school students. in doing so, they gain skills that are easily transferrable to the workplace. the seminar discussions include public policy, trial practice, and communication skills with clients as part of the lessons the law students prepare for their high school students. when law students discover that they are able to convey complex legal content to the lay public – high schools students are, after all, the perfect petri dish for communication – they gain incalculable confidence. that ability to clearly communicate, and to do so with confidence, serves them well in their legal careers. ijple 2 (1) 2018 75 a-jennifer: “to teach is to learn twice.” joseph joubert there is nothing like preparing for a presentation that inspires a person to update their subject matter knowledge. street law students take their responsibilities seriously to provide accurate information to their high school students. the risk of getting it wrong is stressed in the weekly street law seminar. for example, when high school students participate in a misleading lesson on what to do when stopped by the police, a misunderstanding of their rights can be devastating. street law students frequently discuss how their understanding of the law increased when they prepared to teach it. students research, write and present lessons to their street law classmates where content is reviewed and potential misunderstandings or mistakes about the law are identified and corrected. street law faculty, both lawyers, review the final lesson. in addition to the lesson students write, they have access to hundreds of lessons written by other street law students over the years. students are asked to update the law before they use the lesson and are asked to share the updated lesson for others to use. another requirement of our street law seminar requires small groups of law students to develop and present a lesson to the other street law students. these lessons include an expanded presentation of the law designed for law students shy ijple 2 (1) 2018 76 in content knowledge. after each lesson, all law students share ideas for improving the lesson and using it in different settings including with high-needs students. insights learned during this informal discussion build skills for teaching law to their high students and with future clients. students also learn the importance of preparation and practice. we all enjoy watching the delivery of a television show’s awe-inspiring closing argument. it looks so easy. we also know it’s not. when a high school class meets for 50 minutes, law students cannot be scrambling to figure out the next step. it is important for them to plan how they will describe the law to people unfamiliar with the law, checking for understanding and making adjustments as they go. q: how else do law students benefit from street law beyond the classroom? a-marilyn: many law students leave street law with an indelible connection to the high school where they taught. some develop a predisposition to seek other opportunities to serve their communities. the seed for giving back to the community is sown in the street law seminar. many of my former students practice in the portland area. i see them working in an array of non-profit organizations and public entities. ijple 2 (1) 2018 77 my role as professor expands, therefore, to that of advisor, counselor, and confidante. as a result of our interactions through papers, classes, lessons, observations and discussions, by the semester’s end i know these students. i am often, even years later, sought out for purposes of a reference or recommendation for potential employment. these are rich relationships and worth nurturing. a-jennifer: much of the law school experience in other courses consists of individual work. friendships develop and some students study together, however so often the law students’ success in law school depends on themselves alone. this is not the case in street law. street law students usually teach together. they work in partnership with the classroom teachers to select topics that are interesting to the high school students and support the teacher’s curriculum plan. they select dates and times. they meet the students before they begin teaching, introducing themselves. they are professionals. my law students have often said that street law lets them do what they came to law school to do. it restores them. they want to help solve problems and street law provides an avenue for them to share what they know to improve the lives of the students they teach. ijple 2 (1) 2018 78 q: how does the community benefit from street law students? a-marilyn: in my day job, i run classroom law project (clp), a statewide non-profit organization dedicated to civic education for kindergarten through 12-grade (ages 4-18 year olds). the street law seminar class and its students are the lynchpin of clp. clp has eleven different programs ranging from the statewide high school mock trial competition, to courthouse tours for 4,000 students annually, to weekly online current events viewed by thousands of educators. all programs rely on volunteers. when i assign law students to local high schools, the equation is greater than 1 + 1. benefitting from the connection are not only the law school and high school students, but also the high school teachers and administrators, the law school, classroom law project, and the broader legal community. when my wet-behind-the-ears law students eventually evolve into seasoned law professionals, there is meaningful citizen engagement to be found. among my former students are lawyers and civic leaders. they are judges on oregon’s circuit and appellate benches. they are in the state legislature. they are members of classroom law project’s board of directors. when i need volunteers for our next event – speakers, scholars, judges, guides – i know who to call. ijple 2 (1) 2018 79 i have taught two semesters of street law every year for the past 40 years. at roughly 30 students per year, there are about 1200 alumni. they are ambassadors for classroom law project, the law school, the high school, the community, or all of the above. in any case, another 30 potential new volunteers are added to my list every year. a-jennifer: one of the more significant street law goals is contribution to the community. law students enroll in street law because they want to give back and the best way to do that is to share their new knowledge with others in need. q: any final thoughts? a-marilyn: classroom law project’s mission statement is, “…individuals, educators, lawyers, and civic leaders building strong communities by teaching students to be active citizens.” street law serves that mission. from law student to high school student to teacher, from lawyer to volunteer to legislator, communities are strengthened. street law is making a difference. ijple 2 (1) 2018 80 a-jennifer: i am also the executive director of learning law and democracy, a minnesota non-profit organization that sponsors programs to foster civic learning, teaching what it takes to tackle the most important role of citizen. because in a selfgoverning society, we all must step to the plate to do our part to advance the constitutional experiment. street law helps build the leaders we need. at the end of every street law course, i ask the students to reflect on what they have learned that will help them be a better lawyer. without exception over the many years, they talk about how they want to be leaders in their communities. they want to get involved in improving civic education in their schools. they want to make a difference. book review 132 review: public legal education – the role of law schools in building a more legally literate society (routledge 2021) amy l. wallace1 i. introduction much has been written about public legal education (“ple”) since the emergence of the revolutionary idea that all people, not just lawyers, need to know and understand the law. in the united states, civil rights movements in the 1970s underscored the necessity of practical legal knowledge for non-lawyers. since then, the proliferation of public legal education programs (specifically street law2 in many countries) has been remarkable. within this rich context, richard grimes’ public legal education – the role of law schools in building a more legally literate society, defines ple as follows: ple provides people with awareness, knowledge 1 amy l. wallace is an adjunct professor of law at new york law school. wallace founded and teaches the street law experiential course at nyls. she is a graduate of the university of toronto (b.a. in political science), georgetown university law center (j.d.), and lehman college (m. ed. – new york city teaching fellows program). she is also the advisor for law school programs at street law, inc., a non-profit focused on law-related education based outside of washington, d.c. 2 street law is a public legal education methodology that was developed in the early 1970s at georgetown university law center by law students and faculty. in law school-based street law programs, law students deliver practical legal lessons to high school students and community members through interactive, student-centered teaching strategies. it is the predominant form of ple at law schools in the united states and is found in over forty countries. more than 100 u.s. law schools have faculty-taught or student-led street law programs. e.g., amy wallace, a law-themed charter high school born at new york law school remains indelibly linked, 4(1) int’l j. of pub. legal educ. 4 (2020). book review 133 and understanding of rights and legal issues, together with the confidence and skills they need to deal with disputes and gain access to justice…(and)…recognize when they may need support…and how to go about getting it.”3 this definition recognizes that it is critical in a functioning democracy that people understand their rights and know how to exercise them. scholars have written reports discussing the types of instruction that are most effective in delivering public legal education lessons.4 studies have been conducted to measure the value of ple programs for the high school students or community members participating in the sessions.5 public legal education programs now exist on almost every continent and practical books and articles have been written detailing the groundbreaking projects taking place around the world.6 what differentiates professor grimes’ new book is that he examines public legal education explicitly with law school ple providers in mind. while he stops short of saying law schools have an obligation to fill the gaps left by most governments to teach public legal education, he hints that law schools have a moral responsibility to teach practical legal information and skills in the community. 3 richard grimes, public legal education – the role of law schools in building a more legally literate society (2021). 4 steven e. finkel & howard r. ernst, civic education in post-apartheid south africa: alternative paths to the development of political knowledge and democratic values, 26 (3) pol. psychol. 333 (june 2005). 5 sean arthurs, street law: creating tomorrow’s citizens today, 19 (4) lewis & clark l. rev. 925 (2015). 6 david mcquoid-mason, street law and public legal education (2019). book review 134 law schools are uniquely situated to fill this critical role.7 faculty experts, resident at law schools, are equipped to explain virtually any legal issue. law schools are filled with enthusiastic law students anxious to find a way to use their skills to benefit society. law schools also have an obligation to provide law students with real world clinical experiences. professor grimes not only carefully details how law schools can engage in public legal education, he explains why they should. few people are as qualified as professor grimes to write a guide to public legal education. he is currently a visiting professor at charles university in prague and at the university of edinburgh. the very short biography at the front of the book tells the reader that he became a solicitor in 1977 and has been teaching experiential and clinical education for twenty-five years. this biography omits that it was professor grimes who first introduced street law to the united kingdom as a pilot project at the university of derby in 1997.8 with his assistance and encouragement, street law programs are now found at over sixty percent of u.k. law schools.9 the biography also leaves out that professor grimes has worked on legal education projects in over fourteen regions.10 the book is written 7 richard grimes, public legal education – the role of law schools in building a more legally literate society 5-6 (2021). 8 richard grimes, david mcquoid-mason, ed o’brien, and judy zimmer, street law and social justice education, in the global clinical movement – educating lawyers for social justice (2011); richard grimes, legal literacy, community empowerment and law schools – some lessons from a working model in the uk, 37 law teacher 273 (2003). 9 richard grimes, public legal education – the role of law schools in building a more legally literate society 2 (2021). 10 united kingdom, argentina, iran, ireland, nigeria, the philippines, south africa, belarus, czech republic, georgia, myanmar, the middle east, turkey, and viet nam. the book contains an astonishing book review 135 as a practical guide for law schools and organizations considering implementing street law or ple programs. the ple community is a wonderful, cooperative group of professors and practitioners who meet regularly to share ideas and lessons in a remarkably un-proprietary way. professor grimes’ new book is a user-friendly guide that discusses all aspects of a law school-based public legal education program including templates and sample documents and is a testament to the collaborative nature of the ple community.11 ii. synopsis the book is divided into six chapters: background; two chapters discussing delivering ple (the first ple generally and the second specifically addressing street law); incorporating ple at a law school; evaluating ple programs; and conclusions and a case study. the conclusions chapter contains short reflections from a number of ple practitioners.12 the first chapter readily makes the case for the need for public legal education programs. professor grimes highlights the growth in the number of people with anecdote where professor grimes arrives to deliver a training in west africa only to discover there are 2000 participants waiting for him to conduct the training in a football stadium. 11 the author would like to thank lee arbetman, professor richard marsico, and professor andrew perkins for their review of this paper. 12 short reflections from this author and the editor of the international journal of public legal education, sarah morse, together with scott walsh, margaret fisher, john lunney, michal urban, ben perdue, sean arthurs, jeff giddings, and david mcquoid-mason are included in the chapter “conclusions: don’t just take my word for it.” book review 136 unresolved legal issues and unrepresented litigants as evidence of the critical importance of ple programs. the book briefly discusses government efforts to address the lack of legal knowledge and skills in communities. professor grimes notes that few government efforts have led to real growth of ple programs. most government initiatives to date seem aspirational as opposed to attainable. professor grimes also uses this chapter to outline why law schools have a vast role to play in building a more legally literate society. the book identifies many different settings (schools, prisons, community centers) that can work with a law school-based ple program. public legal education programs can include a large number of law students with a relatively small number of faculty supervisors. as professor grimes highlights in later chapters, ple programs are an excellent complement to existing doctrinal courses and clinical offerings. street law and other ple programs are usually enthusiastically welcomed by law students. finally he identifies that ple programs can aid law schools in fulfilling a broader commitment to the well being of society. the second and third chapters focus on delivering public legal education programs. the second chapter addresses ple generally and the third chapter discusses street law specifically. the book is well-organized and includes all the main issues and questions that arise when designing a law school-based program. choosing an audience or a location for a ple program is one of the first decisions book review 137 a faculty member must make. professor grimes recognizes the importance of assessing the specific needs of the community and including legal issues that frequently arise for those participants. the book informs readers that programs in the u.k. and some other countries are often delivered to adults in community settings. in the united states, the vast majority of law school-based street law programs are paired with high school students. topics are generally chosen in consultation with the cooperating classroom teacher based on student interest and existing school curriculum. the book outlines in detail a number of interactive teaching strategies for face-toface ple instruction including cases studies, mock trials, and moot courts. these strategies are carefully outlined for new programs unfamiliar with studentcentered teaching. professor grimes also discusses a form of ple, which is relatively unknown to u.s. law schools – hard copy pamphlets, leaflets, and posters. this form of ple, although very different from the traditional street law model known to most u.s. law schools, is very interesting. professor grimes discusses circumstances in parts of the world where holding face-to-face classes may not be possible or safe but that printed materials can be used to teach people about their rights. some american law schools are located in wealthy neighborhoods and faculty and law student leaders are not able to physically reach the communities that would most benefit from ple programs. other law schools book review 138 are located in remote regions and have similar problems. those schools could work on hard copy materials that could be sent to and posted in underserved communities. the law student instructors practice different skills when preparing written materials rather than when facilitating interactive sessions but both skill sets are beneficial for the law students and the community members. the growth of virtual/online instruction has allowed law students to reach community members beyond their geographic area but hard copy materials could still be helpful in communities without reliable access to internet or technology. finally professor grimes discusses virtual ple sessions. this form of delivery became the norm during the global pandemic13 and he identifies that some programs may choose to remain online or develop a hybrid program that offers both in-person and virtual instruction. technology has enabled some programs to reach far more people than before. online programs have also aided people with disabilities who may face challenges in attending in-person meetings. in the u.s., many information sessions and “know your rights” meetings for adults may choose to remain virtual. in contrast, many programs working with children and young adults are likely to return to in-person instruction. 13 amy wallace, classroom to cyberspace: preserving street law’s interactive and student-centered focus during distance learning, 27(4) int’l j. of clinical legal educ. 83 (2020); amy wallace, cyberspace back to the classroom: taking lessons learned from teaching street law during the pandemic back to in-person instruction, int’l j. of clinical legal educ. (forthcoming). book review 139 chapter three is devoted to street law. professor grimes discusses the history and methodology of the program that was founded at georgetown university law center fifty years ago. this chapter also contains a detailed and practical program handbook. this thorough template walks the reader step-by-step through the process of creating a program and supervising the law student participants. although professor grimes previously published this handbook,14 the guide is particularly useful in conjunction with the comprehensive discussion of ple in this book. american programs may note that the handbook addresses indemnity insurance. because most u.s. programs discuss the law and legal issues in generalities and do not give advice on specific legal problems, insurance is not required. if u.s. law students offer legal advice during a street law session, they could be in violation of strict rules prohibiting the unauthorized practice of law because they have not yet been admitted to the bar. next professor grimes turns his attention to incorporating ple into the law school. again, this chapter provides a thorough blueprint for any faculty member looking to start a ple program at their law school. he acknowledges that individual schools have their own policies and procedures in place for approving these types of projects. the book includes a discussion of learning outcomes or things instructors want participants to be able to “do” at the end of a session. while it is 14 richard grimes, sample handbook for street law clinic, 4(1) int’l j. of pub. legal educ. 4 (2020). book review 140 common to teach law students the importance of including thoughtfully constructed learning outcomes in a lesson plan, professor grimes also highlights the importance of learning outcomes for the seminars conducted by law faculty for the law student instructors. throughout the book, he considers how to maximize the benefits for both the law student instructors and the community participants. evaluating ple programs is addressed in the next chapter. professor grimes identifies the challenges for effective evaluation of ple programs. measuring changes in behavior including civic engagement and the effective exercise of rights requires costly long-term studies. he discusses the value of anecdotal evaluations that provide a “snapshot in time” and he references some recent studies. professor grimes cites to the accepted draft of a study ben perdue and i prepared. we asked law students who had participated in a street law program what benefits, if any, they derived from their involvement in their program. we studied responses from almost seventy law student participants from twenty law schools in six countries.15 the participants overwhelming responded that they benefitted personally and professionally from participating in their street law program and although only a snapshot of those law students in that moment, one hundred percent of the 15 preparing lawyers for practice: developing cultural competency, communication skills, and content knowledge through street law programs, 70(2) j. of legal educ. (winter 2020) (forthcoming). book review 141 respondents answered positively about their experience and stated that they believe they developed critical lawyering skills from their ple experience. when assessing ple programs, professor grimes emphasizes that it is important to evaluate all three components of a project: benefits to society, benefits to the law student instructors; and benefits to the law school or institution. the third prong is the most neglected part in terms of studies done to date and this area is ripe for investigation as this information would be persuasive for a law school considering whether to implement a ple program. the final two chapters of the book are devoted to conclusions and a case study. the conclusions section contains reflections from ten public legal education practitioners.16 the case study includes all the documentation and completed forms and templates for the ple program at north yorkshire law school. this appendix will help new programs visualize a ple program from inception to completion. this thorough ple textbook will be helpful for any faculty member starting a program at their law school. the requirements set forth in professor grimes’ guide indicate that most if not all u.k. street law or ple programs are faculty taught. that is not true of street law programs in the united states. over half of the 16 short reflections from this author, and sarah morse, editor of the international journal for public legal education, are included in this section. also included are reflections from scott walsh, margaret fisher, john lunney, michal urban, ben perdue, sean arthurs, jeff giddings, and david mcquoid-mason. book review 142 approximately one hundred programs at u.s. law schools are led by law students. many of the programs are run through a street law student group and others are the community service project of an affinity group like a black law students association chapter. many of these groups have minimal faculty supervision and would find it difficult to meet the benchmarks set forth in professor grimes’ text. faculty-led programs have greater longevity, reliability, and guidance and for those reasons we hope that some u.s. law schools see the value of the work being done in student-led programs and decide to convert them to credit-bearing courses. iii. looking forward i cannot end this review without acknowledging this important question alluded to by professor grimes in the first chapter why is it that local, state, and national governments are not being held responsible for providing access to ple? should it not be the duty of the government to educate its citizens and residents on the laws that govern them? professor grimes briefly discusses efforts by governments to support ple and he acknowledges that governments ought to do more but the focus of this book is the role of law schools. further study is required to examine actions and failures to act by government leaders. the rapid development of public legal education programs in uzbekistan may be a good case study. book review 143 uzbekistan’s ple journey began when one law school, tashkent state university of law (tsul), began working with street law, inc. in 2018.17 in january 2019, uzbekistan’s president shavkat mirziyoyev issued a decree declaring the importance of public legal education programs.18 street law, inc., together with an american law firm partner, and the uzbekistan minister of justice worked with the law school to develop a program that could be replicated throughout the country. in 2020-2021 tsul and all fourteen law colleges had active street law programs and over five hundred student instructors worked with 131 schools reaching over eight thousand students.19 this meteoric progress is indicative of the amazing things law schools can accomplish with government support. it is remarkable that the government of this opening democracy has embraced ple in ways the governments of many longstanding democracies have not. the social justice movements of the last few years, including women’s rights, racial justice, environmental protection, and lgbtq rights have underscored the necessity of public legal education. every person needs to understand their rights and how to exercise them. but the question remains – who is equipped to assume the responsibility for public legal education? this book makes a strong case that 17 “street law program at tashkent state university, uzbekistan enters third year,” november 10, 2020, street law, inc. https://www.streetlaw.org/articles/street-law-at-tashkent-state-university-uzbekistan (accessed oct. 4 2021). 18 decree – on the radical improvement of the system for raising legal awareness and legal culture in society, president shavkat mirziyoyev, jan. 9, 2019. https://lex.uz/docs/4149770. 19 email from botirjon kosimov, senior lecturer, tashkent state university of law, oct. 7, 2021. https://www.streetlaw.org/articles/street-law-at-tashkent-state-university-uzbekistan book review 144 law schools are best-suited to fill the gaps left in addressing ple. law schools have on-site faculty experts often excited to contribute to social justice. law schools also have an overabundance of law students who need practical real world clinical experience. public legal education programs provide law students with the opportunity to study substantive legal topics while developing public speaking skills and the ability to break down legal concepts for non-lawyers. the high school students and program participants gain access to enthusiastic, knowledgeable members of the legal community. law schools secure rigorous, practical, clinical/experiential programs that law school students enjoy. law school-based public legal education programs are the definition of a “win-winwin” scenario and this book by richard grimes is a wonderfully thorough roadmap for any interested law school, faculty member or law student. new beginnings may yoneyama o’brien first and foremost, i would like to commend international journal for public legal education (ijple) co-founder richard grimes (and the rest of the editorial board), for the vision to create the first academic journal to provide an international platform for public legal education (“ple”). included in the ple universe are programs that have been called law-related, legal literacy, civic or citizenship education or street law, all terms practitioners seem to use interchangeably. this inaugural issue and those that follow will hopefully document best practices from some of the original leaders of the ple, street law, legal literacy and law related education movement and also be a clearinghouse where educators can share some exciting new teaching methodologies, trends and research ideas and evaluate what works. my own hope is that it also will become a community-building institution where educators can learn from each other. at its core, this journal can serve to advance the reach of the public legal education programs worldwide while furthering access to justice, democracy and human rights. here begins the task of documenting and evaluating the impact of law related education programs like street law. since ple programs are so extensive and as boundless as their settings – from its origins in high schools, the courts and correctional institutions to street law for farmers in kathmandu, i leave it to contributors to this journal to document, research or discover how educators, trainers and coaches have developed and imagined their courses and to distill the best practices culled from their particular programs, which are remarkably distinct, experimental, or even one-off. perhaps this journal will begin to evaluate these disparate and widespread programs and project what lies ahead to expand and sustain public legal education programs, such as street law, into the future. in this preface, i would like to talk a little about street law and why public legal education is needed in america. then, i would like to identify two examples where those who have experienced ple have gone on to have significant impact and become influential leaders in the field. finally, i would like to end with a personal remembrance of co-founder of street law, ed o’brien. i. street law and unmet legal needs of the public i come from the perspective of street law, which has become an ubiquitous moniker to cover all sorts of programs to educate the public about the law and how the law affects them. street law had its origins at georgetown university law center in 1972 when my husband ed o’brien and a bunch of other law students were invited by professor jason newman to launch a pioneering program in some of the poorest neighborhoods in washington, d.c. whereby law students were tasked with teaching “every day law” to high school students. since that propitious beginning, the street law model has grown into a vast array of programs spanning the world from dublin to chang mai and has inadvertently spear-headed a social movement.[footnoteref:1] [1: richard grimes, david mcquoid-mason, edward l. o’brien & judy zimmer, street law and social justice education, in the global clinical movement: educating lawyers for social justice 225-40 (frank s. bloch ed., oxford university press, 2011). ] through its innovative interactive methodologies, street law has rarely strayed from its roots of empowering students to embrace their rights by participating in exercises that illustrate practical aspects of the law and how the legal system might affect them personally. part of the original features of ed’s program was its emphasis on classroom debates examining current cases in the local or national news to bring it back home to students. moreover, students learned that they have rights, that they can choose to exercise their rights under law and witness the process of balancing the protection of rights with real time justice or of advancing those rights through advocacy or public policy. while arming students with knowledge of the law, the court system, the workings of the institutions of government and the skills to interact with the legal process, they are encouraged to become full participants in civil society. in america, we need only to turn on the evening news to understand why the most basic of these programs need to be part of the core curriculum of every school and law related educational setting – since we apparently seem to be experiencing a dearth of knowledge about basic democratic values and institutions at all levels of society. in the united states, according to the 2017 justice gap report, access to justice is not generally available to 86 per cent of low-income americans, who on average receive limited or no legal representation in civil matters.[footnoteref:2] moreover, about 40-60 percent of middle income americans have unmet legal needs.[footnoteref:3] if more citizens understood that they are protected under law and have unmet needs, perhaps we might find a more compassionate world and a fairer justice system; public legal education programs could help ameliorate this challenge. [2: legal services corporation, the justice gap: measuring the unmet civil legal needs of low-income americans (washington, dc, 2017). ] [3: roy stuckey et al., best practices for legal education; a vision and a road map 18 (2007), quoting deborah rhode, pro bono in principle and in practice 20 (2005). ] educators should take note of one potential new technology breakthrough that might be successful in addressing this need. microsoft in partnership with the legal services corporation and pro bono net recently announced it is developing an online voice-activated portal to address the basic legal needs of the public. microsoft is expected to launch the portal in 2018 in the pilot states of alaska and hawaii.[footnoteref:4] providing education about the law online like amazon’s alexa could possibly impact the evolution law related education and may deconstruct some notions of how legal services are delivered. [4: richard acello, easy access: legal services corp., microsoft plan voice-response portals for legal advice, abaj (september 1, 2017). ] there is more to come, and, surely, we will watch it unfold in the ijple. * * * * ii. ple impacts – two examples notwithstanding ed’s many long-standing friends and colleagues who have contributed mightily to street law, whom ed might like to highlight here, i chose two individuals who represent much of what ed might be proud to point to as examples of how a program like street law can make a difference in the world. how we measure ple impacts remains to be seen, but these two extraordinary leaders, in the face of enormous challenges, have made a difference in the areas of public legal education, democracy and human rights. south africa: human rights commissioner mohamed shafie ameermia how did a kid from limpopo, one of the poorest provinces in south africa, grow up and win the prestigious robert g. storey international award for leadership in june 2017 in america? the award is given to a leader who exemplifies dean storey’s “dedication to peace, justice, and the rule of law in the international community.”[footnoteref:5] [5: storey award, the center for american and international law, southwestern institute for international and comparative law, www.cailaw.org. dean storey served as executive trial counsel at the nuremberg trials, dean of smu school of law in texas, and president of the american bar association. ] that kid who loved constitutional law was a student in street law’s first international program in south africa over 30 years ago. his name is mohamed shafie ameermia. today he is a human rights advocate serving as a commissioner in the south african human rights commission. after studying law at wits university, he has had a storied career in municipal and regional government. he has stated that “his biggest challenge was to make the constitution and the bill of rights a living reality in south africa and make legal services accessible and real for the poor and vulnerable members of society.” [footnoteref:6] [6: anton van zyl, international recognition for former town secretary, limpopo mirror (may 21, 2017), https://www.limpopomirror.co.za/articles/news/42208/2017-05-21/international-recognition-for-the-former-town-secretary. ] commissioner ameermia has used all the enforcement tools provided him under law to take an activist role in pursuing human rights abuses in south africa. in spelling out his vision for his access to justice portfolio for the south african human rights commission, the commissioner set forth the goals he hopes to achieve during his tenure: through the access to justice program, the equality courts must be made to effectively work in ensuring that all . . . rights enshrined in the constitution are not only protected, but that they are promoted and advanced to ensure that access to justice in the interest of the poor, marginalized, the downtrodden, the destitute and the weak and disabled are advanced and championed, so that we can achieve the egalitarian and noble ideals we set out for ourselves in the constitution become a living reality. in sum, my vision as a commissioner on the south african human rights commission, is to translate the bill of rights into practical action. i realize this is an enormous task, but i am of the view this it is necessary for: without rights there cannot be freedom without freedom there cannot be development without development there cannot be transformation.[footnoteref:7] [7: profile: mohamed shafie ameermia, south african human rights commission, sahrc.org.za. ] as the keynote speaker at 2016 ed o’brien international street law conference in durban, south africa,[footnoteref:8] commissioner ameermia urged participants to advocate for human rights education as an underlying objective of the 2030 united nations sustainable development goals, which inter alia seek to improve peace through access to justice by building effective, accountable and inclusive institutions.[footnoteref:9] he also stated a wish to see the street law programs started over 30 years ago in law schools throughout south africa be revived or expanded – suggesting that public legal education is needed more than ever to teach high school youth how the law can affect and can empower their every day lives. such programs could serve as measures or effective indicators for achieving the sdg objectives. [8: the 2016 ed o’brien international street and legal literacy best practices conference was organized to celebrate the 30th anniversary for the very first international street law program at the university of kwazulu-natal (formerly the university of natal) in 1986 and convened by the dean of the law school, david mcquoid-mason, a life-long friend and collaborator of ed’s and one of leaders of the street law global movement along with richard grimes of the uk. ] [9: for example, u.n. sustainable development goal 16 – promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels. independent national human rights institutions play an important role in ensuring that states deliver on their human rights obligations and that no one is left behind. . . . united nations, economic and social council, progress towards the sustainable development goals; report of the secretary-general, u.n. doc. e/2017/66 (may 11, 2017). ] ed o’brien always taught that one person can make a difference. in a remarkable coincidence, ed and i ran into mohamed at the airport in marrakesh at the world human rights forum in november 2014. he was one of 5,000 people from 94 countries attending. we were both looking for the driver assigned to take us to our hotel and, since he appeared to be a fellow attendee, we invited him to join us. it was then he pointed to ed and exclaimed, “i know you! you were my teacher at the first ever street law program in south africa!” after almost thirty years, ed laughed and thought this must be destiny! two years later, mohamed accepted street law global’s invitation to speak at the first street law best practices conference honoring ed’s memory in durban and brought his entire s.a. human rights commission staff. this is not to say that every street law student will be so accomplished or so honored as commissioner ameermia, but in small ways and big, street law can have a positive impact on youth as active participants in their communities. islamic world: radwan masmoudi in 2004, ed o’brien and his street law colleagues started working with the center for the study of islam and democracy,[footnoteref:10] headed by dr. radwan masmoudi. with funding from the u.s. state department's democracy and rule of law program, they used the democracy for all text originally drafted with david mcquoid mason’s south africa street law program, and produced a new book islam and democracy: toward effective citizenship (2005), notably published in arabic.[footnoteref:11] the authors, including eight arab scholars from morocco, jordan, algeria and egypt, used excerpts from the qur’an, to clarify how islamic principles correspond with basic forms of democracy. this book has been successfully introduced in a number of countries including morocco, tunisia, jordan, egypt, algeria, bahrain, iran, iraq, saudi arabia, and turkey, reaching thousands of participants, and continues in ongoing workshops.[footnoteref:12] [10: “the center for the study of islam & democracy (csid) is a non-profit organization, based in washington dc, dedicated to studying islamic and democratic political thought and merging them into a modern islamic democratic discourse. . . ,” csidonline.org. ] [11: radwan masmoudi, edward l. o’brien, b. chorak, mary larkin & aly abuzaakuk, islam and democracy (washington, d.c., 2006) self-published by street law inc. and center for study of islam and democracy. ] [12: from 2006 to 2009, csid had trained over 3,000 participants in various arab countries, with the goal of training students to become trainers csid workshop in bahrain: islam and democracy – towards an effective citizenship, csid feb. 11, 2009), csidonline.org. (“dr. masmoudi confirms that democracy, though feared by arab governments, is pursued by arab citizens. the workshop aims at promoting freedom of thought and expression and ensuring that differences in opinion are respected in the arab society.”) ] csid has noted that “building democratic institutions and traditions is not easy and will take time, patience, hard work, and perseverance. however, we were extremely happy and delighted to find hundreds, if not thousands, of scholars and leaders – across the arab and muslim world – who share this desire for freedom, democracy, and human dignity.”[footnoteref:13] csid has also published a number of newsletters including muslim democrat and democracy watch in english and arabic. [13: center for the study of islam and democracy, introduction, workshops on islam & democracy (may 24, 2006), csidonline.org. ] csid continues to offer educational programs throughout the year on islam and democracy and most recently in july 2017 offered a series of workshops for youth, civil society and religious leaders, part of its “hand in hand” program to combat extremism and terrorism. [footnoteref:14] [14: summer university, july 2017, csidonline.org. ] it is not surprising that tunisia has become a model for democracy in the arab world, as mrs. meherzia labidi, a member of the tunisian parliament related in a talk to csid this year. she noted that tunisia is “a state where it was possible not only to develop oneself socially and economically and to dream of a modern democratic state, but to really make it possible. . . . we want to build a democracy where diversity, human rights are respected, where the alternation to power is not done through coup d’état but through elections. we insist on building a democratic republic based on citizenship, supremacy of the law, and sovereignty of the people, while reconciling islam, democracy, and modernity, once and for all. . . . tunisia is ripe for success and will continue down this path.” [footnoteref:15] [15: mrs. meherzia labidi, member of the tunisian parliament and member of the executive committee of the muslim democratic nahdha party in tunisia, tunisia: a model for democracy in the arab world, address before the center for the study of islam and democracy (february 2, 2017). ] * * * * commissioner ameermia and dr. masmoudi are exemplary leaders in this movement. ed often pointed out that it is the people who staff street law and related programs – the passionate educators, the human rights and democracy advocates, who are the strong leaders that make street law effective. it is thanks to the vision of these committed activists, including judges, lawyers, legal and human rights educators, lawmakers, paralegals, social studies teachers, parents, students and significant supporters, who have played key roles in advancing the direction and the expansion of street law programs worldwide, that street law has experienced its success, and it is to strong leaders like them who will hopefully guide and sustain its future. * * * * iii. remembering ed o’brien aside from his warmth, friendly personality, and his endearing personal charms, ed o’brien had integrity and enormous wisdom. nonetheless, what i admired most in ed was that he had moral courage. he was a lifelong admirer of robert f. kennedy and often pointed me to one of rfk’s famous quotes. these are words ed lived by and epitomize his belief that even one person can make a difference by standing up against injustice….and the ripple effect that can have. rfk said: few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change the world that yields most painfully to change. each time . . . a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against . . . injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.[footnoteref:16] [16: robert f. kennedy, day of reaffirmation of academic and human freedom speech, at the national union of south african students, university of cape town, south africa (june 6, 1966). ] street law started as a ripple and is now a social movement. street law has become ubiquitous. ed was a tireless champion of human rights and democracy education. of importance to him, was the u.n. mandate found in the universal declaration of human rights calling on all nations to “strive by teaching and education” to respect human rights and freedoms.[footnoteref:17] [17: un general assembly, “preamble,” universal declaration of human rights, g.a. res. 217 (iii) a, u.n. doc. a/res/217(iii) (dec. 10, 1948). ] ed’s colleagues nancy flowers and kristi rudelius-palmer[footnoteref:18] pointed out that: [18: nancy flowers & kristi rudelius-palmer, remembering ed o’brien (1945-1915), human rights educators usa (july 16, 2015), hreusa.org. ] “ed was a strategic, passionate, human rights learner and educator, who dedicated his life to empower youth and adults to practice the core principles of equality, non-discrimination, and justice for all. . . . ed’s own words best capture his understanding of the essential role of human rights in the education of the children of the world:” i have learned that to teach law or democracy without teaching human rights is vastly inadequate. human rights are a value system and a foundation on which law and democracy rests. young people must be taught ethical behavior, and human rights are a set of ethical standards the world has agreed upon.[footnoteref:19] [19: edward o’brien, why am i a human rights educator? in university of minnesota human rights resource center, towards a just society; the personal journeys of human rights educators 111,112 (abraham magendzo k. et al. eds., 2015). ] ed was always on a mission. dc statehood, marriage equality, voting rights, better benefits for adjuncts, or just helping friends, colleagues and students. essentially, his life was dedicated to the sustaining of street law programs worldwide, and he was willing to mentor, empower and nurture anyone who might be part of the next generation of leaders. i am sure he would be delighted that his legacy will be sustained in this important journal. viva ijple! to provide a context for this journal issue, i want to include two of ed’s last efforts to provide a history of street law, one focused on the beginnings of the international effort to take street law to a global audience beginning in south africa and the second a short unfinished history of the program from its origins at georgetown law center’s clinical programs,[footnoteref:20] to its separate institutional identity as street law, inc. law related education or street law pedagogy can start from there. [20: the georgetown street law program, directed by rick rowe, is housed in georgetown law’s clinical program, the oldest and most pre-eminent clinical legal education program in the u.s., where it has been ranked #1 in “best clinical training programs, ranked in 2017, part of best law schools,” in best grad schools: law 2018 issue, u.s. news & world report, usnews.com ] 14 practice report 179 clinics in time of crisis: responding to the covid-19 outbreak amanda thurston, diana kirsch1 background at the time of the covid-19 lockdown in march 2020, hertfordshire law clinic was still in its infancy. it had only opened its doors in october 2019 and was technically still in its ‘pilot scheme’ phase – with the official opening not due to take place until april 2020. the aim of the clinic was to help support its local community by offering free legal advice in areas of unmet need. at the time of opening this included family law, employment law, commercial and ip advice for smes, and preparing powers of attorney. at the same time, the clinic aimed to provide law students with real-life practical experience of dealing with clients and their cases. an important factor restricting the type and quantity of cases we can deal with is the level of professional supervision available. the university is lucky on this front as some of its law school staff are non-practising solicitors, and we had already built up good connections with local law firms who were generous with the pro bono work 1 amanda thurston is director of law clinic in the school of law at the university of hertfordshire and diana kirsch is associate dean enterprise of & director of pro bono in the school of law at the university of hertfordshire practice report 180 their lawyers could offer. we have therefore always had almost twice as many external lawyers (compared to law school staff) supervising the students; currently fifteen. practicalities the students work in pairs for all their clinic work. for some cases they shadow the lawyer supervisor giving one-off verbal advice to a client whilst keeping detailed notes. they then prepare an attendance note, which once approved by the supervisor is sent to the client as a record of the advice they have received. in other cases, the students interview the client alone, to gather more detailed instructions, and then carry out appropriate research to enable them to prepare a letter of advice. once the letter is approved by the supervisor it is sent to the client. the two options enable the students to gain the most from learning new skills and working with an experienced professional. before being allowed to partake in any of this clinic work, the students have to undergo a formal application process and compulsory training which includes watching recorded lectures; reading relevant material; and attending live sessions. satellite clinics we wanted to ensure the clinic reached the most vulnerable and needy parts of the local community. we therefore arranged to establish two satellite clinics. the first had students and their supervisor attending the premises of future living hertford practice report 181 (flh),2 a charity working to support victims of domestic abuse, to provide family law advice to their clients. this was only permitted after the students had undergone appropriate domestic abuse awareness training to ensure the charity’s vulnerable clients were treated appropriately. the second satellite clinic should have seen students visit hmp the mount and provide family law advice to prisoners. it had been recognised that access to this type of advice was widely needed for those in prison, but was extremely difficult for them to obtain. this was postponed due to the pandemic lockdown, explained further below. the feedback from students, supervisors and clients has been very positive on how the law clinic has worked for them. we were therefore keen to look into expanding the clinic; the areas of law we could advise on, the depth of work we dealt with and the number of students involved. however, the turn of events in march 2020 meant we had more pressing considerations to deal with. lockdown the university of hertfordshire decided to close down its campus and send all students and staff home shortly before the official government lockdown in march 2 www.futurelivinghertford.co.uk http://www.futurelivinghertford.co.uk/ practice report 182 2020, and with only 24 hours’ notice to us all. the clinic had some immediate challenges to face: challenge 1 – answering the telephone from home the client telephone line to the clinic was based on campus and manned by students on a rota. this was probably the easiest issue to resolve with the dedicated telephone line being forwarded to the full-time clinic administrator so she could control the incoming calls and messages, and share out the work on making initial contact with clients between the student clinic assistants, all working from their own telephones and own homes. challenge 2 – moving to video appointments client appointments, which were all taking place face-to-face on campus, were already booked in for the next 4 weeks. this was a little trickier as we had no wish to shut down the clinic or cancel appointments. we recognised that the best approach would be to move the clinic online. ideally, we would give you a helpful insight into the clear scientific approach we took in researching the various platforms on offer and showing how the statistical data highlighted which would be the best. however, time constraints meant it had to be far simpler than that. we had one afternoon to decide which platform would be free and easily accessible to clients, students and supervisors, including those students practice report 183 returning abroad. it also needed to keep the contact details of all those attending a video meeting confidential. we therefore chose zoom which seemed to conform to all our requirements and having purchased a zoom licence, we moved the clinic online in less than 24 hours. initially, when clients were advised their face-to-face meetings were suddenly going to be moved online over 50% opted to postpone their meeting in the hope the lockdown would end in a few weeks. as the lockdown continued, however, clients simply accepted the move to an online environment and readily agreed to book online appointments. challenge 3 – going paperless one problem the hertfordshire law clinic did not face was the physical movement of any confidential paper files. this is where we were probably assisted by being so new. we were already paperless, with all confidential client information and documentation being held in our case management system clio.3 challenge 4 – ensuring we maintain confidentiality there were still concerns about confidentiality and potential breaches of gdpr. we trusted the clinic students to ensure they behaved professionally even when online. their compulsory training before working in the clinic, included a two-hour session 3 www.clio.com http://www.clio.com/ practice report 184 on professionalism, and they all signed a student agreement setting out the high professional standards we expect of them. we felt that the level of trust which had been afforded to students before lockdown should be continued when we moved online. we provided them with an updated student handbook to highlight the practical changes of moving the clinic online and reminded them of specific issues with confidentiality. for example, a student needed to ensure they had client interviews and discussions about cases alone, without any third party listening in. as the majority utilised headphones and microphones for their online learning, this did not ever appear to be an issue. we took the decision not to record the online student/client meetings. we were not present in the room with them when the meetings were face-to-face, and we felt that the risks had not increased significantly with those meetings taking place online. there was a presumption that the clinic staff and supervisors would continue to comply with confidentiality once working for the clinic online – they were having to do all their other confidential day-to-day work in lockdown, so we again trusted them to follow the new guidance. when it came to document confidentiality clio assisted us with the additional advantage of offering clio launcher; an application within the case management system allowing students to access and amend confidential documentation without downloading it to their personal device. its use ensured compliance with data practice report 185 protection legislation and the duty of confidentiality whilst still allowing the student anywhere in the world to access, draft, or amend a client document. there seemed to be no issue with clients receiving their attendance notes or letters of advice by email with little or no access to post. most already made their first contact with the clinic using email and now we offer nothing else. challenge 5 – retaining and gaining volunteers we were initially concerned students would no longer wish to continue volunteering for the clinic – particularly if they had left student accommodation, or even the country, for lockdown. however, we appeared to have a captive audience. the students were no longer commuting to attend their seminars. most were unable to socialise or work, or even gain unpaid work experience. suddenly, the clinic was seen as the only form of practical work experience they were likely to get for months. further, anything that changed a somewhat monotonous day in lockdown could be seen as light relief. we actually managed to increase the number of students helping. likewise, whilst there were a few professional volunteers who were exceptionally busy during lockdown, family lawyers in particular, the majority of them were happy to continue assisting the clinic. a few, if furloughed, actually had more time to help, or even if still working, found it was far easier to give us an hour of their time to log into a video call, than have to book out a whole afternoon to travel to our campus. the move to an online clinic also meant the geographical area from where our external supervisors came from could expand. practice report 186 it was actually in the midst of lockdown that we first expanded the areas of law the clinic covered to include housing, due to the number of enquiries we were getting from tenants worried about rent arrears and eviction. this was only possible because of the move online one external lawyer was on furlough, and another could supervise one afternoon a week as part of their day job with a charity supporting young people. outcome for the clinic after our smooth transition into the virtual world, we became the university’s first virtual law clinic and during lockdown, up to the end of july 2020, we managed to engage with 75 clients online. we appreciate that we had the advantage of our clinic being part of the university and so never had the worry about resources, in terms of both money and paid staff. satellite clinics we were pleased to be able to continue the satellite clinic with flh without any disruption. their clients, although many were vulnerable, were learning that many things during lockdown had to be dealt with virtually so accepted that their clinic appointments would be too. if they wanted the extra reassurance of their support worker with them, they could just be invited to join the zoom video call. the same could not be said for the planned satellite clinic with hmp the mount. this project had its own, unique challenge. practice report 187 challenge 6 – internet connection whilst technology was an issue for the main clinic when it came to choosing which platform to use, after that it was rarely mentioned. of course, there was the odd occasion when someone couldn’t access the zoom link or forgot how to unmute themselves – but these minor teething problems were part of the new virtual life. the prison had much more basic it issues which were not so easily overcome. the prisoners do not have access to the internet in their cells, or any other confidential area. they cannot even receive telephone calls in their cells but have pre-set times each day when they can have privacy in their cell and telephone out on a pre-agreed telephone number. this was our first clear insight into how the wonders of modern technology do not help you in a secure prison, these findings resonate with a recent law society report: “during the lockdown period, meetings with legal representatives were predominantly by telephone or video conferencing and the majority continue to be so. for those who are living in institutionalised settings, such as prisons, immigration detention centres, mental health units or care settings, this is particularly important. people in these settings are reliant on those detaining or caring for them to facilitate access to legal representatives and during lockdown this depended on the supply of and access to technology.”4 4 law society (2020) law under lockdown: the impact of covid-19 measures on access to justice and vulnerable people, [online]. available at https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/topics/research/law-underpractice report 188 we are now hoping to find a way to overcome these restrictions with the use of a new, dedicated telephone line for the prisoners to contact the clinic on, and for student volunteers to be staffing this telephone line at set times each day, as we cannot simply return messages. it has taken some thought and ingenuity, but it is just another hurdle thrown-up by the pandemic. challenge 7 – communications – too much or too little communication seems to have been the hardest challenge during lockdown for all clinic activities. for the prisoners it was an issue of lack of communication – or at least access to it. however, for those of us lucky enough to have uninhibited access to the internet, the issue was often the opposite. without being able to see anyone face-toface there was suddenly a deluge of emails, messages, webinars and online announcements sent out – from the nhs, the government, employers, work contacts, colleagues, friends, family, and many more. we found many of our student volunteers were overwhelmed by the volume of virtual communications and they struggled to process and deal with them all in a time-sensitive manner. this deluge of electronic communications also left us at a disadvantage when trying to ask a favour for the clinic. no longer able to pop along to a colleague’s office with the offer of coffee and cake, or meet up in a café with a potential new external lockdown-the-impact-of-covid-19-measures-on-access-to-justice-and-vulnerable-people (accessed 19 november 2020) practice report 189 supervisor, we had to resort to the seemingly over-formal booking of a ms teams video chat. so, one clear challenge was to find the appropriate level and quantity of communication. we needed to stay in touch with everyone connected to the clinic, but not to such an extent as to feel like we were harassing them. clinical legal education module it had always been planned that once the clinic was up and running, we would introduce a cle module to be able to gain the best student experience in the clinic and utilise their clinic work as part of an assessed module. the timing meant this was due to start in the middle of the pandemic lockdown in may 2020, with a group of accelerated law degree students. this new module therefore had its own challenges. challenge 8 – blended learning by this time, we had all learnt how to teach, and be taught, online. however, we had never undertaken clinic training in this way, and these were practical skills we were teaching. interviewing needs to be tried and tested to fully understand it. how could we expect students to work well in pairs with real clients when they had never even met their clinic partner face-to-face? of course, the great advantage we had was the students themselves. they have grown-up in a generation used to handling electronic devices on a daily basis, and to practice report 190 adapt to continual changes and improvements to technology. they had already become accustomed to learning from their bedroom or kitchen table; and using a mobile telephone or tablet rather than a pc. they were well versed in reading training manuals on a screen, rather than printing them off, and were used to making friends and connecting with others remotely. so, we introduced our first attempt at creating an entirely online training programme. this included recorded lectures, documents, and videos to read and watch at their leisure; and live online group seminars to interact with. remembering to unmute ourselves; making use of the chat box and screensharing all became second nature. this was a steep learning curve for everyone, but that’s probably why it worked. we were all in the same position, and there wasn’t any alternative. if anyone suggested the students were not learning practical skills in a lifelike way, then they were wrong. the pandemic meant most clients were seeing their paid solicitors via a screen, and even court hearings were being conducted by telephone or video call. the student experience was entirely similar to what the legal world had become during lockdown. we never got to actually meet some of those accelerated students, and now never will, as they have finished their degree and gone on elsewhere to work or continue studies. that is a real shame, but does not appear to have affected their results, with a high proportion of the class attaining an upper second class or above. we believe that these results are a testament that online learning can work, and that student’s main practical experiences can still be completely natural and real even if they are virtual. practice report 191 streetlaw projects the cle module students also took part in another of our pro bono projects; streetlaw. this allows students to work in a small team to produce a presentation on a specific legal subject, relevant to the audience they will present it to – for example knife crime to school children, or cybercrime to the elderly. usually these would be live presentations with the students travelling to the chosen venue. the pandemic presented this project with its own challenge: challenge 9 – presenting virtually we wanted to avoid this project being frozen during lockdown and had to continue it for at least the cle module students as it was already part of their course and assessment. we therefore simply followed what all other training providers have done during the pandemic and moved the presentations online. the aim of producing relevant content for the audience was maintained, and for the students, they still had the experience of trialling newly learned skills. these included working as part of a team; researching a new area of law; creating a presentation on the subject matter, ensuring the content is appropriate for the audience and gaining confidence in their presenting. our students impressed us with their innovative ideas and we even ran a youtube live event with the help of a housing solicitor from shelter on housing rights for students living off campus. practice report 192 lessons learnt the hertfordshire university campus reopened in september 2020, but with heavy demands on limited teaching spaces, which had to be covid secure, the clinic remains online. given the second lockdown in november 2020 we are experiencing at the time of writing, this was by far the best decision. students would probably have agreed to come on campus for face-to-face client meetings, but for the clients and external supervisors, the remote clinic works better, at least for now. even for some of the internal supervisors, whist they remain working from home and teaching online, it is simpler to maintain their clinic work online too. clients have finally recognised the advantages in accessing a remote clinic. they no longer have to worry about taking time off work for their appointment or finding childcare cover. they no longer have the problem of ensuring they have the permit to park on our campus or locating the correct bus to get here. many of our external supervisors are also more easily able to continue being a part of the clinic when they do not have to travel to our campus but can log on to an online meeting. this is particularly the case when their own firms would not permit them to visit our campus at present and some are still working from home. if third parties were allowed onto campus, we would be at ongoing risk of having to change this – often on short notice. we now know the virtual clinic works for everyone, and it can remain steady during these fluctuating times. practice report 193 whilst we have not specifically surveyed the clients to enquire whether they would prefer to remain online, not a single one has asked to have their appointment on campus. this allows us to capture clients from a wider geographical area. there is the issue of whether virtual advice can work for vulnerable clients. however, if a client is suffering from physical or mental health issues, being able to reach legal advice from virtually anywhere should hopefully be seen as a positive. the flexibility of online meetings would also allow them to have a third party attend with them, even if they cannot be in the same room together. we do obtain feedback from clients after every meeting. we are grateful that it has always been positive, and this did not change after moving online. however, some clients, whether it is a generational issue or simply lack of ability or confidence to utilise technology, have still refused to access us online. for example, so far, we have had no clients come to the online clinic to draft their power of attorney. we will also never be able to fully resolve the concern of who is in the room next to the client, listening in, or what is going on just beyond the camera. unfortunately, we have seen examples in our clinic of a client discussing child welfare issues with the child concerned in earshot, and another client who would not use her microphone but typed all instructions into the chat box on screen because her abusive partner was in the room next door. we cannot find solutions for every issue – certainly not with a virtual clinic only seven months old. practice report 194 on the teaching front, the cle module has now been allocated a face-to-face seminar slot on campus each week. however, this is not necessarily the positive step we had hoped for. some students struggled to return to campus, either physically trapped overseas due to travel restrictions, or having their own, or other’s, health issues to deal with. those that are in the classroom cannot do the mock interviews and small group work we had hoped for; they have to wear face coverings, sit at least one metre apart, and face the front. none of this is conducive to trying out new practical skills. should we therefore revert to purely online teaching? there is still a lot to be said for having a group of students in the classroom together. they can interact with the lecturer and each other; and learn from each other. when it comes to reflecting on their clinic experiences, they can share successes and even failures. they can actually see the person they are going to do their clinic, or other pro bono, work with and there is a sense of camaraderie. their later seminars when they are sharing reflections on their clinic work are actually named team meetings, preparing them for working amongst others, akin to the department in a law firm. what’s next? it is generally accepted that we still need to return to seeing some clients face-to-face – particularly vulnerable clients. once flh has reopened its offices and we can transport students in a covid safe way, we will return to see their clients there. some practice report 195 of them need this extra security when seeking advice on personal and traumatic events. there are also the elderly clients who don’t have access to electronic devices and internet. further, the satellite clinic at hmp the mount will only really run to full capacity when we can visit the prisoners in person. for all the advantages of the virtual clinic, interviewing in person is still a vital skill for the students to experience. it is different to a screen, in some ways easier, like maintaining eye contact; understanding body language; being able to work with their student partner and not interrupt each other. however, it also has some more challenging aspects – dealing with real ‘in your face’ emotions; proper ‘meeting and greeting’ your client; and of course, ensuring your smart attire continues below the waist! however, the virtual clinic will never disappear, not now we have shown it can work, and work well. why would we want to take a step back? and just as lockdowns 1 and 2 have caught us rather unawares, who knows when it will happen again. practice report 196 simulated and real-world experience – the challenge of adapting practice in clinical legal education in unprecedented and challenging times kaye howells1 march 2020 was undoubtedly the beginning of unprecedented and challenging times for all. from an education perspective, such challenges have resulted in the re-design of module delivery, consideration of how we ensure the students receive high-quality teaching and are afforded the same opportunities, albeit within a virtual environment. this paper will consider the challenges faced and how we can adapt practice in cle in these unprecedented and challenging times. professor richard lewisstates “the main advantage of clinical education is that compared to traditional teaching methods, it involves a different approach to the learning of law: it encompasses experiential learning or “learning by doing” 2. it is taught through both simulation and real-world experience across universities worldwide, such teaching (until march 2020) to the best of my knowledge, predominantly being face-to-face. however, whilst there is emphasis on “learning by doing”, where 1 kaye howells is a senior lecturer in law and student legal advice centre lead at the university of derby. 2 richard lewis (2000) ‘clinical legal education revisited’ dokkyo international review 13, 149 practice report 197 does it state that such learning by doing must be through face-to-face interactions? the issue as educators is how we continue to ensure the same level of experience for the students through a virtual environment. however, that does not come without some challenges. i commenced my career in higher education in september 2018 when i joined the university of derby’s law school. my primary role was to establish the student legal advice centre and develop the clinical legal skills (cls) module. prior to joining the world of academia, i was a practicing solicitor for 14 years, predominantly in child protection. how the cls module was delivered pre covid-19 the academic year 2019/20 saw the first year of the cls module and the operation of the centre. the centre is open all year round, bar one week at easter, two weeks in the summer and two weeks at christmas. during the academic year 2019/20, the teaching of the cls module was conducted face-to-face. similarly, the students conducted face-to-face appointments with clients in the centre. the module is a 40credit bearing module. the module is designed such that all students undertake some level of simulation prior to undertaking real world experience. the schedule of delivery includes 3 hour lecture/workshops for 12 weeks in the autumn semester and 6 hours of tutorials within the second semester, with emphasis on the work the students carry out within the student legal advice centre contributing significantly practice report 198 to the hours the students are required to complete. as the supervising solicitor and module leader, i also met with the students following client interviews to reflect and also to put together an action plan in respect of the client’s case. march 2020 brought about significant changes, with the remaining teaching weeks of the academic year being moved to online delivery and clients being offered appointments online via microsoft teams. at the point of lockdown in march 2020, the centre was temporarily closed. however, within six weeks a decision was made to move the provision online. i canvassed with the students enrolled on the cls module to find how many could commit and feel confident with continuing to work in the centre through online client meetings. i was confident in their ability having taught them and worked with them in the centre since september 2019. several students confirmed their commitment to continuing to work within the centre. the plan for summer training pre covid-19 i had timetabled voluntary student legal advice centre training for june 2020. at the point of timetabling, such training was to be delivered face to face. this was for students who wanted to shadow over the summer months. i hoped it would be particularly appealing for those intending to take the module this academic year. due to covid-19 i informed students i would deliver the training online. disappointingly, few students attended. those that did attend expressed the view practice report 199 that the online element had been off-putting for some. this caused me some concern as to what effect such view would have on the number of students who enrolled on the cls module this academic year. despite low student numbers, i was able to keep the centre open during the summer months. of note is the number of students enrolled on the cls module this academic year in comparison to last. 29 students were enrolled on the module 2019/20. this year 14 students are enrolled on the module. the theme from student feedback is that the online nature of what is such a practical module was off-putting for some students who had previously shown interest in the module. preparation and planning preparation and planning during the summer months for delivery of the cls module this academic year has been key. the cls module continues to be afforded the same timetabled hours this semester as to that of the previous academic year. however, the 3-hour weekly lecture/workshop is wholly delivered online. the university of derby has made a commitment to the students to provide 3 hours of face to face teaching per week of the semester (subject to any change in government guidelines). in the final year of the llb at derby, students study one 20 credit core module (equity) and then have a number of optional modules of their choice. due to the range of optional modules available and a varying number of students across the cohort taking different options, the only viable option for the 3 hour face to face provision was to attach the practice report 200 those 3 hours to equity, the core module. from a timetabling and room booking perspective it was not viable to offer face to face across the optional modules. thus, all optional modules, including the cls module, are delivered online at this current time. part of the preparation for the move to online delivery involved re-examining the module specification and schedule of delivery to adapt the schedule, ensuring it complimented online delivery. in doing so, i considered the potential challenges to include: ensuring active engagement from the students online, a positive learning environment and inclusivity. as both the module leader and supervising solicitor for the student legal advice centre, i would need to be satisfied that the students are competent enough to become client facing, albeit in a virtual environment. educating those delivering aptly put by beech, “most tech-platforms supporting higher education are wellmatured and mainstream. yet, problems can arise if the processes and people underpinning them have been slow to catch up.’3 whilst the technology is available, clearly the onus is upon those delivering to ensure they have the skills required. i confess that pre covid-19 my use of different technologies, particularly in my 3 diana beech. ‘time for “co-opetition”? unleashing the benefits of technology in higher education.’ (12.03.18) higher education policy institute. https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2018/03/12/time-co-opetitionunleashing-benefits-technology-higher-education/ https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2018/03/12/time-co-opetition-unleashing-benefits-technology-higher-education/ https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2018/03/12/time-co-opetition-unleashing-benefits-technology-higher-education/ practice report 201 teaching was arguably quite limited. i therefore welcomed the announcement at the end of the last academic year that teaching staff at the university of derby were expected to engage with the off-campus digital learning course during the summer months. the course was designed such that the following learning outcomes would be achieved: 1. apply a designed approach to help students navigate effectively through module content and activities 2. design and deliver an effective blend of synchronous and asynchronous learning experiences for students 3. apply a range of approaches to enable the socialisation of students in the offcampus digital learning space 4. design and deliver active learning approaches with and between students 5. deploy appropriate tools to ensure the accessibility of your course materials there was an expectation that each academic would participate in all activities, to assist in supporting their own learning with others in specified groups from different disciplines. the course content was designed to prepare academics for their roles as a module tutor, teaching students in an online setting. to achieve course attendance sign-off by the facilitators, engagement with the activities set was compulsory, as was the drafting of a high-level module plan. the high-level module plan included practice report 202 breaking down in detail what would be covered in each asynchronous and synchronous session for each teaching week of the module. engaging in the course and completing the activities undoubtedly assisted in my preparation for the coming academic year. it enabled me to consider method of delivery and engagement of the students, which was of particular concern to me in respect of the cls module, given the practical nature of the module. whilst some may have been au fait with the terms “synchronous” and “asynchronous”, it was new terminology for me. drafting the high-level module plan enabled me to be specific within the plan as to subject matter/area to be covered and how, be it synchronous or asynchronous. completing the off-campus digital learning course enabled me to be more prepared in terms of delivery of the module. engagement with the course also gave me the opportunity to experience the course from a learner’s perspective, which i think is invaluable and enhanced my own abilities. given the challenges of covid-19, i have become much more aware of the technologies available to assist in the delivery of teaching. arguably, the current climate has forced my hand, which can only be a positive. beech suggests that technology “enhances collaborative learning and helps institutions to maximise opportunities…. it also enhances student experience by allowing students to adapt to practice report 203 new learning environments and be much more creative.”4 arguably therefore we are enhancing the student experience through either blended or solely on-line delivery. increasing the use of technology within teaching practice, also acknowledges the fact that technology is undoubtedly a driving force in terms of employment and therefore, we are preparing the students for professional practice. the significance of the learning environment and student engagement – formal and informal learning spaces in the short number of weeks of delivering online during the last academic year, feedback was that students were less confident, and my own experience was that there was less student engagement in sessions. i was therefore concerned about ensuring how i could facilitate student engagement this academic year and gave specific thought to the learning environment. in preparing for delivery of the cls module, i considered how i could provide both formal and informal learning spaces for the students and continue to encourage a learning community amongst them. as a starting point, i introduced a discussion board, a ‘café forum’, to encourage students to engage and communicate with each other. furthermore, to provide variety and an alternative, i set up a team on 4 ibid practice report 204 microsoft teams, with the students being encouraged to perceive it almost like a firm of solicitors and a virtual office space in which to engage with each other. the café forum is set up as an informal meeting place for students to share their views and experiences. i have also introduced other discussion boards throughout the semester (with more planned throughout the academic year) which encourage discussions around specific topic areas students are learning about during the module. for example, one discussion board is titled “reflection in clinical legal education”. the students are encouraged to share articles about reflection and comment upon those articles. a further example is a mid-semester discussion board encouraging students to share experiences of their work in the centre to date. one element of the assessments for the cls module is a reflective essay. in planning the module, i was of the view that such discussion boards would encourage student engagement with each other, whilst assisting in preparation for assessment as well. students have responded well, albeit initially through eager encouragement from me. i also respond to the threads within the discussion boards to encourage the students further. the formal learning space (being the 3 hours weekly timetabled sessions) are delivered through blackboard collaborate. this enables me to deliver to the cohort, share material on screen and importantly, utilise the ‘breakout rooms’ for the workshops. i have found use of the breakout rooms an excellent mechanism for encouraging group discussion in smaller groups, which has proved an effective way practice report 205 of the groups then reporting back to the whole cohort in the ‘main room’. simple use of the poll tool has also proved to be an excellent way of measuring student engagement and a tool i use frequently! is ensuring inclusion more challenging in online delivery? one of the core elements of the university of derby’s teaching and learning strategy5 is in respect of inclusion. it is our responsibility to: “promote inclusive and flexible learning provision which meets the diverse needs of different learners, and provide an environment in which learners are effectively supported in their transition through the different stages of their higher education journey.”6 whether delivering face to face or online, there is a commitment to ensure inclusivity. however, i raise the question as to whether it is potentially more challenging to ensure inclusivity within an online environment. gauging a student’s engagement, understanding and learning needs in a face to face setting is arguably less challenging. perception of student complexities are perhaps more apparent in a face to face setting. 5 university of derby learning and teaching strategy (2016-2020) https://www.derby.ac.uk/media/derbyacuk/assets/organisation/about-us/learningenhancement/documents/learning-and-teaching-strategy.pdf 6 ibid https://www.derby.ac.uk/media/derbyacuk/assets/organisation/about-us/learning-enhancement/documents/learning-and-teaching-strategy.pdf https://www.derby.ac.uk/media/derbyacuk/assets/organisation/about-us/learning-enhancement/documents/learning-and-teaching-strategy.pdf practice report 206 in considering inclusivity and giving thought to challenges, i queried whether i could demand a student turns on their camera during online delivery. this may seem a relatively basic query to raise. however, it is a topic of discussion amongst educators. tabitha moses of wayne state university highlights: “although sticking with remote instruction may be the correct decision from the standpoint of public health, it is not without problems.” 7 she suggests that “online instruction can pose a range of challenges for students if they are required to keep their cameras on”8 and lists such challenges as follows: 1. increased anxiety and stress 2. ‘zoom fatigue’ 3. competing obligations 4. right to privacy 5. financial means (the assumption a student will have access to technology with camera access) i propose that this is a challenge we face in delivering cle. i submit that there is a preference for eye-contact and understanding body language, which clearly cannot be gleaned where students choose not to turn their cameras on, appreciating of course 7 tabitha moses ‘5 reasons to let students keep their cameras off during zoom classes’ (17.18.20) the conversation https://theconversation.com/5-reasons-to-let-students-keep-their-cameras-off-duringzoom-classes-144111 8 ibid https://theconversation.com/5-reasons-to-let-students-keep-their-cameras-off-during-zoom-classes-144111 https://theconversation.com/5-reasons-to-let-students-keep-their-cameras-off-during-zoom-classes-144111 practice report 207 such as the identified challenges listed above. i am of the view that it is preferable where meetings are held with clients for student legal advisors to be visible. at the initial online session of the module this semester, i raised the concept of cameras with the students. i shared my preference for the use of cameras during some of the workshop elements of the module, in particular for example during simulated exercises. i also informed the students of the expectation of the use of cameras during client interview. i ensured that i justified my reasoning for the said expectation. furthermore, i also wanted to reassure the students that if this would be cause for concern for any one of them, i would meet outside of the group setting to have a private discussion. students have responded well to my request to date. there continues to be a reluctance for the use of cameras as a norm within class but where students meet with me individually for supervision or meet with clients, they have been happy to leave their camera on and can see the benefit, particularly in client interviews, to being able to make eye contact as it were. continuing to afford simulated and real-world experience in online delivery pre covid-19, students had the opportunity to engage in simulated and real-world experience through face to face delivery. this academic year, the students enrolled on the cls module continue to be afforded the opportunity of both simulated and realworld experience, albeit on an on-line platform, either via microsoft teams (when meeting with clients) or blackboard collaborate (when taking part in simulated practice report 208 interviews). currently, i schedule the client meetings through microsoft teams and have an option to join the meeting should i wish to do so. whilst there is the option to join, i have reservations about the concept of joining the client meetings even in an observer role. my concern is that being present in the interview could have the potential to negatively impact upon the client relationship with the student legal advisors and in my view, potentially place the students under additional pressure. as the supervising solicitor of the centre, i meet with the student legal advisors prior to the client meeting commencing for supervision (the student advisors also receive an email in advance, setting out the nature of the client meeting). i then meet for supervision following client interview. this assimilates to the structure pre covid19, albeit such meetings are now conducted through online platforms. i am of the view that there is a place within cle for both simulated and real-world experience be that face to face or through online provision. i share the view of marson, wilson and van hoorebeek that “no simulation or classroom based session can offer the student a true insight into the pressures and at times exhilaration of legal practice and this experience can only assist in producing better prepared trainee lawyers”.9 all educational institutions are driven by wanting to ensure graduates leave with the academic and practical skills to enable them to be successful on their journey into a 9 james marson, adam wilson & mark van hoorebeek, m. (2005) ‘the necessity of clinical legal education in university law schools: a uk perspective’ (2005) 7 int’l journal of clinical legal education 29 practice report 209 chosen profession. there is an increase in the use of technologies within the legal sector. therefore, delivering cle through online learning and through students advising in the centre through an online platform, students are being provided with the opportunity to graduate with the skills and attributes that will be demanded by employers. where technology fails us…. at a very recent client appointment, it became apparent that the lead student legal advisor’s microphone was not working. the other student legal advisor had not previously shadowed a live interview and had limited experience of simulation. i was therefore of the view that it would be inappropriate to expect him to lead the first interview. in the circumstances, i made the decision to lead the interview but essentially in the role of a student legal advisor as opposed to that of a solicitor. our student legal advisors must not provide legal advice during their client meetings, such advice is provided in writing following the interview, to ensure it has been approved by me as the supervising solicitor before being sent to the client. in this instance, i was of the view that it was more beneficial for the student to observe me conduct the interview in the manner he would be expected to. the same level of service was being provided to the client in any event. perhaps, very simply, a risk of online delivery, be that through teaching or in a clinic setting, there is always the potential for technology to fail us! practice report 210 access to justice it would be remiss of me not to consider the significance of cle in delivering access to justice. when i deliberate about what was intended when the student legal advice centre was launched, the purpose was three-fold: i) to provide the students the opportunity through clinical legal education to develop knowledge and practical skills by providing advice and assistance to the public ii) to provide the community of with free advice and assistance iii) to signpost clients where the expertise required to an individual case is beyond that of the centre the purpose and what was intended at the launch of the centre remains the same to date. in 2018, stevens, kerr & harper commented upon the future of law clinics: “technology could also lengthen the reach of law clinics to rural areas, offering a “virtual legal service”. this virtual process could be facilitated not only by skype and video conferencing but through the creation of an app that allows documents to be practice report 211 safely scanned and uploaded. with these tools in place, technology could be the way forward.”10 whilst technological advances within the student legal advice centre are yet to reach advances such as the creation of an app, i can comment upon my own experience of delivering the centre’s service through an online platform, in terms of increasing access for the public. prior to migrating the centre to an online service, all client appointments were face to face. the centre experienced a number of clients who failed to attend appointments without notice. since moving the service online, all clients have attended their appointments. clients are no longer perhaps having difficulty in physically attending appointments. furthermore, it is providing the opportunity to people who do not live within a comfortable travelling distance to utilise the centre’s services. when we initially moved the service online, i was concerned that we may see a reduction in the number of clients. for the students to gain the real-world experience we need to have the client base. fortunately, i can report that the centre continues to have a good client base and as stated above, is reaching out to people beyond the city and county. 10 adam stevens, zoe kerr and sarah harper, ‘the role of pro bono representation in allowing access to justice” (30.07.18) the writers were law student interns, participating in the ws society internship programme in july 2018. the article summarises their research and presentation. http://www.wssociety.co.uk/features/2018/7/30/8xxtiddcliks1s5sosak8jj9wfqzc9 http://www.wssociety.co.uk/features/2018/7/30/8xxtiddcliks1s5sosak8jj9wfqzc9 practice report 212 close at the time of writing, the students have experienced seven weeks of the first semester and the change in delivery methods. as previously discussed, delivery of the module is through blackboard collaborate. being relatively new to world of academia and lecturing has meant that the use of such technologies has been as equally new to me as it perhaps is to the students. i am elated (and admittedly relieved) to report a positive experience to date. through the use of tools such as polls, break-out rooms and asynchronously, the use of discussion boards the students are actively engaging with delivery. i have conducted simulated interviews using online platforms, which assimilates how students will see clients in the centre and again, this was a positive experience a view shared by the students. a challenge at the outset was around being satisfied as the module leader and supervising solicitor for the centre, that the students would be competent to become client facing. in such a short period of time, i am satisfied that the method of delivery combined with the student engagement enables me to ensure competency. despite the challenges of on-line delivery, we continue to afford the students the same opportunities, arguably more apt opportunities in line with how practice is developing. the collaborative community of practice within cle as a solicitor in practice sharing practice certainly was not common to me. however, when i joined the university of derby and started developing the student legal practice report 213 advice centre, it became very apparent that there was a strong support network of academics and practitioners in cle. i am sure i am not alone in the view that such a collaborative community of practice is invaluable. i am further of the view that such a network has strengthened as a result of covid 19 and that we can continue to share practice and learn from one another, which in turn will strengthen delivery of cle to our students. the continued provision of a pro bono service is key. the wider impact in terms of challenges of adapting practice in cle is to ensure in facing and overcoming any challenges, we do so to enable continuing effective delivery of cle to students and to enable the ongoing provision of clinics. we find ourselves in a changing landscape. whilst we face challenges in such times, it is an opportunity to embrace the change with positivity, to enable the continued development of clinical legal education and in turn continue to deliver access to justice. 105 uk and ireland street law conference 2022 review ruth nwosu, sabrina shafi, kristianna peel, isabel ng & heloisa chambisse1 introduction the uk and ireland street law conference brings together academics, lawyers, students, and other street law enthusiasts to promote, support and celebrate public legal education (ple) and the progress being made in this important field. normally held annually, this was the first conference since the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic, taking place over the 7th and 8th april 2022 and hosted in edinburgh by the law society of scotland. the conference was centred around street law’s commitment and desire in helping the lay person to ‘understand their rights and responsibilities in a world full of increasingly complex and obtuse legal systems.’2 the ethos of the conference was to provide a valuable resource within the ple community for those who were present across the two-day conference and for future guidance. as students and street law initiators, it was gratifying to be a piece and player on the chessboard to interact, connect and understand the multitude of approaches to teaching and learning in a street law context. in accordance with the principle of collaboration and to promote open education, this article aims to collate the insightful topics and discussions from the key-note sessions. this article will then move on to discuss the value of the conference from the perspective of students as well as wider stakeholders in ple programmes. further, we will explore how 1 law students at the university of sussex 2 sean arthurs et al, ‘from zero to 60: building belief, capacity and community in street law instructors in one weekend’ (2017) 24(2) international journal of clinical legal education 118, 120. 106 the conference could be improved moving forward with suggestions as to how students and future lawyers and/or professionals, can contribute to ple in the future. summary of the uk and ireland street law conference, day 1, thursday 7th april 2022 session 1: counterbalancing teen reliance on social media news using street law methodology by amy wallace, new york law school the opening session of the conference was a fascinating presentation performed by amy wallace from new york law school. through her research, she showed the dependency of the teenage population on social media to learn about the ‘news’ and how one can use a street law approach to act as a check upon or a corrective device in relation to the source and accuracy of social media versions of ‘news’ and current affairs. wallace presented an array of relevant and practical role-play scenarios that would serve usefully for these purposes. delegates were then split into groups and were given different roleplay scenarios, for example a mock legislative hearing, to address contemporary issues or ‘news’ and then share with the rest of the conference. overall, this session was a highly educational presentation that demonstrated a range of useful session ideas and delivery methods, completed in the traditional street law style of interactive teaching. session 2: environmental rights & protection by alannah short & luke mcgivern, law society of ireland session two offered a highly relevant insight into one particular street law programme. first, delegates were offered a handout to read about pollution issues near a school. they were then given an a-z sheet and had to write down a word for every letter of the alphabet that related to the scenario in terms of environmental rights and protection. this 107 activity was highly engaging and brought out the creative, even competitive, side of the participants! overall, the activity enabled conference members to understand the power of a seemingly ‘fun’ activity that allows an audience to think and learn in a cooperative, constructive and creative way. reference was then made to other teaching and learning methods that could be linked to the a-z words such as letter writing and, campaigning. examples were then given of a case upon which the scenario was based. this session allowed the participants to gain ideas for future sessions as well as better understanding the street law style of ‘active’ learning. this contrasted usefully for us, as students, given that much of our own institutional teaching can be better described as ‘passive’ – dominated by lectures. session 3: diversity and inclusion: is your ple project accessible to all of your student body? by racheal kirkup & colleagues, bpp education group one of the important aspects of conducting street law projects is ensuring that they are inclusive – and this is what was explored and shared in this session. following a short presentation on the diversity and inclusion issues faced by the presenters and the mechanisms used to address them, the exercise that followed allowed participants to think about the challenges that teachers and learners may have when facing a diversity or inclusion problem. we were encouraged to list possible sources of internal and external support that may be sought by or directed to students. the main piece of advice given by the speakers was to make the project diverse and inclusive from the outset. in other words, it should be clear from the beginning how students can and should be supported if needs arise. for example, the contact details of the university’s wellbeing officer can be included in the project’s handbook so that in the event of a student having anxiety or panic attacks, they know to whom to reach out. in addition, an array of personal circumstances that may impede students from participating in street law projects were noted, including anxiety, costs (such as travel expenses) and limits of 108 current legal knowledge amongst other things. student participation in a variety of roles including behind the scenes support should be widely encouraged so that contributions can be made to projects from different perspectives that meet student needs as well as project objectives. session 4: identifying client opportunities and tailoring materials by kristina garner, university of east anglia kristina garner led an insightful session into how street law programmes can successfully target, and address clients’ needs by tailoring materials to them, reinforcing the idea that street law cannot and should not be a ‘one size fits all’ programme. garner illustrated the flexibility of street law to be able to mould and address the needs of target groups, referring to the world’s estimated population she suggested that there are 7.9 billion possibilities as to how street law programmes can be set up. the session highlighted the processes and considerations that can be taken to tailor street law sessions, beginning with identifying the client base and the opportunities of reaching a diverse number of people within that. for example, in post-sixteen education there are possibilities for street law to be set up for sixth forms, apprentices, university students, as well as a wide range of legal issues that may be of significant interest to the particular street law community group. it was agreed that an effective way to address this was to conduct client interviews to assess what legal education they believe they could benefit from. finally, the importance of addressing different delivery methods was stressed – what may be captivating to primary school children may not be as attractive for an adult writers’ group. it is important to understand street law as a flexible programme and to use its adaptability to tailor to the needs of the client base. 109 session 5: reflections so far by law society of scotland committee following the insightful and fruitful first four sessions of the conference, we regrouped to share our current reflections thus far. the key takeaways included how to effectively design inclusive programmes that were tailored to be adaptable, if necessary, depending on the target audience. to enhance the accessibility of street law, it was considered what a suitable ‘dosage’ of educational material would be. it was noted that spreading out a single topic over several sessions would maximise learning and would enable the facilitators to focus on producing engaging active-based sessions. session 6: keynote workshop: ‘capturing the learning’ maximising the educational benefit of street law and other forms of ple by richard grimes, university of edinburgh led by richard grimes, session six was an enlightening keynote workshop that covered every aspect of an ideal street law programme. it specifically focussed on maximising the educational benefit of street law. first, the core features of an effective programme were defined. grimes provided questions to think about regarding one’s programme such as: what legal knowledge one will be learning?; what skills have been developed?; what values and teaching outcomes will be created?; and more besides. then, the discussion focused on who is learning the content, and how to specifically target that audience be they law students, community groups or other stakeholders. the importance of this as well as significance of monitoring learning and how exactly one can do it was emphasised. the value of using specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound (smart) learning outcomes that are aligned carefully for each activity, and the keeping of records and documents for evidence was stressed. the session then moved on to the delegates working in small groups to prepare a proposal for a street law module to be included in the curriculum and then representatives of each groups had to do a presentation before a mock board of studies of a law school to make the case for 110 accreditation. the session therefore covered basic principles of course outcomes, content, delivery, assessment and evaluation with a hands-on dimension to put it all in context. session 7: sharing ideas and innovations quickfire round by law society of scotland committee this quickfire session allowed for each participant to reintroduce themselves and give a brief overview of their own street law projects. frances ridout spoke about the two street law projects at queen mary university london, ‘sharing and publishing images to embarrass (spite)’3 and ‘i am you’4. the former involves undergraduate students running workshops on the illegality of image-based sexual abuse and harassment and the latter seeks to educate primary school children on the protected characteristics of the equality act 2010, through a series of interactive workshops. the law society of ireland shared a project they had undertaken with children of a similar age, which concerned environmental rights and protection. they began their street law workshops by taking the children outside and making them note and appreciate key aspects of their local environment, before returning their focus to the laws that protect the environment. overall, this session demonstrated the diversity in the structure and execution presented by each street law facilitator. summary of the uk and ireland street law conference, day 2, friday 8th april 2022 session 1: sheffield hallam and our street law programme by lisa woolley, sheffield hallam university 3 queen mary university of london, ‘spite for schools’ < http://www.lac.qmul.ac.uk/clients/communityprojects/spite-for-schools/> accessed 13 june 2022. 4 queen mary university of london, ‘i am you’ < http://www.lac.qmul.ac.uk/clients/community-projects/i-amyou/> accessed 13 june 2022. http://www.lac.qmul.ac.uk/clients/community-projects/spite-for-schools/ http://www.lac.qmul.ac.uk/clients/community-projects/spite-for-schools/ http://www.lac.qmul.ac.uk/clients/community-projects/i-am-you/ http://www.lac.qmul.ac.uk/clients/community-projects/i-am-you/ 111 sheffield hallam’s street law experience was shared in this session by lisa woolley. the covid-19 pandemic moved everyone towards designing and delivering online street law sessions and sheffield hallam was no different. wooley explained that the switch was difficult at the start but, with time, they managed to gain momentum. a highlight of their street law project in the academic year 2020-21 involved delivery of sessions to primary schools. with this experience, they had significant practical takeaways such as the need for disclosure and barring service (dbs) checks. a few of the schools in which they had planned to deliver the sessions were unable to take part as not everyone had been able to carry out a dbs check. if planning such sessions, it is vital that the dbs check is successfully completed. as street law is taught as a module not an extra-curricular activity at sheffield, woolley also shared how the module curriculum is structured and how the students are assessed. finding the most efficient way to assess street law projects as a module is challenging, as it difficult to decide on what exactly is being assessed: the sessions delivered or the work that is done in preparation for the same. the assessment mode adopted at sheffield is a 3000-word essay and a 1000-word selfreflection piece, in which the research and documents gathered by the students can be used as addenda in the reflective piece. session 2: street law scotland: online lessons in a changing teaching environment by georgia turnbull & robb marrs, law society of scotland the pandemic has forced many communities to work and engage online and so, within street law, there is a need to learn how to develop an effective online community. in this session, ideas and tips were shared to facilitate building online communities to ensure that the delivery of the street law sessions is of high quality and as engaging as the faceto-face sessions. these included carrying out icebreaker and other interactive exercises throughout sessions to keep everyone involved and make the people delivering the sessions even more relatable. the latter point is crucial as virtual sessions can present 112 obstacles to making a personal connection with audiences – humanising trainers and fostering greater levels of engagement. at the end of the session, a group exercise was done where we were given a hypothetical scenario of a zoom session of twenty students, and we had to design an online class for the students. again, it was a demonstration of the range, variety and scope of street law work. session 3: copyright: the card game by frances ridout & meghan mizen, queen mary university london (qmul) demystifying the law, building confidence accessing the law and promoting learnercentred education are common aims of ple. in this session, frances ridout and meghan mizen explained how they used street law as the means to achieve these overall aims and to provide greater access to information in the legal and highly technical field of copyright. engaging delegates in the ‘copyright: the card game,’ ridout and mizen demonstrated, yet again at this conference, the importance of producing engaging activities to advance legal education. this literal card game covered the main aspects of copyright in a thorough and captivating manner. playing the game, target audiences draw cards displaying objects and their copyright status. the implications are then debated using facilitated discussion. this session underlined the important link between copyright and street law itself. street law, being an open educational practice and available as a shared resource for the benefit of all, engages in open licensing, open access publishing and creative commons. it is, therefore, necessary for all street law initiatives to be attuned to this to continue to promote accessibility and spread knowledge. session 4: designing street law lessons – ingredients in the secret sauce by lee arbetman, street law inc. using the culinary recipe analogy there are key ‘ingredients’ to effective street law sessions and lee arbetman shared these in this session. he referred to the well-known 113 learning pyramid which studies suggest show that teaching others can lead to a retention rate of information of up to 90%, a significant improvement when compared to more traditional, often university-style approaches to learning and teaching which consists predominantly of lectures and seminars. some studies suggest that knowledge retention can be significantly lower under such passive forms of study (5% and 50% respectively).5 street law’s proactive teaching style allows for research, analytical and problem-solving skills when structuring an interactive lesson with relevant material for the specific target audience, ranging from primary school children to adults of all ages, depending on the community group involved. to further unpack the ‘secret sauce’ to an impactful lesson, arbetman placed emphasis on the ‘dosage’ of information being taught to your audience in order to create an interactive lesson, a method which should be preferred to the heavy offloading of knowledge in one sitting. arbetman’s formula made complete sense both as a presentation and in the context of the other ple work we had heard about at the conference so far. session 5: reflections so far by law society of scotland committee the reflection session of the second and final day of the uk and ireland street law conference 2022 was given by the law society of scotland committee. they first acknowledged the thought-provoking and open atmosphere of the conference and how such valuable round-table discussions lead to a continuous flow of ideas in the conference room, in turn extending to the global community once ideas are implemented and developed. the committee also recognised the importance of the ‘unlearning process’ when it comes to creating a more agile learning environment to deliver street law workshops both in person and online. in terms of online teaching, as demonstrated by the earlier session delivered by georgia turnbull and robb marrs, the paradigm of how 5 see: mcquoid mason, david, ‘introduction to democracy education, best practices handbook’ (2018) undef, pp 7-8. 114 a street law lesson is shaped in person had to be unlearned to give space for new online teaching tools (e.g., padlet) and ideas to maintain student engagement. session 6: sl and qwe, linden thomas & lucy blackburn, university of birmingham & university of central lancashire in light of the solicitors qualifying exam (sqe) being phased in to become the predominant method to qualify as a solicitor in england and wales – candidates need to ‘complete two years’ full-time (or equivalent) qwe’ which enables aspiring solicitors to gain legal work experience.6 following the reflection session, linden thomas and lucy blackburn delivered a topical session on the connection between street law and qualifying work experience (qwe). through several quick-fire rounds, delegates worked in small groups to distinguish whether six case studies could be classified to be qwe or not. this was conducted by using the competences guide that the solicitors regulation authority (england and wales) applies to determine whether an experience constitutes qwe, examples include working with other people, managing yourself and your work, ethics, and professionalism. this session highlighted the value of street law and ple workshops in aiding students to be critical learners and thinkers and the transferable skills to be applied in future practice as a solicitor. session 7: a ple for help: filling public legal education gaps in canada by natasha jaczek, university of ottawa to understand why there has been a lack of ple in canada, jaczek’s session inspired insightful discussion into both the benefits and challenges of setting up a street law programme in school settings and in the wider community. street law initiatives can be included within the school’s timetable, which in turn makes the programme more 6 solicitors regulation authority, ‘qualifying work experience for candidates’ (sra, 5 april 2022) <https://www.sra.org.uk/become-solicitor/sqe/qualifying-work-experience-candidates/> accessed 9 june 2022. 115 accessible to a diverse range of pupils. if seen as part of the curriculum, attendance levels should be high. it was noted, as in a previous presentation, that background and security (dbs) checks must be completed to ensure the safeguarding of all concerned. a potential challenge regarding school-based initiatives was maintaining continuity within each school's curriculum and resources are an ever-present issue. regarding communitybased programmes, benefits included, amongst other things, the ability to address a more diverse range of socially relevant legal topics. overall, this session successfully concluded the conference with a consistent theme that ran throughout – the importance of clear outcomes for all, the need for interactive learning and teaching, the significance of reflecting community-need in terms of topics covered, the practicalities of establishing and managing a street law module and the value of sharing ideas, experiences and ‘best practice’. the overall value of the conference for students and street law participants in general looking specifically from the students’ perspective, the main takeaway from the conference was the high level of participation due to the interactive nature of the sessions that were provided by the speakers – it truly symbolised the ethos of street law and its delivery. given the nature of much, if not most, university teaching, students are conditioned to learn from, and adopt to, a specific way of delivery dominated by lecturestyle and powerpoint assisted presentations. whilst many universities and other higher education institutions have introduced more student-centred learning opportunities (such as law clinics and street law), these are still vastly outnumbered by more traditional forms of knowledge transfer. the conference allowed us, as students, to engage with innovative methods of teaching and learning, showcased by the different presenters. for example, the ‘copyright: the card game’ session, was the epitome of 116 demystifying and decoding the law (in this instance being copyright and business law) through an engaging card game. such sessions enabled us, as students, to better comprehend the underpinnings and structure behind a lesson/project before incorporating the substantive law and applying this, perhaps, to other settings. from the students’ perspective, the conference allowed us, as existing participants in street law, to become more aware of the design and mechanics involved in a project rather than just the delivery aspect. most importantly, it allowed us to gain real insight into the aims and philosophy behind the ple programmes, which has helped motivate and inspire in a very personal way. the session held by lee arbetman on the ‘ingredients in the secret sauce’ combined with the keynote workshop led by richard grimes, which included a simulation of a presentation to a board to persuade it to support a street law programme, were particularly helpful. these sessions put the rest into context and perspective – giving a foundation on which all else could be appreciated. for us, it made sense of much of the work we had already done back at our law school. it was truly ‘doing’ and reflecting on the ‘doing’. additionally, this conference gave a basis for us and the potential for other students to truly understand the purpose of street law and the chance to be more involved in the process moving forward. for the street law delegates more generally, the conference allowed all to refresh their minds on innovative ways to introduce, develop and/or improve projects. it was agreed during these 2 days that the starting point in designing an effective street law session was to identify common aspects of what a successful lesson looks like. in addition, there was useful discussion on the types of activity that can interest and engage different audiences, in particular those based in the school environment, the wider community and a mix between the two (as discussed in jaczek’s session on day two). the topic of dosage of material opened valuable discussion into the several ways street law initiatives can 117 be run effectively, concluding that the focus lay in the captivity of the activities with a lesser focus on providing extensive knowledge in one session. the inclusion of topical but perhaps not commonly addressed topics for street law was another innovative idea that participants at the conference appreciated. for example, copyright and environmental rights were the two of the subjects that stood out as perhaps non-typical matters covered by street law sessions. aside from being inspirational the conference was an excellent opportunity to network and meet potential collaborators for the future. how could this conference be improved going forward? a key suggestion for improvement is to encourage more students to attend the conference. a significant number of the sessions referred to students’ contribution and raising questions about how they felt the activity went and could be improved. without students being well-represented at the conference, an opportunity is missed for such important feedback. having students present at future events would also allow for a firsthand account of their experiences more generally. such conferences are a fantastic platform to exchange ideas and discuss common challenges. in the spirit of co-creation and more effective learning and teaching, involving students from the outset would no doubt contribute to more successful street law and other ple projects. students and facilitators would, thereby, be encouraged to engage in meaningful communication at all developmental stages of projects, as opposed to only giving feedback at the end of particular activities. this could only constructively contribute to ple work in general and street law activity in particular. another improvement could be the inclusion of more examples of active street law programmes. whilst the presentations themselves were highly valuable, observing and 118 taking part in exercises and simulated street law work was, for us, an unforgettable experience. it proved to be especially useful as it helped inspire ideas for us to include in our own future programmes whilst also helping us to visualise how projects can be better tailored to serve different audiences and address relevant topics. further, in conjunction with an annual street law conference, it would be beneficial to have more frequent virtual meetings between universities and the organisations present at the conference. this could create an opportunity for a continuing dialogue on new teaching and learning methods, on potential presentation topics and enabling a more effective sharing of resources that could be useful across the board. suggestions as to how students and future lawyers/ professionals, can contribute to public legal education in the future as future lawyers, or practitioners more broadly, a suggestion as to how one can contribute to ple could be by volunteering to give inspiring talks to universities about the programme. just as the conference demonstrated, inspiring students is a powerful tool and connecting students with practitioners enables greater understanding and access to the street law community. in continuity with student-focused initiatives, campaigns or taster sessions at universities could be held to increase awareness about educating individuals on legal issues. raising awareness amongst students generally of access to justice and the role of legal literacy could incentivise them to join the street law teams. in turn, creating a positive domino effect, and expanding the reach of street law to nonlaw university students will allow for an increase in people being able to provide workshops to the wider community. another way in which students can contribute to ple in the future is by starting programmes in their local areas. for some of us, one of the reasons we took part in the street law project at our university was to learn the building blocks of the project to 119 create a similar one back in our home country. with this aim in mind, we thoroughly immerse ourselves in the experience and learn as much as we can from it so that we can apply our knowledge elsewhere. with an expanding digital era, creating and presenting free, online, programmes/sessions is another viable option. in such a diverse environment, an online lesson can mean that ple could be encouraged and accessed by a wider range of audiences and can mean that lawyers/professionals may find it easier to volunteer, compared to in-person sessions, as it does not require travel and is less time consuming. conclusion prior to the conference, we anticipated a more 2d, presentational-style discussion. instead, the conference exceeded our expectations and revealed a totally different ballgame. we were presented with a truly captivating 2 days which embraced the street law methodology of interactive discussion. from this, we were able to gain a holistic outlook on several different strategies and how one can structure and deliver street law sessions to a variety of target audiences. it was enriching to witness street law being applied across the board and to see students, academics and other street law enthusiasts working and sharing ideas and learning skills to be able to apply in the future. ijple 2 (1) 2018 28 evaluating legal literacy programmes – aims, challenges, models and a call to action richard grimes1 building ‘best practice’ 2 generally speaking, if one asks most people whether improving public understanding of the law and legal system is a good thing, most hands will go up. this is perhaps no surprise. an improved level of legal literacy should not only raise awareness of rights and responsibilities but may well provide people with more of an informed choice about what to do if they encounter legal issues. it might give those concerned the tools and confidence to address some of these problems themselves through self-help and it may, address, at least to some degree, inequalities that otherwise exist. overall, improving levels of legal literacy could enhance access to justice more generally. the generic term often ascribed to raising legal awareness amongst the wider population is public legal education (ple). 1 formerly director of clinical programmes, york law school, university of york, uk and now a legal education and access to justice consultant, and contactable at: richard.grimes@hotmail.co.uk 2 this contribution is based on a presentation and discussion that took place at the ed o’brien memorial workshop on street law best practice in durban, south africa in april 2016. i am grateful for all who attended that session and for their insights. thanks must also go to david mcquoid-mason and the other staff at the school of law, kwazulu natal university and the south african street law movement more generally for their vision, organisation and commitment in setting up the event and in following through with the publication of which this is a part. ‘best practice’ is used here in the sense of not what is best per se but rather what models, techniques and approaches can be devised, adapted and implemented through proven work elsewhere. mailto:richard.grimes@hotmail.co.uk ijple 2 (1) 2018 29 there is a wealth of anecdotal material suggesting that all of the above is highly relevant and impactful3 but there is little by way of clear empirical evidence to substantiate such claims.4 this article will look at the need for, and means of, developing such an evidence base and ends with a plea for more research, sharing of ideas and collaboration in terms of evaluating ple. the article will be presented in the format of an introductory section looking at the background and history of ple (in particular street law) in terms of aims, challenges and models from the perspective of evaluating impact. this is followed by a ‘lesson plan’ in which a sample set of possible ple options are set out with the means of evaluating impact incorporated in the model used. it is hoped that this might provide a guide for those wishing to devise (or revise) their legal literacy programmes from an evaluative viewpoint. as will be seen below the starting point is that those responsible for design and delivery must identify what it is they are expecting to achieve from any planned session and whether those outcomes are in fact reached. this type of evaluation, formative evaluation, measures whether the objectives of any particular lesson are 3 there is a great deal of published work on the perceived benefits of ple – see for example: the collection of articles in j. robins (ed.), waking up to ple : public legal education, access to justice & closing the justice gap, justice gap series, solicitors’ journal, 2013 and, more jurisdictionally and community-specific: j. krishnan, s. kavadi, a. girach, d. khupkar, k. kokal, s. mazumdar, nupur, g. panday, a. sen, a. sodhi, and b. shukla, grappling at the grassroots: access to justice in india’s lower tier, harvard human rights journal, vol. 27, 2014, 151. 4 a recently published study in the usa does however highlight the impact of one prominent ple approach – street law – on school pupils although even this study highlights the need for further research. see: sean g. arthurs, street law: creating tomorrow’s citizens today, lewis and clark law review, 19:4, 925. ijple 2 (1) 2018 30 achieved and provides sign posts for how to revise instruction to ensure objectives are achieved. the template should enable those using it to replicate and, as necessary, adapt an evaluable model for use in the field. this paper then has a sample form appended as an example of how ple sessions might be evaluated. aims before turning to the models and impact measurement what specifically are the purposes of evaluation? evaluation is important for several related reasons. first and foremost if planned outcomes and actual achievements are not clear how can the value of what is being carried out be assessed – with a view to monitoring progress, awarding possible credit and making improvements in future delivery? more strategically perhaps, and as will be seen, many ple initiatives rely on either public funding, the backing of foundations and other charitable bodies and/or the input of voluntary and not for profit personnel and initiatives. the relative lack of impact evidence is surely an obstacle to securing financial and other resource backing? the aim therefore of this article is to raise the importance of evaluation and to identify the means by which any assessment may be carried out. in a nutshell, can we identify: • whether outcomes set for a particular ple session or event have been achieved? ijple 2 (1) 2018 31 • if future planning and delivery can be improved? • whether there is impact – what difference does an improvement in legal awareness actually make in the immediate, short-term or longer-term contexts? • if and how the evidence can be used for development purposes – for example funding, curriculum design, policy change? • if findings of an empirical nature match what instinct and anecdote suggests – thus building a body of evidence that has consistency and resonance.5 challenges first, what is meant here by ple? at its most general, it is the raising of awareness of law and the legal system through a variety of techniques and methods including the provision of information (hard copy, electronic and face to face) as well as through a more formal education interface such as one-off presentations or structured courses and programmes. this takes into account the street law approach where target audiences are introduced to a range of legal rights and responsibility issues through interactive learning and teaching techniques often lead by lawyers, judges, and trained law students under professional supervision.6 5 for example the claims made by the bethel institute through their learning pyramid – as discussed in a. kumar, personal, academic and career development in higher education soaring to success, routledge taylor & francis, 2007 6 some street law programmes are delivered by in-house teams largely based in ngos, the initiators and probably the most prolific in the usa and internationally being street law inc., washington dc. others are lawschool based. for a discussion on the history and current prevalence of street law programmes see: r. grimes, e. o’brien, d. mcquoid-mason and j. zimmer, street law and social justice education, in the global clinical movement: educating lawyers for social justice, f. bloch (ed.), oup, 2010. i do not suggest here that students ijple 2 (1) 2018 32 there seems to be a degree of consensus that ple should include, but not be limited to, the dissemination of information. a point often made is that in addition to the acquisition of knowledge, ple involves fostering understanding and the development of skills. it is also argued that ple should aim to influence attitudes, and build confidence. distinctions need to be drawn between information per se and education more generally. the latter commonly involves custom made and subject specific material, delivered more than likely in an interactive way, whereas the content of the former tends to be generic, with the direction of flow largely being one way, from ‘expert’ to recipient. it also is inclined to treat the audience as a passive receiver of that information. street law is probably the best example of the education model and one that shapes part of the evaluation template examples given below. the quest for robust evaluative evidence is, however problematic. this is on a number of levels. first, what is being measured and secondly, how might that measurement be reliably and consistently done? it should also be remembered that studies involving sensitive data may need ethics approval from professional or other institutional bodies (such as universities whose staff or students carry out research) and that there may be legislative requirements over the handling of such data. one way to measure social impact is to study widespread changes over time. however, the literature suggests that neither the measures nor the tools appear to exist are or necessarily make, good teachers, but their use in many ple programmes is a model that can have multiple beneficiaries including the students themselves. ijple 2 (1) 2018 33 in the ple context (although there have been a number of evaluative studies in other disciplines using defined methodologies).7 in uk ministry-led task force on ple in 2007, ple presented the following challenges that affect both planning and evaluation: • ple sessions or materials are typically part of some larger curricula • ple is unlikely to be clearly recognised by practitioners • ple is frequently tailored to achieving goals for users • target ‘audiences’ for ple initiatives vary widely by age, background, ability and needs • participants in ple-related work are unlikely to recognise its nature or scope • the goals of ple may focus on different outcomes including changes in behaviours, skills and attitudes. 8 in addition, the lack of a ‘like with like’ comparison and the nature of learning as process rather than product make evaluation challenging to say the least.9 by way of 7 for example see: c. brennan and k. gallagher, consumer support networks: improving consumer advice in the uk, international journal of consumer studies, 26 (3), 227, 2002; and financial services authority, measuring financial capability: an exploratory study, fsa, 2005 8 pleas task force, developing capable citizens: the role of public legal education, department for constitutional affairs, russell press, 2007 9 for the product vs. process debate see: s.j. lachman, learning is a process: toward an improved definition of learning, the journal of psychology: interdisciplinary and applied, 131 (5), 1997, 477 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ijc.2002.26.issue-3/issuetoc ijple 2 (1) 2018 34 contrast few ask for the learning legitimacy of other forms of education to be proven. judging by the number of students reportedly disinterested in lectures, a similar study on impact and the value-added component of learning passively might be usefully called for!10 all of these factors or characteristics have measurable dimensions and may be interrelated. the measurement of impact is therefore complex and difficult. measuring how and when improved awareness rises to the level of impacting a participant’s ability to implement the newly acquired knowledge or skill is also difficult to establish – particularly in trying to identify cause and effect. this has previously been shown to be the case in legal self-help situations.11 despite these challenges, it is suggested here that impact can be measured at different moments in time and with different techniques and approaches. a combination of methods and, where relevant, an amalgamation of findings coupled with subsequent analysis can reveal valuable insights on impact and outcomes. let us turn to this now. 10 the evidence for this is largely anecdotal but supported by much of the literature on learning and teaching. see for example; g. gibbs twenty terrible reasons for lecturing, sced occasional paper no. 8, birmingham. 1981. 11 see: j. giddings, m. lawler and m. robertson, the complexities of legal self-help, in: j. robins, op cit, 50 ijple 2 (1) 2018 35 models space in this article does not permit a detailed discussion of evaluative research techniques. for those interested there is a wealth of material available elsewhere.12 suffice it to say for present purposes that useful evaluation might consist of a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods. these might start with a simple record of the number of those attending ple sessions or accessing ple material. entry and exit questionnaires might be used to see what the target audience expected and then made of the materials and/or presentations. if a particular ple project is targeted at a specific issue it may be possible to monitor impact in terms of the resolution of disputes, take up of benefits or incidence of unwarranted activity such as domestic violence, unlawful eviction or anti-social behaviour (in each instance in terms of both number and participant perception). focus groups could be used to prompt feedback and discussion. evidence could be gathered from ple participants (the audience, the 12 see for example: s. halliday and p. schmidt, (eds.). conducting law and society research: reflections on methods and practices, cambridge university press, 2009. there are also important studies in other subject fields that attempt to evaluate impact – for example in youth justice, numeracy and financial literacy and in consumer protection – see: j. kenrick, young people’s social welfare need and the impact of good advice, youth access, 2007; financial services authority, towards a national strategy for financial capability, financial services authority, 2003, financial services authority, measuring financial capability: an exploratory study, financial services authority, 2005 and financial services authority, levels of financial capability in the uk: results of a baseline survey, financial services authority, 2006; and, individuals’ awareness, knowledge and exercise of employment rights, 2007 and the annual competition act and consumer rights survey office of fair trading (uk), respectively. citizenship education more generally was the subject of a longitudinal study in the uk, which began in 2001 and ran until 2009. the report on the findings can be found in: a. keating, d. kerr, t. benton, e. mundy and j. lopes, citizenship education in england 2001-2010: young people’s practices and prospects for the future: the eighth and final report from the citizenship education longitudinal study, national foundation for educational research, dfe, 2010.for an interesting account of ple programmes and evaluative methods see: m. sefton, public legal education strategy (ples) task force scoping report, paper 2/03a, research unit, department for constitutional affair, 2006 (from which the citations to some of the reports referred to in this footnote were taken). ijple 2 (1) 2018 36 presenters and other stakeholders) before, at, after and following the event of release of material in question. the appendix to this paper contains an example of how session delivery might be evaluated. of course any evaluation will hinge on what is expected and that might vary considerably, for example if a ple session was a one-off event looking at a particular issue or was more overtly educational in an incremental sense such as a short course or semester-long module. hard evidence may be relatively easily obtained when impact can be measured at the time of or soon after the ple input. the much more difficult question as to lasting or longer-term significance of an increase in legal awareness inevitably requires longitudinal studies which are, by their nature, time-consuming to carry out, relatively expensive to administer and difficult to firmly establish cause and effect. some notable examples of highly successful studies in the legal awareness field (rather than impact of ple as such) can be found and make for interesting reading.13 the pleasance et al causes of action studies, based on a rolling programme, for instance show the very high price paid for unresolved legal disputes (some gbp £3.5 million a year and not including the human cost). it begs the question of the extent to which a greater awareness of legal rights and responsibilities might mitigate against such waste and the negative impact on personal well-being. 13 for example: h. genn, paths to justice: what people do and think about going to law hart, 1999 and p. pleasance, n. balmer, a. patel, a. cleary, t. huskinson and t. cotton, civil justice in england and wales: report of wave 1 of the england and wales social and civil justice panel survey legal services commission and ipsos mori, 2011 ijple 2 (1) 2018 37 a suggested template and examples of evaluation in a street law context let us therefore take the issues and principles identified above and put theory into practice by designing lesson plans that address the need for evaluation. in order to stress the importance of a clear structure for ple preparation and delivery and to act as a guide for those developing ple programmes a common template is used throughout this book. this uses the following format: who is the ple directed towards – audience? what is covered – topic/subject matter? what is the purpose – learning outcomes? where and when will it happen – location and day/time? who is doing what – preparers, presenters and any relevant supervision? content – what knowledge, skills and/or values are to be covered? how will it be done – mode of delivery with timings (focuser, small groups, report back, wind up and evaluation)? what is needed – resources (materials, equipment, room(s) and people)? how was it – for you and them? what next – future progress? ijple 2 (1) 2018 38 for illustrative purposes we will work with two examples here following a similar template; first, there is a plan for delivery of a typical street law session and secondly a plan for the use of hard copy legal information (which could also/instead be delivered as part of a web-based ple project). example 1 work plan for a ‘typical’ street law session on stop and search provisions under domestic law14 institution: a law school running a credit bearing module called ‘law in the community’ item details timings comments target audience young people in a ‘special’ school for pupils with a record of prior poor school attendance. check age and capacity of pupils. do risk assessment. topic police stop and search – your rights and responsibilities. teachers at school have said that some pupils are often subject to stop and search as they have a ‘reputation’ amongst local police. learning outcomes (los) for pupils: 1. to be able to specify when a police officer can insist that a person stops and the learning outcomes must be smart 16 and for evaluation purposes need to be linked to the 14 this example was provided by delegates at the ed o’brien street law conference, durban, south africa, april 2016 16 specific, measurable, appropriate or assignable, relevant or realistic and timely or time-bound – see: g. doran, there's a s.m.a.r.t. way to write management's goals and objectives, management review (ama forum) 70(11), 35, 1981. ijple 2 (1) 2018 39 answers questions 2. to know when it is appropriate to co-operate with the police even if the police cannot legally insist 3. to identify what can be done if the police exceed their powers or if a person is arrested. for the law student presenters:15 assessment methods. location/day/time the stop and search lesson is one of a series of ‘know your rights’ presentations to be delivered at the school on a set day per week for one hour. 60 minutes plus travel time. timings will need to be agreed with the school staff and normally fit into an allotted timetable space. preparation/delivery/ supervision (who?) a team of 5 law students will research the law and applicable procedures and will deliver the session at the school. one staff member to supervise preparation and delivery. the content and delivery format will be checked by the supervisor (an ex-practising lawyer in the law school). content 1. police powers to stop an individual/group 2. police powers to consequently search persons/property 3. consequences of refusing to stop or be searched 4. possible sources of help if arrested 5. possible action/ route for complaint if police powers exceeded or person otherwise 15 a separate set out learning outcomes are required if the law students are expected to achieve certain educational goals. these will vary according to the module studied and the level at which it is offered e.g. first year or final year of study. for reasons of space limitation these details are not included in the template here. ijple 2 (1) 2018 40 unhappy with treatment exceeded. delivery (how, logistics and timings) 60 minutes using interactive techniques. arrival and set up introduction and icebreaker – 5 mins pupils to observe role play of police stopping and searching an individual – 10 mins brainstorm what has happened and why? 15 mins replay role play (using pupils) using forum theatre technique17 15 mins discussion on what to do if the police are thought to be at fault – 10 mins recap through a quiz what the basic legal position is – 5 mins. timings are approximate and flexible but need to be monitored. if the session is likely to overrun additional time may be found in a following session. resources paper, pens, flip chart, props for role play, room large enough for roleplay/discussion, possibly a prize and/or refreshments. outcomes (check if los are achieved) quiz with prize(s). other evaluation (target audience and/or presenters) questionnaire for students to complete before and after the event; follow up session 17 a useful devise in which observers can stop then action during a role play if they think what is happening is incorrect or could be improved. the objector then assumes the role of the person who was interrupted. for a discussion of this technique see: http://dramaresource.com/forum-theatre/, accessed 1 june 2016. http://dramaresource.com/forum-theatre/ ijple 2 (1) 2018 41 recapping on subject matter of this presentation; inclusion of stop and search questions in pupils’ course assessment. review for further development discussion with school staff on value of session; debrief for law students post-event. link with future projects/sessions part of on-going set of presentations. development of similar programmes at other venues. example 2 work plan for a tool kit on self-representation before courts and tribunals18 institution responsible: advocacy rights – an ngo supporting unrepresented litigants19 item plan comments target audience advocacy groups and their members. important to make links with local/regional/national groups and any relevant networks. topic representing yourself in civil courts and tribunals. learning outcomes (los) for users: 1. to know where the local courts and tribunals are located 2. to know how to start or respond to the issue of legal proceedings 3. to be able to recognise what will happen next once proceedings are issued 4. to be able to gather and present relevant evidence 5. to know how to address the court or tribunal 6. to know where to go to for help if required. the purpose of the toolkit is to provide an overview of legal proceedings so that a non-lawyer can recognise what happens and why in legal proceedings before courts and tribunals. 18 this example is included to contrast with the more typical street law presentation 19 this is a fictional ngo but based on various manifestations in the uk and other countries for example – the rotherham advocacy partnerships. more information on this can be found at: http://www.rotherhamadvocacy.org.uk/, accessed 1 june 2016. http://www.rotherhamadvocacy.org.uk/ ijple 2 (1) 2018 42 location/day/time not relevant preparation/delivery/supervision (who?) the preparation will be supervised by an experienced practising lawyer. content 1. overview of jurisdiction of courts and tribunals 2. issue of proceedings 3. preliminary hearings and orders 4. evidence 5. trial 6. remedies and other court orders 7. settling cases out of court 8. sources of help for litigants in person. delivery (how, logistics and timings) booklet available in hard copy or in an e-version and available on ngos’ websites. resources distribution points in publically accessible places (e.g. libraries and schools). links to websites. outcomes (check if los are achieved) a questionnaire to be incorporated in the booklet/on website. other evaluation (target audience and/or presenters) focus groups of users and court/tribunal staff. review for further development informed by focus group. a suggested template for user/other stakeholder feedback is appended to this article. possible link with an academic institution/government department to conduct empirical and longitudinal ‘impact’ study. link with future projects/sessions future plans depend on nature of feedback. ijple 2 (1) 2018 43 summary of evaluation ‘best practice’ potential roles for ple include the raising of awareness of rights and responsibilities generally, preventing problems from arising or escalating and assisting (directly through improving self-help capacity or indirectly through enhancing the ability to identify a problem) and then recognising routes through which further assistance can be sought, such as referral to another agency (including a lawyer). in any version in which ple is targeted at individuals or groups with problems and issues, ple might also focus on those who assist others – for example a training of trainers or development of para-legal model.20 in either case when working with the target audience evaluation is still critical in order to monitor the educational process as well as to allow for fine-tuning and other future development. whilst evaluation is problematic, particularly in terms of robust methodologies and the inevitably long-term nature of impact studies, a careful review of expected outcomes and utilisation of a range of research techniques may enable the impact of ple to be monitored and analysed for the long-term benefit of wider community. clearly there is much work to be done on developing, funding and conducting ple impact research. this brief paper is intended to help kick-start that process. if anyone is interested in working on ple evaluation please contact the editors of this journal. 20 see for example: p. patel, z. douglas and k. farley, learning from a ‘paralegals’ intervention to support women’s property rights in uganda, international centre for research on women, 2014, available at: http://www.icrw.org/sites/default/files/publications/icrw%20uganda%20paralegals_final.pdf, accessed 1 june 2016 http://www.icrw.org/sites/default/files/publications/icrw%20uganda%20paralegals_final.pdf ijple 2 (1) 2018 44 appendix evaluation template form please complete the following set of questions in as much detail as possible for your ple project please return completed forms, via e-mail, to xxxxx, by xxxxx. project reference: project title: lead organisation: project start date: a. please provide a brief summary of the aims of the project and state how these will be, or have been, achieved: b. which of the sub-themes does the project fall into? (please refer to guidance attached but please amend if these are incorrect and add the groupings by client and category.) client group: category: project objective: c. how has the project provided concrete and material help for targeted clients (this should be based on real examples and should include the number of clients helped and the level of help delivered)? example(s) d. what have been the long-term impacts of the project, if any, and how has the project secured these improvements? e. are there aspects of the project that could be replicated elsewhere, if so, what are they and under what circumstances would it be appropriate to replicate these (this could include information materials that have been produced by the project, for example)? f. what impact has any funding (including matched funding) had on the project? has it added value to the project, is so, how ijple 2 (1) 2018 45 g. what links, if any, has the project had or made to other initiatives (government/council/otherwise)? h. what difficulties, if any, has the project experienced? i. what plans are there for this or related projects in the future and what is required to achieve these? ijple 2 (1) 2018 3 street law, inc.: context, history and future lee arbetman1 introduction in 1972, a small group of georgetown university law students developed a series of practical law lessons for use with public high school students in washington, d.c. these visionaries recognized that ordinary citizens—not just lawyers—needed a basic understanding of practical law in order to take on civic responsibilities. the lessons were popular with the high school students and with their law student teachers. responding to their practical nature, the high school students called these lessons “street law.” the name stuck.2 a pilot program in two local high schools in 1972–73 launched a movement—first in the united states but eventually around the world—to teach the public about law and public 1 lee arbetman is executive director of street law, inc., a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization located just outside washington, d.c. lee is a graduate of grinnell college (b.a. in history), the university of massachusetts (m. ed. in social studies education), and george washington university law school (j.d.). he has taught at the elementary school, middle school, high school, college, and law school levels. he is the co-author of street law: a course in practical law and the developer of many of street law’s programs. he has delivered street law training and technical assistance in mexico, ukraine, turkey, and georgia. 2 washington, d.c. and the district of columbia are used interchangeably in this article to refer to the capital of the united states. ijple 2 (1) 2018 4 policy using learner-centered, interactive teaching methods. today, street law programs can be found in every state in the u.s. and in more than 40 countries around the world.3 propelling this global movement to advance justice through practical education about law and democracy is street law, inc., a washington, d.c. area non-profit organization that is an outgrowth of the early street law program at georgetown university law center. that pilot effort has also grown into a full-fledged, credit-bearing experiential education program at georgetown that has served as a model program for more than 120 law schools across the country and around the world. nearly 1,000 upper division georgetown law students have participated in this program since its inception. many have gone on to positions as law firm partners, corporate counsel, government officials in the u.s. and abroad, and even members of the federal court bench. they have taken from their law school experience a commitment to public education about law and democracy. the early pilot at georgetown law center and the d.c. public schools has spawned a variety of street law programs delivered by teachers, lawyers, law students, judges, justice system staff (e.g., probation officers), youth workers, and police officers. programs 3 visit www.streetlaw.org for more information about street law, inc., including a map of its program activities around the world. http://www.streetlaw.org/ ijple 2 (1) 2018 5 worldwide have reached students from elementary schools to community colleges and from classrooms to the justice system and community settings. all street law programs share the following three characteristics: 1. teaching practical content: legal rights and responsibilities, obligations under the rule of law, internationally accepted human rights, and the operation of democratic systems of government 2. using interactive teaching strategies to develop important skills: civic engagement, advocacy, problem solving, critical analysis, and communication 3. involving the community in the educational process: subject matter experts from the legal community visit classrooms, and students go into their communities to both observe and affect law in action the emergence of street law in the early 1970s was not an historical accident—it was a historical necessity. the social turbulence of the 1960s in the u.s. lead to passage of laws that affected broad segments of the public. during that decade the supreme court of the united states decided cases that implemented their 1954 public school desegregation cases,4 nationalized rules affecting police-citizen interaction,5 and recognized that public 4 brown v. board of education, 347 u.s. 483 (1954) and brown ii, 349 u.s. 294 (1955) 5 mapp v. ohio, 367 u.s. 643 (1961), prohibited the use of illegally seized evidence in state court criminal trials (the exclusionary rule); miranda v. arizona, 384 u.s. 436 (1966), required that police warn defendants in custodial interrogation situations that they have a right to counsel and that their testimony could be used again them (selfincrimination) ijple 2 (1) 2018 6 school students did not leave their first amendment rights at the door.6 additionally, the u.s. congress passed important, far-reaching civil rights legislation in 1964, 1965, and 1968.7 taken together these statutes and court decisions presented the american public with many laws that affected them in their daily lives. it was time for the public to become legally literate. the 1970s: early pilot programs in washington, d.c. the street law concept—teaching practical law to ordinary citizens—was first proposed in 1971 at georgetown university law center.8 a georgetown law center public interest law professor, jason newman, and four of his law students—including future street law, inc. executive director ed o’brien—collaborated on a plan to teach law in washington, d.c. public high schools. this group from georgetown law drafted the first street law lessons, which covered practical aspects of criminal law, juvenile justice, consumer law, family law, housing law, and individual rights and liberties.9 6 tinker v. des moines, 393 u.s. 503 (1969) 7 civil rights act of 1964, 78 stat. 241 (july 2, 1964) prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin in employment and in businesses of public accommodation; voting rights act of 1965, 79 stat. 437 (august 6, 1965), prohibited racial discrimination in voting and banned literacy tests that had been used in some southern states in the u.s.; civil rights act of 1968, 82 stat. 73 (april 11, 1968), also known as the federal fair housing act, prohibited discrimination in housing. 8 the georgetown street law program has continued without interruption since 1972. https://www.law.georgetown.edu/academics/academic-programs/clinical-programs/our-clinics/street-law-program/ 9 at about the same time that street law was starting in washington, d.c., the american bar association in chicago, illinois, created its youth education for citizenship committee (now known as the division for public education) www.americanbar.org. the constitutional rights foundation in southern california (www.crf-usa.org) and law in a https://www.law.georgetown.edu/academics/academic-programs/clinical-programs/our-clinics/street-law-program/ http://www.americanbar.org/ http://www.crf-usa.org/ ijple 2 (1) 2018 7 the street law pioneers successfully promoted the idea of street law to vincent reed, the district of columbia’s associate superintendent of schools at the time, and the school system approved a pilot project to begin in 1972 at woodrow wilson and eastern high schools. the street law pilot project culminated in a mock trial in georgetown law center’s moot courtroom, with the high school students trained to play the roles of attorneys and witnesses. students’ success in the first street law mock trial competition had a major impact on street law's future. free society, now the center for civic education (www.civiced.org) also launched. these ngos continue to operate in 2018, and each has also had experience with democracy education programs outside the u.s. ijple 2 (1) 2018 8 this was the first interscholastic high school mock trial competition. in short order, the mock trial competition expanded to all the d.c. public high schools. eventually the concept spread across the country. today the majority of states in the u.s. have high school mock trial competitions. as evidence of success, the initial mock trial competition spread quickly to all of the washington, d.c. public high schools and then to other states. there is now a robust national high school mock trial competition in the u.s. winners of state competitions compete against each other at a national event that is held in a different city each year. all states and most u.s. territories send teams, and, in recent years, south korea has also participated.10 10 national high school mock trial championship: www.nationalmocktrial.org ijple 2 (1) 2018 9 equipped with the mock trial competition, a series of tested, engaging learner-centered lessons, and inquiries from other law schools and school systems, a separate organization was formed to pursue the education of lay people about law and democracy. throughout the 1970s, street law staff took the pilot program model to other u.s. law schools with much success. the early adopters of this model were the law schools at university of notre dame (indiana), cleveland state university (ohio), university of denver (colorado), university of san francisco (california), university of tennessee (tennessee), and university of california-davis (california). street law programs can now be found at more than 70 law schools in the u.s. and more than 50 more around the world.11 street law, inc. pioneered the concept of law student teaching programs and of having law schools award academic (or pro bono) credit for these programs. in the u.s. these efforts were often called street law, practical law, youth and the law, or civic education programs. outside the u.s., the term street law term was sometimes used, but because it frequently suffered in translation into other languages, the general term “public legal education” was often used. today, the term public legal education is widely used to describe programs that teach non-lawyers about law. the 1970s also brought street law programs into prisons. the georgetown street law program began a new, parallel program model in which law students taught practical 11 some, but not all, of these programs are identified on street law’s map of program activities around the world at www.streetlaw.org ijple 2 (1) 2018 10 law lessons to inmates in local jails and prisons. after correctional officers noted that they, too, needed to learn their rights, street law expanded the clinic to ensure that prison officials and correctional officers also understood the law. street law co-published a textbook to use in the program.12 street law in the classroom in the late 1970s, street law expanded its programming to provide professional development to high school social studies teachers. with funding from the law enforcement assistance administration at the u.s. department of justice, street law and four other organizations13 began the process of introducing what was called law-related education to the nation’s schools. with consistent bipartisan support from the u.s. congress, this program continued for nearly three decades and resulted in substantial curriculum development, training, and support for teachers, lawyers, law students, and police officers throughout the u.s. 12 o’brien, edward, margaret fisher, and david t. austern. practical law for correctional personnel. st. paul, mn: west publishing company, 1981. this publication is now out of print, and street law, inc. no longer works with correctional officers. co-author margaret fisher, former street law inc. staffer and now distinguished practitioner in residence and director of the street law program at seattle university school of law, has decades of experience working with correctional officers. she can be reached at mfisher130@gmail.com. 13 american bar association, youth education for citizenship; law in a free society; constitutional rights foundation; and phi alpha delta law fraternity ijple 2 (1) 2018 11 as this national process began, street law staff members were encouraged to develop their lessons into a textbook. in 1974, in tandem with west publishing company, street law published a small run of textbooks for use in the washington, d.c. program; the first national edition of street law: a course in practical law was published in 1975.14 together, street law and west publishing pioneered the idea of a high school practical law textbook. street law’s current publisher is mcgraw-hill education and the 9th edition of the text was released in summer 2015. the various editions of street law have sold nearly one million copies in the united states. the national law-related education program led to the creation of statewide civic learning programs in almost every state. some of these were housed at state bar associations, some at law schools, while others became independent nonprofit organizations. these statewide organizations became the backbone of law-related and civic education in the 14 the early editions of street law: a course in practical law were published by west publishing company. the current ninth edition, © 2016, is published by mcgraw-hill education. ijple 2 (1) 2018 12 united states. from early on, the u.s. street law experience was importantly grounded in a multitude of effective partnerships with law schools, governments, legal practitioners, and community groups, which contributed to its scale, sustainability and ongoing success. street law in the juvenile justice system by the end of the 1970s, street law had expanded into the juvenile justice system. the honorable norma holloway johnson, a district of columbia superior court judge who later became chair of street law’s national advisory committee, observed a need for street law programming among the young people who came before her in court. she initiated a street law court diversion program to ensure that the young people involved in the court system understood what was happening to them in court, while also learning some legal basics. youths attended street law classes every saturday for 12 weeks. if they succeeded in the course, the charges against them were dropped. this program began with first offenders for non-violent acts, but was later expanded to juveniles charged with weapons offenses. street law promoted the use of its empowering teaching strategies in juvenile justice systems nationally, and street law lessons have become a part of probation services in many other states. a study of the washington, d.c. diversion program found that ijple 2 (1) 2018 13 students who completed the program reduced their recidivism rate dramatically relative to other similarly situated youth who had not participated in street law. the 1980s: national expansion and international beginnings teens, crime, and the community in 1986, street law, along with the national crime prevention council,15 initiated an innovative approach to crime prevention through the development of the teens, crime, and the community program. this program taught middle school students about criminal and juvenile justice and how to avoid violent crime, substance abuse, child abuse, acquaintance rape, shoplifting, and property crime. students also developed and implemented a wide range of crime prevention projects. this crime prevention education program naturally led to the involvement of police officers. in response, street law developed a separate set of lessons so that these schoolbased police officers could benefit from street law’s proven classroom pedagogy. 15 national crime prevention council: www.ncpc.org ijple 2 (1) 2018 14 the first set of street law lessons for use by school resource officers was published in the late 1980s, and in 2001, street law received the presidential citation from the national association of school resource officers in recognition of the classroom materials developed for sros. in 2016, street law updated and expanded its lessons for schooland community-based police officers in a new publication: street law for police & teens. this program was important to street law's development for two reasons: it provided the organization with an early and positive experience with project-based learning (sometimes called action civics in the u.s.), and it began a long and fruitful series of partnerships between street law and law enforcement officers, in particular school resource officers whose "beat" was in and around schools.16 16 in 2002, street law was awarded a presidential citation from the national association of school resource officers: www.nasro.org. in 2017, street law completed a revised set of lessons for police officers: www.streetlaw.org/policemanual. ijple 2 (1) 2018 15 street law in south africa in 1986, street law began to expand its work internationally. professor david mcquoidmason, dean of the law faculty at the university of natal in durban, south africa, met with street law, inc.’s executive director, ed o’brien, to discuss starting a street law program in his country. professor mcquoid-mason secured funding and brought o'brien to south africa for a month to run workshops and share street law’s philosophy. despite operating during apartheid, the street law program was almost universally accepted in south africa. professor mcquoid-mason worked to adapt the u.s. street law textbook for south africa and convinced local high school principals to allow street law courses to be taught by law students. mcquoid-mason even met with nelson mandela upon his release in 1990. mcquoid-mason reported that mandela was a big supporter of street law. the program expanded to 17 of the 21 law schools in south africa and eventually added new components like a space colony simulation and mock youth parliament.17 17 street law south africa: www.facebook.com/streetlawsouthafrica http://www.facebook.com/streetlawsouthafrica ijple 2 (1) 2018 16 the success of the south africa street law program marked the beginning of street law’s international expansion, demonstrating that street law’s practical law approach could work outside the u.s.—even in the most challenging of circumstances. the 1990s: international expansion and training u.s. high school teachers the 1990s were a critical decade for street law. new curricula were developed, street law’s premier professional development program for teachers—the supreme court summer institute for teachers—began, and significant developments were made in street law’s international programs. expanded educational programming over the course of the decade, street law made it a priority to address the weak treatment of the u.s. supreme court and its cases in high school history, government, and civics textbooks. knowing that high school students respond enthusiastically to studying real ijple 2 (1) 2018 17 cases about real people, street law collaborated with the supreme court historical society to develop a summer institute for teachers to help them expand and improve their instruction about the court and its role in students’ lives. as the nation's leading supreme court advocate, john roberts, later to become chief justice of the united states, worked closely with street law staff to create the institute. roberts also taught in the program annually until becoming a member of the supreme court. street law has turned this opportunity into one of the nation’s premier professional development programs for high school social studies teachers. the supreme court summer institute has been conducted annually since 1995 and more than 1,200 teachers from all 50 states and the district of columbia have participated. each year, the institute concludes with a visit to the court to hear decisions and attend a reception hosted by a justice. ijple 2 (1) 2018 18 street law and the supreme court historical society have also collaborated to develop the popular landmarkcases.org, which provides materials that help teachers deliver engaging instruction about the court’s cases that are most often required in state social studies content standards. in 1995, street law developed an innovative program to teach young parents about the law. the lesson topics covered important topics including child abuse and neglect, family law, government benefits, and rights and responsibilities of tenants. parents and the law classes were held in community settings and in school-based parenting education programs. in 1993, street law developed a set of activities for teaching conflict resolution to young people called we can work it out! 18 it featured classroom lessons and mediation simulations in which students practiced their mediation skills. an adaptation of this text was published for upper elementary school students in 1998.19 throughout the 1990s there was an expansion of high school social studies elective courses that focused on law, the majority of which used the street law textbook as their 18 zimmer, judith a. we can work it out!: problem solving through mediation. culver city, california: social studies school service, 1993. 19 zimmer, judith a. let’s say: “we can work it out!”: problem solving through mediation. culver city, california: social studies school service, 1998. ijple 2 (1) 2018 19 primary instructional resource. after the first edition’s publication in 1975, subsequent editions of street law: a course in practical law were published every five years.20 international expansions in 1996, street law leaders in south africa and the united states began to collaborate on a human rights textbook that could be used across borders. the result was human rights for all, a text that was adapted and used in a number of other countries; it was translated into russian, romanian, hungarian, and spanish.21 encouraged by the first democratic election in south africa in 1994, street law staff in south africa and the united states collaborated to create a text that explored the components of a successful democracy in south africa and the united states. this partnership resulted in democracy for all, which has also been adapted and translated for use in many countries. a second edition of democracy for all, 22 completed by the south african writing team in 2017 and focused on south africa, is available as a free online resource for educators to translate and adapt for use around the world.23 20 arbetman, lee and edward l. o’brien. street law: a course in practical law (first edition). st. paul: west publishing company, 1975; and arbetman, lee and edward l. o’brien. street law: a course in practical law (ninth edition). columbus: mcgraw-hill education, 2016. 21 o’brien, edward l., eleanor greene, and david mcquoid-mason. human rights for all. lincolnwood, il: national textbook company, 1996. 22 mcquoid-mason, david, mandla mchunu, karthy govender, edward l. o’brien, and mary curd larkin. democracy for all. kenwyn, south africa: juta & co ltd, 1994. 23 street law south africa. street law: democracy for all – learner’s manual (second edition). kenwyn, south africa: juta & co ltd, 2017. https://juta.co.za/support-material/detail/street-law-democracy-for-all-learners-manual https://juta.co.za/support-material/detail/street-law-democracy-for-all-learners-manual ijple 2 (1) 2018 20 the success in south africa led to a street law expansion into central and south america, where programs were established in chile, ecuador, bolivia, and panama. street law staff partnered with local communities and organizations to visit program sites and edit curricular materials to fit local cultural contexts. in 1997, street law received a large international grant from the open society institute (soros foundation) to expand the street law experience to 17 countries, including russia and other countries in central and eastern europe and central asia. street law partnered with local ngos and provided training to local teachers and law students. street law collaborated with program sites to adapt human rights for all and democracy for all to fit the needs of local programs and also helped ngos create practical law textbooks that used street law's learner-centered methodology. in many of those countries, street law staff worked with law faculty to establish legal clinics which included a law student teaching component. in 1999, street law became a founding member of the global alliance for justice education (gaje)24—a global organization committed to achieving justice though education. gaje sponsors biennial worldwide conferences that provide networking opportunities for like-minded justice educators, in particular law school clinicians, as 24 global alliance for justice (gaje): www.gaje.org ijple 2 (1) 2018 21 well as a chance to learn about new street law programs that have taken root around the world. by the 1990s the term street law was being used globally as a generic term covering a very particular aspect of public legal education. some people ran street law programs that had never had any interaction with an existing program in the u.s., u.k. or south africa. the popularity of the term presented both opportunities and challenges. the opportunities focused on the rapid spread of these programs; the challenge was that in some instances programs “reinvented the wheel” and, as might be expected, program quality was somewhat uneven. the founding of street law, inc. from its inception in the early 1970s until 1998, street law had been a project of the consortium of universities of metropolitan washington. this organization had been street law’s legal “parent.” street law had a prominent national advisory committee during that time, and several of the chairs of the committee had been past presidents of the american bar association. in 1998, street law was incorporated as street law, inc., a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization registered in the united states with a governing board of directors. ijple 2 (1) 2018 22 the 2000s: diversity pipeline work with companies and law firms street law’s corporate legal diversity pipeline in 2001, street law collaborated with lawyers at dupont and the association of corporate counsel (acc) to support increased diversity in the legal profession, through the development of street law’s corporate legal diversity pipeline program.25 the program, which is active today, connects diverse high school students with corporate law department volunteers. the volunteers, trained by street law staff, teach a series of lessons in high school social studies classrooms and then bring participating students and their teachers to the corporate headquarters for a day-long series of legal simulations and a career fair. the program is designed both to teach civil law topics and to encourage young people of color to consider law as a career option. the legal diversity pipeline program has also been implemented with law firms in partnership with nalp (national association for law placement). nearly 2,000 25 learn more at www.streetlaw.org/acc (the program with corporate law departments) and www.streetlaw.org/nalp (the program with law firms). in a number of instances hybrid programs arose with law departments working with their law firm partners. http://www.streetlaw.org/acc http://www.streetlaw.org/nalp ijple 2 (1) 2018 23 american lawyers devoted an average of 10 volunteer hours each to this program in 2016. by 2016, more than 1,400 lawyers from across the u.s. were volunteering an average of 10 hours per year in street law’s pipeline programs. program evaluations have shown that participating students learn civil law and increase their interest in a legal career as a result of participation. international street law programs in the 2000s the u.s. department of education recognized the value of street law-style programming in international education settings when it funded the democracy education exchange program and deliberating in a democracy—two partnership programs among street law, constitutional rights foundation, and constitutional rights foundation chicago. the programs promoted civic education and democratic institutions in eastern and ijple 2 (1) 2018 24 central europe and latin america. groups of teachers and program staff traveled between countries to conduct workshops and classroom visits. students connected across borders through video conferences to deliberate practical law and democracy issues.26 in 2004, street law partnered with the center for the study of islam and democracy27 to create an adaptation of democracy for all that included excerpts from the koran to illustrate how islam and democracy are compatible. the resulting text, islam and democracy: toward effective citizenship, published in arabic, has been used successfully in a number of countries including morocco, tunisia, jordan, and egypt.28 in 2008 street law’s longtime executive director ed o’brien retired; he was succeeded by the organization’s associate director and street law textbook co-author, lee arbetman. in the years following his retirement, o’brien was frequently honored for his visionary work in the areas of human rights education and global democracy building. street law’s continued success with american teens in 2004, street law began its youth in transition program, providing lessons for teens aging out of the foster care system. several of the companies and law firms involved in the legal diversity pipeline program also provided volunteers to teach these lessons in 26 deliberating in a democracy specifically focused on using the deliberation teaching strategy, and the project’s website is a rich resource of deliberation materials in english, spanish, and russian: www.deliberating.org 27 center for the study of islam and democracy: www.csidonline.org 28 center for the study of islam and democracy and street law, inc. islam and democracy: toward effective citizenship. 2005. http://www.deliberating.org/ http://www.csidonline.org/ ijple 2 (1) 2018 25 community settings. in 2015, street law brought its programs for vulnerable youth— parents and the law, youth in transition, and programs in the justice system—under the curricular umbrella of legal life skills, and a revised set of practical, learner-centered lessons was completed. the 2010s: new programs and practices during the first half of the 2010s, street law continued to grow its partnership programs with corporate law departments and law firms. international work continued in turkey, indonesia, haiti and ukraine. strategically, street law developed promising partnerships with larger international development organizations enabling its democracy and rule of law programming to be delivered in the context of broader civil society building efforts. in 2013, street law began work with its publishing partner, mcgraw-hill education, to co-author a new version of united states government: our democracy.29 this high school textbook, published in 2016, incorporated the best in street law pedagogy. it is designed to help students “do” democracy, not just learn about it. completion of a government course is a high school graduation requirement in most states in the u.s.; therefore, this 29 remy, richard c., donald a. ritchie, lee arbetman, megan l. hanson, and lena morreale scott. united states government: our democracy. columbus, oh: mcgraw hill education, 2016. ijple 2 (1) 2018 26 new publication has tremendous potential for reaching young people and advancing street law’s mission. in the initial issue of the new international journal for public legal education a critical, early step was taken toward addressing the need for proof of concept for street law programs. dr. sean arthurs and a number of street law colleagues published “is it possible to go from zero to 60? an evaluation of one effort to build belief, capacity and commitment to street law in one weekend.”30 this article details the power of street law training to prepare law students in ireland and scotland to deliver interactive practical law lessons to teenagers. the article also summarizes earlier proof of concept work and (hopefully) sets the stage for further research on the impact of street law programs. in 2017, street law began an ambitious project in collaboration with pact and a consortium of ukrainian ngos to develop civic education materials, teacher education, and a new required 10th grade civics course for ukrainian high school students. street law’s future what accounts for street law’s staying power in the u.s. and around the world after 45 years, and why does this program continue to appeal to new audiences? the answer 30 arthurs, seán, melinda cooperman, jessica gallagher, freda grealy, john lunney, rob marrs, and richard roe. “is it possible to go from zero to 60? an evaluation of one effort to build belief, capacity, and community in street law instructors in one weekend.” international journal of public legal education: vol. 1, no. 1 (2017). www.northumbriajournals.co.uk http://www.northumbriajournals.co.uk/ ijple 2 (1) 2018 27 likely lies in a combination of street law’s practical, accessible content (adjusted for each country and culture); interactive pedagogy, which helps people develop their civic voice; and deep community involvement that brings professionals from the education, law, and law enforcement fields together to deliver programs. in 2018, street law, inc. and its many partners around the world are poised for continued success. despite some (hopefully only temporary) backsliding in terms of human rights in the u.s. and abroad, the arc of history bends toward democratic development, and street law programs are a critical element of establishing a just and fair world. 83 the art of adapting open educational resources for street law: copyright the card game a case study jane secker1, chris morrison2 and frances ridout3 abstract the street law community is well practiced in designing bespoke activities for particular community groups. starting with a blank canvas can often be the easier forma. how often do we consider inviting our street law students to adapt works, games, and materials designed for one purpose or audience (i.e. not street law) and transform them into a different format? this paper highlights a case study involving undergraduate law students adapting an openly licensed card game originally designed for use with academic librarians, and using it as a tool to raise awareness with sixth form students about the laws and issues of copyright. open educational practices, information literacy and street law this article sits at the intersection of three areas of interest: information literacy, open educational practices and street law. while the article is largely practical in focus, we start by providing a short theoretical framework to our work, which we believe makes some new connections between these disciplines. 1 dr jane secker is senior lecturer in educational development at city, university of london. 2 chris morrison is copyright and licensing specialist at the bodleian libraries, university of oxford. 3 frances ridout is the director of the queen mary legal advice centre, queen mary university of london. she is a barrister and senior lecturer. 84 firstly, the article is about the adaptation of an information literacy teaching resource, developed to educate librarians about copyright. information literacy is the ability “to think critically and make balanced judgements about any information we find and use”.4 the teaching resource in question is available under a creative commons licence5 which allows it to be shared and adapted. the resource is also an example of the growing global movement towards recognising the benefits of what cronin calls ‘open educational practices (oep)’ in higher education and more broadly6. this includes publishing research on open access platforms but also sharing teaching materials as open educational resources (oers) and considering the benefits to learners of more open and equitable access to education. open access as defined by the budapest open access initiative, is scholarly literature that is: “.. free(ly) availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles.” 7 while this movement has gained considerable traction across the world, including from research funders, the focus of this article is on raising the profile of oers, which are freely available, openly licensed teaching materials. unesco recognise their value, saying that oers “contribute to peace, sustainable social and economic development 4 cilip definition of information literacy (2018) available at: www.cilip.org.uk/news/421972/what-isinformation-literacy.htm <accessed 13.06.2022> 5 “creative commons licenses give everyone from individual creators to large institutions a standardised way to grant the public permission to use their creative work under copyright law.” www.creativecommons.org/about/cclicences/ <accessed 13.06.2022>. 6 cronin, c., 2017. openness and praxis: exploring the use of open educational practices in higher education. international review of research in open and distributed learning: irrodl, 18(5), pp.15-34. 7 see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/budapest_open_access_initiative http://www.cilip.org.uk/news/421972/what-is-information-literacy.htm http://www.cilip.org.uk/news/421972/what-is-information-literacy.htm http://www.creativecommons.org/about/cclicences/ 85 and intercultural dialogue”. they also believe they improve the quality of education and help with capacity building.8 secondly the article reports on the experiences of law students, working on a street law programme to adapt the teaching resource to a new audience, in this case sixth form students in schools, who need to engage with copyright as it relates to their own online behaviour and the social justice issues surrounding it. there are several interesting theoretical links between the three areas that we have observed. firstly, the very nature of public legal education is about democratising, demystifying and decoding complicated (and often hard to find) legal information for the benefit of communities especially those affected by laws. the law should not be secret, it should not be hidden and it should be easily accessible to all who want or need to engage with it.9 the street law movement is inextricably linked to both a commitment to social justice (it having been described as a type of civic education10) and a culture of being free of charge. secondly, within public legal education and street law communities we not only recognise and share good practice and resources but encourage the adaptation and development of these resources11. it is an academic 8 see unesco page on open educational resources https://www.unesco.org/en/communicationinformation/open-solutions/open-educational-resources <accessed 13.06.2022>. 9 per lord bingham “the law must be accessible and so far as possible intelligible, clear and predictable.” bingham, l. (2007) “the rule of law,” the cambridge law journal. cambridge university press, 66(1), pp. 67–85. 10 arthurs, s., cooperman, m., gallagher, j., grealy, f., lunney, j., marrs, r. and roe, r.l., 2017. from zero to 60: building belief, capacity and community in street law instructors in one weekend. int'l j. clinical legal educ., 24, p.118. 11 examples include, but are not limited to, those freely available from street law inc. https://store.streetlaw.org <accessed 13.06.2022>, mcquoid-mason, d.j., 1994. democracy for all: education towards a democratic culture. juta and company ltd. www.google.co.uk/books/edition/democracy_for_all/vgnu448i15ic?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=pp1&printsec=front https://www.unesco.org/en/communication-information/open-solutions/open-educational-resources https://www.unesco.org/en/communication-information/open-solutions/open-educational-resources https://store.streetlaw.org/ http://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/democracy_for_all/vgnu448i15ic?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=pp1&printsec=frontcover 86 field which is proudly collaborative. diversity of input to resources improves them and ensures they are updated. this spirit aligns closely with the ethos of creative commons licences which are designed to encourage remixing and building on the work of others. finally, copyright education is one aspect of information literacy teaching often undertaken by librarians who seek to empower communities to use information to achieve their personal or professional goals. understanding copyright, particularly the application of copyright exceptions, can help ensure it is not seen as a barrier to learning. therefore, what these three disciplines share is a concern about equity, social justice and opening up access to knowledge as represented in figure 1. this collaboration potentially led to a more transformational educational experience for both the students and the tutors. cover <accessed 13.06.2022>, and content in archive editions of this journal; the international journal of public legal education. http://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/democracy_for_all/vgnu448i15ic?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=pp1&printsec=frontcover 87 figure 1: the relationship between street law, information literacy and open educational practices copyright might, at first glance, feel like an unusual topic for a street law activity, it being initially associated with the restriction of individual’s rights, and business law. through the diagram above, we have sought to demonstrate that it is in fact a direct fit with the social justice mission of clinical legal education. perhaps, most importantly, clinicians need to provide suitable opportunities for the students engaging with street law projects in this area to see these connections. ultimately, developing information literacy skills in the area of copyright will serve many individuals, protect culture and perhaps ultimately support small businesses in the street law (part of public legal education) information literacy / copyright education open educational practices social justice equity and access to information • pro-bono / free • empowering communities • collaboration • democratising • demystifying • decoding the law • confidence accessing law • learner-centred knowledge discovery • open licensing • open access publishing • all rights reserved vs creative commons 88 future12. businesses need to understand how and where they might have copyright protection in part of their business that they have created, but also understand the degree to which rules can enable or restrict their output / product. copyright the card game copyright the card game was created by chris morrison and jane secker in 2014, initially as a training resource for librarians to communicate the changes to uk copyright law following the hargreaves review of intellectual property (hargreaves, 2011).13 it was designed as an accessible and interactive way to introduce the complex area of copyright law, and has been effective with a wide variety of audiences including educators, researchers, creators and entrepreneurs.14 the card deck and associated powerpoint slides are available for free download from the website www.copyrightliteracy.org.15 they are available under a creative commons licence that allows them to be shared and for others to make derivative versions. these digital resources can be adapted for use in in-person workshops or digital workshops. as a result, a range of international versions have been developed including in the us, canada, new zealand and australia. 12 elaine campbell (2015) a dangerous method? defending the rise of business law clinics in the uk, the law teacher, 49:2, 165-175. 13 hargreaves, i. (2011). ‘digital opportunity: a review of intellectual property and growth’. 14 secker j and morrison c. (2016) copyright and e-learning: a guide for practitioners. facet publishing: london. chapter 6: copyright education and training: https://ukcopyrightliteracy.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/chapter-6_secker-m_copyright-e-learning-2nd-edn.pdf <accessed 13.06.2022>. 15 https://copyrightliteracy.org/resources/copyright-the-card-game/ <accessed 13.06.2022>. https://ukcopyrightliteracy.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/chapter-6_secker-m_copyright-e-learning-2nd-edn.pdf https://copyrightliteracy.org/resources/copyright-the-card-game/ 89 the game works by covering different aspects of copyright law in a series of rounds with an associated suit of cards. firstly, the ‘works’ round covers the subject matter protected by copyright. the second round covers ‘usages’ which are the restricted acts in the copyright legislation. round three provides an overview of different types of licences which allow legal use of copyright material with the permission of the copyright owner. the fourth round introduces the ‘exceptions’ cards, which list a selection of permitted acts those where activity is legal without the copyright owner’s permission. this round also introduces the concept of risk when making decisions about using content protected by copyright. all rounds involve providing participants with context-specific scenarios related to copyright and asking them to select the appropriate cards. teams then come together to share their answers and the facilitators discuss these and award points based on well thought through interpretations of the law. the game is based on active learning principles and is designed to provide a ‘safe space’ where participants are allowed to work through different possibilities without fear of ‘getting it wrong’. in fact, the game is specifically designed to address the fact that those who are given responsibility within their organisation often feel the need to find the ‘right’ answer to copyright questions. however, copyright law is rarely clear cut, particularly when it comes to interpretations of copyright exceptions and risk. 90 this has been shown to be particularly helpful for the library and information profession where copyright can cause significant anxiety.16 the game incorporates many of the fundamental principles of street law; it is interactive, fun, and empowering for the participants who have the opportunity to develop their knowledge / expertise in an area of law. areas of law such as copyright are too often overlooked as ideal areas of law for street law activities; seen in a commercial, money driven light rather than as a social justice tool. society has changed in the last decade, even more so since the covid19 pandemic in 2020. people now have greater access to a wide-ranging set of digital tools that allow them to create and share their creative work. most young people have access to a smart phone years before they reach adulthood, and social media platforms such as tiktok and instagram are increasingly focused on visual content rather than words. as such, the need for young people (school students and law students) to be aware of the concept of copyright and start the journey of engaging in the various rights and responsibilities has never been greater. this is partly reflected in the launch of the government’s online media literacy strategy in july 2021, which while focusing on countering online harms also recognises the need for people to understand how online content is generated and be able to critically analyse the content they consume.17 in addition the intellectual property office strategy 2018-2021 highlights the importance of raising 16 wakaruk, a., gareau-brennan, c., pietrosanu, p. (2021). introducing the copyright anxiety scale. journal of copyright in education and librarianship, 5(1), 1–38 www.jcel-pub.org/article/view/15212 <accessed 13.06.2022>. 17 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/online-media-literacy-strategy <accessed 13.06.2022>. http://www.jcel-pub.org/article/view/15212 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/online-media-literacy-strategy 91 awareness of ip law through education and work is underway to develop a new ip education framework due for launch in 2022.18 the need for awareness in this area has been amplified by the covid19 pandemic and advancement of digital communication. put simply, society (and in-particular young people) have access to more digital platforms and are creating more digital content with them. adapting for street law copyright the card game is an ideal tool to be adapted for use in a street law activity because it is openly licensed. the trial started with a group of 9 undergraduate law students engaging with a 15 credit, level 6, optional module: street law. the game was first introduced to the students through their participation in a seminar run by the game’s creators. the real aim was to get the students (especially those who had not studied an intellectual property law or copyright module) comfortable with the format and the content. particularly the idea that intricacies around the law were not the priority; engaging in the discussion and issues was. the different rounds were used as a way to introduce them to the area of law and effectively help them ‘research’ the legal content for their street law activity. this came with the caveat that they were engaging in more legal content than would be necessary for a teenage audience. their brief was to deliver an engaging street law session via zoom, to approximately 20 sixth form students who had already self-identified as being interested in law 18 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ipo-strategy-2018-to-2021 <accessed 13.06.2022>. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ipo-strategy-2018-to-2021 92 through a school club. for ease and clarity, we will call the law students, students, and the sixth form students, sfs. the students were encouraged to work together in a team of 9 and were given all the raw resources, logos and content to adapt in any way they saw fit. in reality they stripped out approximately 50% of the cards from each round, but did not change the written text on any of the cards. they re-named the game copyright countdown and thought of two current audience appropriate examples per round that the groups could fit the cards into. due to covid19 restrictions, they could not physically attend, so were told that the session would be ‘beamed’ into the classroom with the teacher present and all sfs physically present in the same room. this had the advantage that the sfs could sit in teams, and the drawback that the students found it challenging to see the group via the small laptop camera pointed at the body of the classroom. the students designed a scoring system, where the teams could win points. points meant the sfs could open one of a number of envelopes (the more envelopes they opened, the more letters they would get in the concluding ‘hangman’ style game). the winning team was the team who was able to work out the word from the letters they had at the end of the rounds. however, in reality everyone got sweets or a chocolate prize! interestingly, the students found it helpful to divide up the different rounds (with two students leading on each round) and the ninth member of the team acting as a team leader to organise the team and introduce / conclude the session. 93 the actual workshop took place during spring 2021 when the sfs were physically in the classroom, but the students were stationed around the world and only available online. this in itself provided challenges. the nine students joined the teaching session on zoom, being projected onto a main screen so they were both visible and audible. the sfs sat around small tables in their classroom. the students shared their screen and they were able to see the sfs through a webcam in the classroom. the session was facilitated by their class teacher who played a pivotal role in supporting the session. the students had prepared physical tools for the workshop which had been dropped into the school in advance. these were: a brown envelope with a deck of adapted cards for each team, a worksheet with scenario questions on (these were also on the share screen powerpoint but in hard copy for ease), and 8 mini envelopes (only to be opened if the student won the point). there were also prizes for all teams and sfs at the end. the session was fully rehearsed with academic support twice before the session was facilitated with the sfs. 94 reflections reflecting on the session using gibbs’ model19 helped us to evaluate the experience and to plan for future collaborations. this model involves starting by describing the experience, noting our feelings and thoughts, our evaluation of the experience, an analysis to make sense of the situation, a conclusion about what we learned and what we could have done differently, and then finally creating an action plan for the future. the experience much of the work is described above, so rather than repeat this, one thing we reflected on was how it was a different task to adapt someone else’s work, rather than letting the students start from scratch to facilitate a workshop on copyright. the adaptation process allowed the street law students to have lived experience of the advantages of open educational practice and deep ‘team work’ (meaning with the original creators of copyright the card game rather than just each other). one additional important stage was ahead of running the session for the sfs, the group did a ‘dry run’ in front of the team, who then provided them with additional feedback on how to improve the running of the game. as with a lot of street law projects, the students initially fell into the trap of wanting to teach the sfs about the law and excessive detail on it. it took a number of rehearsals (and building of their confidence) for them to realise that the sfs 19 gibbs g (1988). learning by doing: a guide to teaching and learning methods. further education unit. oxford polytechnic: oxford. 95 discovering the law through the cards was a much more effective method of learning. this also links with the common problem of students viewing themselves as the teachers, rather than it being a peer learning exercise. students took time to understand that the discussion and debate on the issue was as important as the content. we really encouraged them to think about what they would learn from the sfs and how the reaction and answers might be used by them to shape and adapt the game further for future workshops. the students essentially needed to understand the essence of public engagement as a two-way process.20 feelings and thoughts as creators of the card game, chris and jane felt invested in helping the law students to understand the design of the original game and its learning outcomes, while trying to step back and let them adapt it in the way the group felt was best. for example, one experience from using it as a resource is not to present about copyright, but encourage the participants to read the cards themselves. when students wanted to ‘lecture’ to their students in the initial rehearsal, efforts were made to remind them of this essential street law pedagogy. while they had the advantages of our experiences as creators of the game, and our many hours of using it with different groups, it felt unfair to try and unduly influence them by saying ‘that won’t work’. this resulted in 20 the national co-ordinating centre for public engagement describe the importance of “an open, two-way conversation” with communities (https://www.publicengagement.ac.uk/about-engagement/what-publicengagement) <accessed 13.06.2022> https://www.publicengagement.ac.uk/about-engagement/what-public-engagement https://www.publicengagement.ac.uk/about-engagement/what-public-engagement 96 further discussions with the students about the importance of student-centred learning as a fundamental feature of street law. evaluation of the experience the outcome of the activity was impressive and professional. sfs feedback included: • “copyright card game was very engaging and provided us with an insight into the various different forms of copyright!” and • “during the queen mary seminar on copyright law, not only did they provide us with useful practical gifts but also a great insight to the world of law. we played multiple games on different sectors of copyright law. we studied the key aspects of copyright found in all parts of our society (music, advertisement, companies) and had to answer multiple questions. the session was entertaining, helpful and informative” having the starting base of a professional resource really allowed the students to see the standard expected of a ‘learn by doing’ game and concentrate on maintaining and building on that standard of work. it is not uncommon to hear street law clinicians anecdotally describe the difficulties in encouraging students to increase their creativity (possibly a hangover from the more formal authoritarian style of mainstream legal education). adapting resources gives students a physical example of interactive facilitation, and is a worthwhile activity for students at the start of their street law course. school teacher ms dene, who was based in the classroom with her sfs during the session, noted; 97 “the copyright card game was brilliant fun! we ran it with our sixth form law scholarship society. the queen mary students ran the competitive game online with different rounds, which kept it engaging and exciting. the students had a great time and also learnt a lot! for students who were already interested in law, i think they were surprised at how little they knew about a strand of law that is so important to their everyday lives.” despite being actively encouraged to dissect all the original teaching resources, the actual cards were not altered. the pack of cards was stripped back to reduce complication and sections added in, but the students felt reluctant to change the terminology on the cards. in this respect, street law students adapting other resources need as much encouragement to change them perhaps something which comes with confidence, experience and demonstration. just as those leading street law teaching, model student-centred teaching practice within their own classes; we found that students benefit when street law teachers model the art of adaptation to them. this can easily be achieved through adapting the wealth of street law resources readily available, running a session and then showing the students the original resource21. one street law student provided the following feedback: “working with a copyright card game was very different from the learning resources i was used to working with, but it made me be more creative. it gave me a different 21 there are some excellent resources available such as ‘should it be a crime?’ and ‘who gets a heart’ in: arthurs, s., cooperman, m., gallagher, j., grealy, f., lunney, j., marrs, r. and roe, r.l., 2017. from zero to 60: building belief, capacity and community in street law instructors in one weekend. int'l j. clinical legal educ., 24, p.118. 98 perspective of copyright. it is a challenge to adapt complex copyright concepts to a six form audience but working with a card game as a resource made it interactive and easy to understand. [sixth form] students engaged more and as a result better grasped the concepts.” analysis the fact that the students were adapting an open educational resource raised awareness of this fundamental principle in public legal education and street law. it enabled discussions on information literacy and perhaps most importantly allowed for a demonstration of how both areas link to legal literacy. law students in the uk are often painstakingly aware of rules of plagiarism, citing and linking facts to authorities. perhaps it should come as no surprise that the very concept of adapting another work and re-using it felt unnatural to them. one thought for why it was so hard for the students to realise that it was a peer to peer (two way) learning experience as much as a leader disseminated (one way activity) was the nature of the delivery. were they in the room physically they could have been sitting with, walking around, or overhearing the group discussions. perhaps one student would have been integrated into each team of sfs playing the game. this could have provided more content to stimulate discussion. hopefully, in a post pandemic world where face-to-face street law can resume, this will not be a problem. when repeated, we might invite the students to learn more about the two-way process 99 of public engagement before delivery, and take time to think about what they are seeking to gain from the sfs. wallace and perdue (2020)22 published a study reflecting the views of 63 participants in street law projects from multiple jurisdictions. their study revealed five key themes in student self-identified learning: explaining legal topics to lay audiences, public speaking in a non-academic setting, building substantive legal content, research and preparation and developing cultural competency and community connections. the research highlighted the adaptation of lesson plans in street law, but there was no further evidence that adapting resources was seen or viewed as a skill by the students. further, in many other research papers on student skills development from both clinical legal education and more specifically street law; the ability to adapt, develop and edit other people’s work is rarely, if not ever, recognised. commercial awareness, adaptability (in terms of their own behaviour), and innovation are recognised23, but specifically not the ability to adapt tools and resources. grimes et al (2011)24 acknowledged the need to research materials already available, but the skill of adapting open educational resources seems to be an area for the street law community to explore with law students both in terms of using, and recognising as a valuable employability skill. 22 wallace, a., & perdue, b. (2020). preparing lawyers for practice: developing cultural competency, communication skills, and content knowledge through street law programs. journal of legal education (forthcoming). 23 thomas. l., 2018, ‘it puts the law they’ve learnt in theory into practice’, reimagining clinical legal education. bloomsbury publishing, 127-154. 24 grimes. r, mcquoid-mason. d, o’brien. e, zimmer.j., (2011) streetlaw and social justice education the global clinical movement, 2011, edited by bloch. f., oxford university press. 100 this small-scale case study does not seek to be that research. but given the difficulties the team had in encouraging the students to adapt the materials (rather than just reduce the number of cards in the game which were available to the sfs), it may indicate a reluctance within street law students to develop and build on work already in existence. we suggest this is an area for discussion and development within the street law community. as with many street law activities, really grasping the logistics of running a session was one of the factors that needed to be stressed. for example, helping the street law students to understand the importance of the sfs being comfortable with the cards, giving them time to read the cards, and talking slowly and clearly through the rules. as with many street law sessions, this was achieved with rehearsals and feedback. action plan as a point of principle, this work proved that copyright the card game was a resource that could be adapted for quite different audiences to the original intended one. it also created an engaging session with sfs. the plan is to share the newly created resource so it can be used in other street law projects or in schools who wish to teach students about copyright and also to share this on the copyrightliteracy.org website. the team plan to continue to work together to explore other audiences that might benefit from engaging with copyright law using this resource. we ran a further adaptation experience of copyright the card game, at the law society of ireland orientation weekend in october 2021 (a weekend devoted to 101 training trainee solicitors in ireland to facilitate street law sessions in schools). by contrast, here it was played with trainee solicitors who were learning about street law. the game was played to demonstrate to them the art of adaptation and the link between copyright and social justice. at the end of playing a significantly paired down and compressed version of the game (partly due to time constraints), the trainees were asked how copyright links with social justice issues. all the comments were related to the right to protect your own work from abuse and exploitation. as a twist, trainees were then shown a trailer for paywall the movie (https://paywallthemovie.com/trailers25) which is an open access documentary highlighting the issues of academic writing (especially those coming from publicly funded universities) being kept behind expensive paywalls and how this impacts on society’s ability to innovate particularly with medical advances26. this additional adaptation to the game further emphasised how it is about the discussion of legal issues in society rather than participants of the game developing an intricate knowledge of copyright law. giving it a go this article aims to inspire you to think about a broad range of topic areas for street law projects and the social justice benefit in widening awareness about copyright, especially in a post covid19 world. perhaps most importantly, we hope this article 25 <accessed 13.06.2022>. 26 the full version of the documentary is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hm_nwsdbnvq <accessed 13.06.2022>. https://paywallthemovie.com/trailers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hm_nwsdbnvq 102 will inspire you to think about how you can design street law projects which adapt and develop already available open educational resources. for those looking for existing open educational resources there are numerous collections online, but we recommend the university of edinburgh’s guide to finding suitable resources.27 when re-using or re-purposes educational resources students need to be mindful of any financial implications, copyright restrictions on any resources and of course ensuring that they are jurisdiction appropriate. the key advantage of open educational resources is that they are by definition free and openly licensed so can be freely reused and adapted subject to the specific creative commons licence. however introducing students to these resources can ultimately help them to focus the time they do have on producing a better final street law session. as clinical legal education academics, we must at all times remember the importance of the process on street law student learning. how can we turn the art of adaption into learning rather than being viewed (rightly or wrongly) by law students as being a short cut to the final product. outside of the uk, street law students are perhaps more accustomed to working with templates or adapting materials through the work of street law, inc.28 (providing materials for use in the usa) and books like democracy for all: education towards a democratic culture by david mcquoid-mason.29 in clinical legal education, we strive to develop innovative graduates who think and behave differently; we hope that this 27https://open.ed.ac.uk/how-to-guides-old/where-to-find-oers/ <accessed 13.06.2022>. 28 https://www.streetlaw.org/ <accessed 13.06.2022>. 29 mcquoid-mason, d. j. (1994). democracy for all: education towards a democratic culture. juta and company ltd. https://open.ed.ac.uk/how-to-guides-old/where-to-find-oers/ https://www.streetlaw.org/ 103 article has encouraged you to consider teaching street law students about open educational practices and creative commons materials, as well as the art of adapting. we hope it persuades you to approach and encourage your institution to promote openness within practice both within and outside of clinical legal education. this final quote from one of the street law students sums up the benefit he saw: “adapting the game in light of all of these considerations (the knowledge of our participants, the length of our session and the impact of covid-19 on both us and the participants) was a challenging but incredibly useful exercise. i enjoyed 'thinking outside the box' with the added benefit of 'standing on the shoulders of giants'. if we had started from scratch, i do feel that our session would have been much less successful. in fact, i used the skills that i developed in adapting this activity in my final project, which was an adaptation of another street law activity. in turn, i managed to go even further in my final project.” the open access resources for copyright the card game are available for download from the www.copyrightliteracy.org website30. a special thank you goes to ms dene at seven kings school for facilitating the game. without her enthusiasm present in the classroom, this workshop and trial would not have been possible during the pandemic. 30 see https://copyrightliteracy.org/resources/copyright-the-card-game/ <accessed 13.06.2022>. https://copyrightliteracy.org/resources/copyright-the-card-game/copyright-the-card-game-online/ 104 image of sfss participating abstract open educational practices, information literacy and street law copyright the card game adapting for street law reflections the experience feelings and thoughts evaluation of the experience analysis action plan giving it a go practice report 155 royal holloway, university of london and the afghanistan and central asian association: new partnerships and challenges during covid-19 in the clinical legal world nicola antoniou1, jill marshall2, alexander gilder3 and rabia nasimi4 abstract in january 2020, royal holloway, university of london set up a new legal advice centre offering free legal advice to the local community, including building upon key partnerships to address unmet legal needs. this practice-paper discusses royal holloway’s legal advice centre (lac) and the afghanistan and central asian association’s (acca) collaborative approach and response to the global pandemic since march 2020. it will highlight the unprecedented challenges that they have faced, and their efforts to overcome them. in addition, the paper will discuss their research project, which provides royal holloway’s student volunteers with the opportunity to gain unique multidisciplinary understandings of the effect of the pandemic in 1 senior lecturer and director of the legal advice centre, royal holloway, university of london. 2 professor of law, royal holloway, university of london. 3 lecturer in law, royal holloway, university of london. 4 strategic development manager, afghanistan and central asian association. practice report 156 afghanistan, and a chance to put their legal skills into practice by producing legal information to support local users of both royal holloway’s lac and the law clinic at the acaa. this practice-paper includes a road map to royal holloway’s long-term goal, namely, to work with acaa to research the legal vulnerabilities of women in afghanistan, with the aid of a research grant supporting international collaboration. recent reports highlight that lockdown and quarantine measures will have a longterm impact on the basic rights and freedoms of afghan women, who already face hardship. introduction royal holloway, university of london’s lac was set up from scratch by its current director and it opened its doors to the public in january 2020 for a three-month pilot phase. the lac offered a mixture of both on-campus and remote services. the location of the campus was a potential barrier to some clients, and so the lac wanted to have some flexibility by offering telephone conferences. the telephone conferences that were scheduled took place on campus. during the last week of the lac’s advertised sessions, the government announced the covid-19 lockdown restrictions in response to the current global pandemic. practice report 157 the lac had clients booked-in, was unequipped to deal with off-campus telephone conferences, and had clients who lacked access to smartphones. as a result, the lac resorted to the basics of using a mobile phone to call the clients. whilst the last session went relatively smoothly, there was an absence of the student advisers involved, and so there would need to be innovative solutions and adaptations to the clinical programme to remedy this. with royal holloway’s alternative assessments being written for external approval and other online teaching commitments, the lac was somewhat isolated. the lac closed its doors for the student examination period and decided to offer to students, who could not take part in the last session, an opportunity to take part in a summer vacation placement. part of the summer scheme involved a collaboration with the acaa. the acaa continued to operate during the height of covid-19, and this practice-paper will explore the challenges and needs that their users faced. royal holloway’s lac students are working on a joint project that aims to address some of these unmet needs. 1. royal holloway’s lac summer placement 1.1 legal clinics during the lac’s summer placement, in addition to running sessions for members of the public, limited to family law, they carried out a pilot phase for a new clinic, called practice report 158 the hmp coldingley law clinic5. the lac recognised the need for prisoners to seek family law advice, particularly around issues of child contact and the challenges that covid-19 amplified. the biggest challenge for the lac was to ensure that their remote sessions did not affect the quality. clinics such as this provide for the continuation of advice to those in need, as well as forming new partnerships and strengthen existing relationships which may provide resilience for future lockdowns. by expanding the breadth of the lac’s practice to incorporate existing contacts and partnerships that staff at royal holloway have generated over the years, they can improve the stature of the department while providing more options for lac students. 1.2 technology after having time to reflect on the sudden closure of their main legal advice clinic, the lac at royal holloway spent time thinking and liaising with their college’s it department about how they could best implement a service that enabled all users free access and that was secure and safe to use. the initial suggestion was microsoft teams as this was an approved method of communication for learning. although teams appeared to be most suitable for internal use, or where others had accessibility to download the appropriate software the lac encountered difficulties. for example, 5 this is a partnership between royal holloway’s legal advice centre, creighton and partners and hmp coldingley/the forward trust. practice report 159 where clients did not have access to smartphones or email, this was an ineffective way to communicate. in addition, the college had limited capacity to make ‘external’ calls. the lac then tried skype for business. they quickly realised that whilst all staff and student advisers could connect, if they wanted to add a facility to call out to clients without smartphones, and that was toll free, they needed a subscription. this was not possible to do through the college-based account. the lac entered into a discussion with the college’s audio visuals team who suggested a telephone conference facility that allows all users to dial in, or alternatively the lac could dial out to multiple people toll-free. whilst this appeared to be a simple but effective option, the cost was extensive, and so the lac decided to open a college account ready for use as a last resort. finally, the lac decided to use skype (non-business). to test the function, they created a new dedicated lac account. the lac added ‘credit’ and did a few dry runs. the problems they encountered were that their student volunteers could not join the skype session using their skype-business accounts. they therefore had to join each session as ‘guests’. after seeking confirmation from the college’s it and data protection teams that they could proceed with this, the lac decided to use this method to communicate with all clients and ordered a subscription service. the service is free for everyone to use. the student volunteers and supervisor could connect via skype and then ‘phoned’ the clients. practice report 160 1.3 simulated practice: preparing for our new virtual world to fully prepare the student advisers to deal with the new online procedure, the lac carried out simulated exercises using their new skype account. the director of the lac implemented role-play for the fact-finding interview. the feedback provided by the lac director demonstrated that allowing the student advisers to practice increased their confidence in carrying these out online, which achieved the learning outcome of the activity. whilst it is acknowledged that some simulations are “not a substitute for live-client interactions”6, the students were fully engaged in this activity and it provoked an effective response.7 during the lac’s live-client sessions, they found the use of skype to phone relatively easy to use. the lac encountered no real issues, and the connectivity and quality of the calls remained good. the lac, by trial and error, learned that “‘[t]he big game changer is the power of technology to pull back the curtain of mystique”8. the lac have remote case management software, and the ‘virtual’ office element was already 6 weigold, u.h, ‘the attorney-client privilege as an obstacle to the professional and ethical development of law students’ (2006) 33 (3) pepperdine law review, pp 676-722 at 691 7 grimes, r. and gibbons, j, ‘assessing experiential learning – us, them and the others’ (2016) 23(1) international journal of clinical legal education, available at https://pure.york.ac.uk/portal/files/44272535/492_1472_1_pb.pdf (last accessed 23.9.20). 8 langan, m., (june 2013) in ‘legal innovation 2013 new developments in an old profession’, baker tilly publications cited in thanaraj, a & sales, m, ‘lawyering in a digital age: a practice report introducing the virtual law clinic at cumbria’ (2015) 22(3), international journal of clinical legal education, available at: https://www.northumbriajournals.co.uk/index.php/ijcle/article/view/471/863 (last accessed 30.9.20). https://pure.york.ac.uk/portal/files/44272535/492_1472_1_pb.pdf https://www.northumbriajournals.co.uk/index.php/ijcle/article/view/471/863 practice report 161 in place, using intralinks and clio. this also enabled their student volunteers to participate effectively.9 the student volunteers still found the experience of providing advice virtually rewarding and it gave them a chance to gain practical legal experience during a challenging time when most vacation placements were either cancelled or postponed due to covid-19. the services also assisted the lac’s users during a time of uncertainty and stress. 2. the afghanistan and central asian association (acaa) 2.1 background in addition to the above, royal holloway collaborated with the afghanistan & central asian association (acaa). the acaa supports and promotes the social and economic integration of the increasing number of afghan and other central asian refugees arriving in london. the acaa use a community development ethos to support the development of their potential within a mutually supportive framework and work with a wide range of partners to reach vulnerable and isolated individuals and families. the acaa’s core services include: 9 mccrimmon, vickers, r, parish, k, ‘online clinical legal education: challenging the traditional model’, (2016) 23(5), international journal of clinical legal education, available at: https://www.northumbriajournals.co.uk/index.php/ijcle/article/view/565 (last accessed 30.9.20). https://www.northumbriajournals.co.uk/index.php/ijcle/article/view/565 practice report 162 education, training and development opportunities: esol (english for speakers of other languages) for integration, supplementary schools, british citizenship test preparation, business and employment advice and support women’s outreach and women-only projects: empowerment, development, advice and support legal and advice clinics with oisc accreditation, using volunteers and pro bono solicitors, focusing mainly on immigration, housing, business and employment issues social and cultural activities and events promoting community cohesion, music and fitness, volunteering all of these are underpinned by a dedicated team of paid staff and volunteers offering mentoring, support, assistance, translation and interpretation where needed. the acaa’s grassroots and frontline services and activities are vital in supporting vulnerable refugees and migrants in some of the most disadvantaged areas of london to improve their wellbeing, independence, aspirations and integration. the acaa aim to break down language and cultural barriers and give their community a voice. the acaa’s work resulted in being awarded the queen’s award for voluntary services in 2018. the acaa works primarily within the afghan, syrian and central asian communities in london specifically in hounslow (where their main centre is based); lewisham practice report 163 (where they started), croydon, merton, greenwich, epsom, hillingdon, brent and ealing, wiltshire, leicestershire, berkshire, cambridge, doncaster, mansfield, worcestershire, staffordshire, kent, east london, newham, staffordshire, sutton, brighton and hove, southwark, birmingham and wales where they have outreach operations and particular projects. the acaa provide services and activities for all ages but are primarily focused on working age adults, families, and children. recently, acaa has been trialling telephone support for refugees and recent arrivals in five areas outside london. across the services and activities acaa now reaches over 10,000 people annually, with around 5000 accessing direct support. approximately 75% of their service users are refugees and recent arrivals into the uk, and the rest are predominantly muslim bame people of afghan, central asian, south asian and middle eastern heritage. the acaa provides services to some specific vulnerable groups – children and young people, women, the elderly and recent migrants of all ages seeking support to learn english and understand uk systems. in 2018-19 the acaa provided esol to 450 people, 300 children attended their supplementary schools, and 250 women attended a weekly women’s project. the acaa’s social media platforms extend their reach across the uk and almost doubles their audience. practice report 164 2.2 impact of covid-19 on the acaa during the covid-19 pandemic, acaa shifted its regular london-focused enquiry and support service to online and phone only to comply with social distancing. the acaa closed their premises for an indeterminate length of time and suspended delivery of their main face-to-face services across london. however, they found that numbers of people were attending their office in person because they are finding it difficult to understand and observe social distancing rules; the acaa have agreed to see these people if there is an advisor available. enquiries for support and advice have surged; they are receiving around 30 calls per day from vulnerable, elderly, sick and disabled people. they are still supporting victims of domestic violence and asylum seekers on a range of topics including support with citizenship applications, universal credit, financial issues, tenancy support and domestic violence. issues often centre on language and cultural barriers. they provide a vital translation and interpretation service particularly for recent arrivals with very limited english. enquiries coming to the acaa are driven by misunderstandings, different cultural expectations, and a mistrust of public services. the acaa’s capacity to respond has substantially reduced as staff and volunteers self-isolate or have been furloughed; some because they are unable to provide their usual services and some to reduce costs. during the height of the lockdown restrictions, the acaa were having to turn people away, which raised concerns about practice report 165 the negative impact for community members and the possible reputational risks to the organisation. the shift to online and phone support has now highlighted weaknesses in their it and phone systems and they have identified training and equipment needs for volunteers and staff in order to operate a satisfactory remote service. in september last year they took on a 10-year lease on a two-storey building in feltham, west london, which they are developing as a multi-use community centre. the acaa has been using its facilities, particularly a ground-floor hall, community kitchen and spare offices to host events, other small local organisations and activities generating a steady and secure unrestricted income source to meet gaps in other grant funding for services. since the lockdown was announced in march, the acaa has had to close their premises causing a significant fall in income and resultant risk in their ability to cover their own rental bill. the acaa believe the closure of their building is costing around £20,000 per month. the acaa has also had to cancel a number of external events, such as their flagship annual refugee week summer festival in june, an event that has generated up to £16,000 in previous years. 2.3 impact of covid-19 on the people acaa supports refugees and migrants from afghanistan, and central asian countries are a small but growing community and comparatively new to the uk. ongoing conflicts in the countries of origin often result in trauma and health issues affecting settlement and practice report 166 integration in the uk. they are one of the most vulnerable communities in the uk. support networks and organisations are few and relatively underdeveloped. even before the lockdown, refugee communities experienced a range of issues of which language and cultural barriers and a lack of access to mainstream services are the most important. many experience poverty, loneliness, social isolation, hate crime, and some may risk radicalisation. resulting from the trauma of experiencing conflict in their countries of origin and displacement, many of acaa’s service users suffer with mental health problems and lack a sense of identity and belonging. a high proportion of afghan and central asian immigrants to the uk (refugees and migrants) are self-employed (e.g. as taxi drivers) or work in low-paid long-hours sectors such as catering, hospitality, and small retail. patriarchal attitudes mean that women rarely socialise outside the family and some are actively prevented from going out alone or into mixed sex environments. many women face barriers to accessing services due to the multiple disadvantages of poor english language skills, lack of literacy in their home languages and hence in english and having the men of their families speaking for them. many people are low paid, work in the ‘gig’ economy or are self-employed. many work at heathrow airport or for businesses that serve the airport and they are being affected by the reduction of activity at the airport. many operate micro-businesses with turnovers below the thresholds for government intervention. the acaa report that around 80% of their service users suffer from mental ill health. social distancing practice report 167 and self-isolation measures have therefore had a huge impact on many families reliant on these low and intermittent incomes. children are now isolated at home with parents struggling with home schooling, lack of facilities and in poor housing stock. many people have been furloughed or laid off and many are now finding themselves having to apply for universal credit. acaa is already aware that social isolation and distancing puts pressures on households and causes an increase in domestic violence. many are experiencing exacerbated mental health issues due to loss of jobs, emotional stress, loneliness, and bereavement of relatives and friends. many users of the acaa are frightened of the impact of the disease itself especially given that over a third of covid-19 deaths are amongst bame communities across the uk. acaa has found that public information circulates in english, which is not the first language of clients, which leads to confusion and uncertainty. many community members rely on afghan media which focuses on the situation in afghanistan not the uk. poverty, poor literacy (in mother tongue and english) and poor oral english language skills mean there is no real digital alternative, which leads to further isolation and barriers to accessing services. consequently, many community members do not access information in mainstream ways and can be misled by misinformation, misunderstanding online information, and relying on hearsay. community members are reliant on community organisations such as acaa for accurate and timely information and advice. afghan and central asian communities are hard to reach for mainstream and statutory service providers and acaa are the only afghan charity practice report 168 operating in west london supporting some of the most vulnerable communities in the city. 3. the power of public legal education: collaborative project in these uncertain times, and with limited resources, the lac at royal holloway and acaa are working together on a project, which formed part of the summer vacation placements. the aim of this project is to increase access to both users of the lac at royal holloway and acaa to legal information and guidance, that is presented in a way that deals specifically with covid-19 related legal issues. both the acaa and lac at royal holloway wanted to empower their users by creating ‘accessible’ information to help them assert their rights.10 with covid-19 social distancing and self-isolation measures now in place, the student volunteers at royal holloway’s first mission was to research and produce legal and rights-based factsheets. the following areas of law were selected as the main areas of concern: 10 see newsletters as an example at the student law office at northumbria university: bengtsson, l. ‘client newsletters within clinical legal education and their value to the student participants’, (2020) 27(2), international journal of clinical legal education – available at: https://www.northumbriajournals.co.uk/index.php/ijcle/issue/view/90 (last accessed 28.9.20). https://www.northumbriajournals.co.uk/index.php/ijcle/issue/view/90 practice report 169 • employment (e.g. those affected by furlough and universal credit) • social isolation and domestic abuse • housing vulnerabilities in addition, the student volunteers at royal holloway’s lac, together with the acaa are looking into how legal factsheets can be used to improve the transformation of the online space and resilience among their users. the student volunteers will work with external practitioners who will provide pro bono support. the collective aim is to provide accurate and timely information and advice, which is free from legal jargon.11 the student volunteers have been engaged in research on a variety of issues while recognising the vital need for afghan and central asian communities to have accessible information. for instance, charlotte cowdery (llb law) has been researching housing issues for homeowners, landlords and tenants and appreciates how these communities are disproportionately affected by the pandemic. aliyah spacey-smith (llb law) has been focusing on domestic abuse and how cases have risen during the pandemic and a variety of helplines for victims to access. aliyah notes “[t]here are further difficulties for people in minority groups, such as those from afghanistan and central asia, in accessing the help they need due to language 11 roper, v. ‘blogs as a teaching tool and method of public legal education: a case study’ (2018) 2(1), international journal of public legal education available at: https://www.northumbriajournals.co.uk/index.php/ijple/article/view/707 (last accessed 30.9.30). https://www.northumbriajournals.co.uk/index.php/ijple/article/view/707 practice report 170 barriers and lack of knowledge on their rights in the uk, therefore it is important to provide these leaflets in order to help them access relevant services.” student volunteers are developing deeper understandings of the inequalities and hardships faced by minorities in the uk which will be invaluable for when they graduate and begin their careers. in addition, the student volunteers are from various disciplines of study, and thereby have an opportunity to learn from each other as they draw on their conclusions together:12 “this research has allowed me a to delve deeper into the financial consequences of the pandemic in england and has developed my understanding of not just the basic economic impacts of covid-19, such as job losses, but also how this has led to greater struggle in the lives of the public. these struggles causing devastation specifically within the refugee population within england, a group that society seems to massively overlook when it considers those most effected by the pandemic.” jasmine urry (bsc sociology and criminology). “i'm currently in the process of investigating the mental health implications for the afghan community during the global pandemic. prior to covid-19, this minority have faced hardship when dealing with mental health; often excluded from their local 12 hyams, r. and sadique, d, ‘the value of incidental learning in a multidisciplinary setting’ (2014) 20(1) international journal of clinical legal education, vol 20 (1). available at: https://www.northumbriajournals.co.uk/index.php/ijcle/article/view/16 (last accessed 30.9.20). https://www.northumbriajournals.co.uk/index.php/ijcle/article/view/16 practice report 171 communities, victims of racism and xenophobia mean they're more likely to suffer from anxiety and ptsd. unfortunately, the pandemic has only served to exacerbate these experiences and research indicates that little is being done nationally to ease these struggles. this has been particularly eye-opening and frustrating to research as minority demographics within the uk are so frequently side-lined and their struggles ignored.” rosie cannon (bsc sociology and criminology). "i have been responsible for looking into the effects coronavirus has had on the psychological and societal resilience of the afghan and central asian community. so far, the area has been very interesting to research as psychologists have scrambled to identify factors that may be affected by the current pandemic, which has produced some fascinating papers. i hope to be able to use this present research to formulate a useful insight into the effect the coronavirus is having on this community." will rawson (msc forensic psychology). the student volunteers are investigating topics not typically covered in their modules and issues that are experienced differently by minorities compared to some other lac service users. this gives the student volunteers a unique opportunity to both enhance their studies, engage with an organisation such as acaa, and improve their understanding of the law in the ‘real world’.13 13 mcnamara, j. and campbell, c., ‘community projects: extending the community lawyering model’ (2014) 21(2) international journal of clinical legal education, vol 21(2). available at: https://www.northumbriajournals.co.uk/index.php/ijcle/article/view/385 (last accessed 30.9.30). https://www.northumbriajournals.co.uk/index.php/ijcle/article/view/385 practice report 172 student volunteers are also looking at the effects covid-19 is having in afghanistan. in particular, the student volunteers are focusing on how this global pandemic is impacting women’s access to rights in afghanistan, including disabled women, as well as others with disabilities. recent reports have suggested that lockdown and quarantine measures will have a long-term impact on the basic rights and freedoms of afghan women, who already face hardship. the recent oxfam briefing note14 highlights that covid-19 is “exacerbating the inequalities afghan women face”, and that it is vital that responses are adapted to deal with the implications this outbreak has for women. as the project progresses the lac intends to work more closely with the acaa’s partners in afghanistan. 3.1 acaa’s citizens’ advice centres in kabul and pul-e khumri in 2013, two citizens’ advice centres were funded in kabul and pul-e khumri by the uk government (dfid) for three years starting in july 2013. they opened in september 2013 and aimed to give free, impartial legal and other advice to the most 14 a new scourge to afghan women: covid-19, oxfam briefing note, available at: https://oi-filescng-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/asia.oxfam.org/s3fspublic/file_attachments/covid%2019.%20a%20new%20scourge%20to%20afghan%20women_oxf am.pdf (last accessed 23.9.20); afghanistan coronavirus socio-economic impact assessment (july 2020), united nations development programme, available at: file:///c:/users/nicola/downloads/undp-socio-economic%20impact%20assessment-afghanistanbrief2.pdf (last accessed 23.9.20). https://oi-files-cng-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/asia.oxfam.org/s3fs-public/file_attachments/covid%2019.%20a%20new%20scourge%20to%20afghan%20women_oxfam.pdf https://oi-files-cng-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/asia.oxfam.org/s3fs-public/file_attachments/covid%2019.%20a%20new%20scourge%20to%20afghan%20women_oxfam.pdf https://oi-files-cng-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/asia.oxfam.org/s3fs-public/file_attachments/covid%2019.%20a%20new%20scourge%20to%20afghan%20women_oxfam.pdf https://oi-files-cng-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/asia.oxfam.org/s3fs-public/file_attachments/covid%2019.%20a%20new%20scourge%20to%20afghan%20women_oxfam.pdf practice report 173 vulnerable people in afghan society in order to help them improve their quality of life, access their rights and help them escape poverty. over the three years of the project until july 2016, over 7,500 people used the centres’ services including 2,000 people who received individual legal advice. the biggest single issue that they were asked for advice about was domestic violence, followed by unemployment, divorce, poverty and murder. 28% of cases were related to family problems, 16% concerned poverty, health and other social issues, whilst 15% were criminal cases. over the three-year period 65% of clients were women, 56% were illiterate, and 79% were unemployed. numbers of women, illiterate and unemployed people using the services increased every year reflecting both their success in reaching out to these groups and the worsening situation for employment for many afghan citizens. an example case was that of ‘gulmay’. gulmay had been a widow for more than three years. her daughter’s uncle was planning to get gulmay's daughter married by force to a man who was 10 years older than her. the girl was completely opposed to the plan. gulmay and her daughter came to the citizens’ advice centre in kabul for help. the adviser informed gulmay that marriage is something that can only be carried out if the person consents to be married; forced marriage is illegal. the adviser also told the girl to bring her uncle and other family members to the office so that the adviser could act as a mediator, first to convince her uncle that forced marriage is illegal and, therefore, not a possible option. the adviser told her that if the uncle was still practice report 174 unwilling to change his mind, he would be introduced to the attorney general at the ministry of women's affairs and would face legal implications. following the consultation, the case was resolved, and all parties agreed to cancel the marriage plan because of the illegality of the matter. the centres ran family mediation services by themselves or with local elders and took cases to court where settlement was not possible. the centres also referred clients to other non-governmental organisations, the local authorities, ministries, and health services, where specialist services were available. the centres were partnered with the ministry of women’s affairs as well as with the ministry of refugees and repatriation. the centres were members of the afghan women’s network, the afghan civil society forum and worked with over 50 organisations for referrals for specialist advice. over 90% of mediation cases were resolved successfully, as were 60% of the cases in court. 20% of court cases were unsuccessful and 20% of court cases experienced long delays. over 7,500 people attended outreach sessions. sessions were run on rights (women’s rights, disabled peoples’ rights, widows’ rights, rights for returning refugees and idps [internally displaced people]); promoting education for girls and boys; health (maternal health, nutrition, diabetes, depression, winter health checks for idps, sports); and the environment. practice report 175 acaa received a small grant to extend outreach to women’s prisons from the evans cornish foundation. this meant an extra female lawyer working in each centre to increase the capacity to visit prisons and help women there understand their cases and rights, many of whom were imprisoned with their children due to so-called ‘moral crimes’.15 based on acaa’s experiences in providing legal advice in afghanistan there is certainly a need for accessible and free legal advice in many areas of law. however, contracting funding environments could limit acaa’s future effectiveness internationally. by working with the lac at royal holloway, acaa has access to student volunteers and supervising solicitors who can provide free advice on programme development. future projects will consider what other contributions the lac can make to acaa’s activities in afghanistan. 3.2 future work royal holloway and the acaa will continue to work together to provide free legal support to those whose needs are often unmet in the community. with the aid of a research grant supporting international collaboration, the long-term goal of the acaa and royal holloway is to set up a legal advice centre in afghanistan that provides free legal advice and support to women and those with disabilities. they hope that 15 see reports: https://acaa.org.uk/reports/ https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/acaa-uploads2/afghanistan+work+.pdf https://acaa.org.uk/reports/ https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/acaa-uploads2/afghanistan+work+.pdf practice report 176 the literature review and research that is currently being undertaken will help identify the most pressing issues that need addressing amongst these community groups so that legal provisions can be set up. the recommendations set out in the oxfam briefing note16 highlight the need for gender-based violence responses and programming, as well as providing safe spaces for women and girls at risk. in addition, a key recommendation is: “direct funding must be accessible to subnational and local organisations, especially women's rights organisations. un agencies and ingos should use existing mechanisms that reach local and national partners to flexibly channel international funding, ensuring that local partners are designing and delivering assistance and support that is most suited to their communities right now. this especially concerns gender-focused funding, as less than 1% of gender-focused funding goes to women’s rights organizations globally.” the united nations sustainable development goals and the uk’s global challenges research fund (gcrf) repeatedly highlight priority is to be given to alleviate disadvantages experienced by women, to empower women, and help realise gender equality and gender justice.17 royal holloway and acaa hope that a legal advice 16 a new scourge to afghan women: covid-19, oxfam briefing note, available at: https://oi-filescng-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/asia.oxfam.org/s3fspublic/file_attachments/covid%2019.%20a%20new%20scourge%20to%20afghan%20women_oxf am.pdf (last accessed 23.9.20) 17 see https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal5. see also https://www.ukri.org/our-work/collaboratinginternationally/global-challenges-research-fund/ https://oi-files-cng-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/asia.oxfam.org/s3fs-public/file_attachments/covid%2019.%20a%20new%20scourge%20to%20afghan%20women_oxfam.pdf https://oi-files-cng-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/asia.oxfam.org/s3fs-public/file_attachments/covid%2019.%20a%20new%20scourge%20to%20afghan%20women_oxfam.pdf https://oi-files-cng-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/asia.oxfam.org/s3fs-public/file_attachments/covid%2019.%20a%20new%20scourge%20to%20afghan%20women_oxfam.pdf https://oi-files-cng-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/asia.oxfam.org/s3fs-public/file_attachments/covid%2019.%20a%20new%20scourge%20to%20afghan%20women_oxfam.pdf https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal5 https://www.ukri.org/our-work/collaborating-internationally/global-challenges-research-fund/ https://www.ukri.org/our-work/collaborating-internationally/global-challenges-research-fund/ practice report 177 centre that replicates, builds on, and develops the services acaa set up in 2013 will provide a ‘gender sensitive’ space to protect the legal rights and safety of women in afghanistan. in early september, royal holloway and acaa successfully applied and were selected to host a being human café as part of the being human: a festival of humanities programme organised and set up annually by the school of advanced study, university of london and funded through the arts and humanities research council and the british academy. the café “afghan women small spaces café: sewing pathways to human rights” will take place in acaa’s community hub, by phone and on zoom. meeting over afghan tea and cake during english and sewing classes, afghan diaspora women and researchers will use mixed participatory methods including artwork, sewing and conversation to explore what everyday habits and material objects tell us about ourselves and each other. these and other particular culturally specific lived experiences will be connected to human rights law’s purpose of ensuring universal dignity, equality and rights. this is one example of a short-term project that will contribute to the wider goal of pursuing funding to both the afghan and central asian community in the uk and communities in afghanistan. practice report 178 4. conclusion both royal holloway’s lac and acaa have found that covid-19 has magnified preexisting inequalities amongst its users and its services. covid-19 has also forced many charities and organisations to work together to reach those who need continuing legal help. by developing an existing relationship with acaa, royal holloway has been able to provide both support to communities and enhance the experience of their student volunteers in the lac. student volunteers have researched a multitude of legal issues that adversely impact afghan and central asian communities in the uk. the next step is to have the student volunteers begin research on the impact of covid19 in afghanistan to lay the groundwork for future lac and acaa work in the country. the global pandemic has harmed countless individual and families but has successfully brought together organisations who can pool resources to provide assistance. the experience of the lac with the remote summer placements will allow them to be resilient to future unexpected events and has created a fruitful partnership with acaa, which they can build on to pursue funding to assist acaa’s communities18. 18 curran, l., ‘university law clinics and their value in undertaking client-centred law reform to provide a voice for clients’ experiences’ (2007) 12 international journal of clinical legal education. available at: https://www.northumbriajournals.co.uk/index.php/ijcle/article/view/73 (last accessed 30.9.20). https://www.northumbriajournals.co.uk/index.php/ijcle/article/view/73 ijple 3 (1) 2019 street law in the 21st century: assessing the impact of the ‘know the law’ pilot project briony johnston and shaun mccarthy[footnoteref:1] [1: ms briony johnston is a sessional academic with the newcastle law school, faculty of business and law, university of newcastle, australia. mr shaun mccarthy is the director of the university of newcastle legal centre and program convenor of the professional practice program, newcastle law school, faculty of business and law, university of newcastle, australia. the university of newcastle legal centre is conducted by the newcastle law school, university of newcastle in new south wales, australia.] abstract street law has long been identified as a means by which the community is empowered with relevant and topical information regarding their legal rights, remedies and responsibilities. however, in more recent times, traditional forms of delivery such as in-person legal education seminars may not adequately meet the desires and needs of people who are hoping to access legal information faster and more conveniently than ever before. this article examines a pilot project designed by the university of newcastle legal centre to ensure outreach keeps pace with modern expectations of legal service delivery through the development of the ‘know the law’ mobile cache device (‘the site’). released in early 2016, the site is designed to provide international students with a single platform through which they can access information regarding legal issues considered most relevant to them, such as tenancy, driving and employment. website analytics have been obtained regarding the number of ‘hits’ on the site, together with a survey of international students who have been exposed to the legal information therein. this article includes key findings in relation to the development, distribution and effectiveness of this pilot project. i. introduction the university of newcastle legal centre (unlc) is a community legal centre (clc) with a focus on equal access to justice, particularly servicing disadvantaged and marginalised persons. it is staffed by clc lawyers together with a large number of volunteer law students. the unlc has a long-standing commitment to its local community through the provision of free legal advice. it offers both drop-in legal advice clinics at the new space building in the centre of newcastle city[footnoteref:2] and outreach clinics. these include the flagship law on the beach advice clinics held over summer and legal information sessions delivered to community groups. tailored seminars are conducted by the centre to newly arrived international students together with health carer groups in order to front-end the provision of legal information to persons who may need legal assistance in the future. the centre’s forms of outreach may be viewed as ‘street law’ in the traditional sense, providing a ‘vehicle through which the public can be made more aware of their rights and responsibilities.’[footnoteref:3] [2: located in hunter street newcastle, new south wales, australia.] [3: richard grimes, david mcquoid-mason, ed o’brien and judy zimmer, ‘street law and social justice education’ in frank bloch (ed), the global clinical movement (oxford university press, 2011) 225, 225.] since 2010 penultimate and final year law students have been involved in delivering legal information seminars to international students, who often have little knowledge about the australian legal system and their rights under domestic law. one of the main challenges faced by international students is that legal issues, particularly surrounding tenancy, can strike before they have commenced studying or know where to go for legal help. it was this experience at the centre’s advice clinics that led to the unlc embracing modern technology and expanding its commitment to international students, assisting to make their transition to study as seamless as possible. with the assistance of university of newcastle student services and amenities fee (ssaf) funding, the unlc developed the pilot ‘know the law’ site to provide international students with a single electronic platform through which they are able to reference legal information and find contact details for relevant referral agencies. this pilot project has allowed the unlc to interact with, and better provide assistance to, international students before they arrive on campus, helping to circumvent any legal troubles before they arise. the site allows students to conveniently access the link at any time and immediately find information relating to issues that have been tracked by the unlc at its free legal advice clinics as those most likely to affect international students: managing credit & debt; driving in nsw; working in nsw; moving to nsw; police powers & fines; and tenancy. the link to the site is available at the university of newcastle website: http://knowthelaw.newcastle.edu.au. part ii of the paper provides an outline of the concept of street law while part iii will discuss various street law programs throughout the world. part iv then considers how electronic forms of outreach have been increasingly used to provide legal assistance and information to target populations. part v examines the development of the pilot project in detail. part vi addresses the effectiveness of the site through an analysis of website analytics and qualitative survey responses provided by international students. finally, part vii details the conclusions formed as a result of the pilot project. ii. street law – what is it? street law has been described as ‘a legal literacy program designed to enable law students and others to make people aware of their legal rights and where to obtain assistance . . . street law helps people to understand how the law works and how it can protect them.’[footnoteref:4] mcquoid-mason has defined it as ‘a clinical law program which trains law students to provide lay people with information about the law and how it can be used in daily life.’[footnoteref:5] further, street law aims to ‘focus on the specific and often unmet legal needs of the community and can support otherwise “hard-to-reach” groups’[footnoteref:6] on the presumption that ‘raising public awareness and understanding of the law and legal system should arm and empower people to tackle legal problems and contribute to addressing existing inequalities.’[footnoteref:7] the provision of legal information not only promotes ‘a clearer understanding of rights and responsibilities,’[footnoteref:8] it also facilitates active citizenship due to the fact that ‘[i]f the public are better informed, they may more effectively access entitlements and comply with obligations.’[footnoteref:9] grimes goes on to outline the extensive benefits of street law initiatives: [4: david mcquoid-mason, ‘street law as a clinical program’ (2008) 17(1) griffith law review 27, 27.] [5: ibid 27.] [6: grimes, above n 3, 229.] [7: rebecca grimes, ‘conference report – the ed o’brien street law and legal literacy international best practices conference, durban, south africa, april 2016’ (2016) 23 international journal of clinical legal education 137, 141. ] [8: richard grimes, ‘legal literacy, community empowerment and law schools some lessons from a working model in the uk’ (2004) 12(3) legal education digest 6, 7.] [9: ibid 7.] the street law approach to learning has several advantages. it gives students the opportunity to become actively involved in their learning. it supports study elsewhere in the law curriculum at the ‘academic’ and ‘vocational’ stages – reinforcing learning through application and reflection. it directly addresses lawyering and transferable skills, notably research, problem solving, communication, drafting and team work. it increases awareness of rights and responsibilities for both students and targeted community groups. it forges links between the law school and the wider community. it can provide an opportunity for academics, practitioners, students and members of the local community to work in partnership to increase the understanding of law and the legal process. it can generate wider community involvement through the identification of projects for further work – a practical manifestation of community empowerment.[footnoteref:10] [10: ibid 6-7. see also patricia grande montana, ‘lessons from the carnegie and best practice reports: a look at the street law program as a model for teaching professional skills’ (2009) 17(3) legal education digest 28, 31.] several street law programs have been successfully developed in australia. for example, melbourne law school has offered ‘street law’ as an elective subject to their juris doctor students since 2012.[footnoteref:11] as their website states, the course is a ‘community legal education initiative that aims to provide legal education to a non-legal audience.’[footnoteref:12] participating students ‘visit partner high schools in and around melbourne to deliver lessons on legal topics of interest and relevance to young people.’[footnoteref:13] similarly, griffith university also offers a course in ‘street law’, which takes the form of a community outreach clinic whereby students ‘engage in the process of developing materials on law-related subjects which are tailored to meet the interests of a particular community audience, in this instance secondary school students.’[footnoteref:14] [11: the university of melbourne, street law <http://law.unimelb.edu.au/students/jd/enrichment/ pili/subjects/street-law>.] [12: ibid.] [13: ibid.] [14: griffith university, street law: community legal education clinic <https://degrees. griffith.edu.au/course/overview?coursecode=5176law>.] outside of the tertiary context, canberra community law has enacted a ‘street law’ program that provides ‘a free and confidential outreach legal service for people who are experiencing or are at risk of homelessness. street law provides legal advice and casework assistance and connects clients with other legal services.’[footnoteref:15] this initiative is also available in western australia through the street law centre.[footnoteref:16] the centre provides ‘free, confidential legal information, advice and case work to the homeless or those at risk of homelessness’, and ‘seeks to address systemic legal issues through its law reform and advocacy campaign.’[footnoteref:17] [15: canberra community law, street law (2017) <http://www.canberracommunitylaw.org.au/ street-law.html>.] [16: street law centre wa inc, home <http://streetlawcentre.org.au/>.] [17: ibid.] iii. international street law ‘street law’ originated in the united states in 1972 at georgetown university law centre in washington dc.[footnoteref:18] the main aim of street law inc. is not only to ‘educate students and communities about law, democracy and human rights’ but also to train others in the purpose and principles of street law.[footnoteref:19] the programs are designed to ‘teach young people in schools, communities, and corrections sites about the law, while providing law students with a unique, powerful professional development opportunity.’[footnoteref:20] currently, the georgetown street law program includes three streams: ‘street law: criminal justice and human rights; street law: mock trial advocacy; and street law: corrections and community.’[footnoteref:21] stanford law school has also adopted a street law program, where ‘participants volunteer their time to team-teach youth once a week for 10 weeks . . . lessons cover such topics as search and seizure laws, miranda rights, attorney-client relationship, sentencing hearings, racial profiling and violence prevention.’[footnoteref:22] this initiative clearly benefits the incarcerated and at-risk youth who are included in the program. however, it also offers law students ‘an opportunity to put their legal knowledge to practical use’ and ‘have the chance to experience the rewards of teaching in an environment that allows them to gain a greater understanding of the legal needs and social concerns of youth.’[footnoteref:23] [18: street law inc., about us <http://streetlaw.org/en/about/who_we_are>. see also mcquoid-mason, above n 4, 29.] [19: ibid.] [20: street law inc., law school programs <http://streetlaw.org/en/programs/program/2/ law_school_programs>.] [21: georgetown law, georgetown street law program <https://www.law.georgetown.edu/ academics/academic-programs/clinical-programs/our-clinics/street-law-program/>.] [22: stanford law school, street law <https://law.stanford.edu/street-law/#slsnav-contact-information>.] [23: ibid.] south africa is also widely recognised as a strong proponent of street law following its introduction of a pilot project at the university of natal in durban 1986, now known as the university of kwazulu-natal.[footnoteref:24] their focus goes beyond mere provision of legal information and involves a distinct human rights aspect, as ‘[s]treet law workshops blend legal substance with innovative teaching strategies aimed at not only increasing understanding but also intending to develop the values and attitudes needed in citizens living in a democratic country.’[footnoteref:25] students are responsible for designing lesson plans that are subsequently delivered to the target group, and are taught the importance of ‘interactive teaching methods including mock trials that involve large numbers of participants.’[footnoteref:26] care is taken to ensure participating law students are ‘properly trained so that they can go out to schools and community groups, and teach effectively and confidently.’[footnoteref:27] the curriculum outcomes of the optional street law course run at the university highlight the extensive benefits that accompany participation within this form of community outreach. these include increased understanding of the law, improved writing and communication skills, experience with advocacy and significant opportunities for personal development.[footnoteref:28] three streams are offered within the clinical law program at the university of kwazulu-natal, providing students with a choice of: ‘family law; hiv/aids and the law; or social justice.’[footnoteref:29] [24: mcquoid-mason, above n 4, 29.] [25: street law south africa, about us <http://www.streetlaw.org.za/index.php/about-us/about-us>.] [26: mcquoid-mason, above n 4, 27.] [27: ibid 35.] [28: ibid 36.] [29: ibid 43.] the united kingdom has also embraced the concept of street law, with richard grimes first introducing a pilot at the university of derby in 1997.[footnoteref:30] more recently, the law society of scotland was nominated for its program at the european association awards for best training initiative.[footnoteref:31] this street law pilot project is relatively new, commencing in 2014/2015,[footnoteref:32] and ‘provides highly-participatory, law-focused education to school pupils over a period of 6-8 weeks whilst also contributing to the professional development of scots law students.’[footnoteref:33] this development is extensive, as the ‘law students themselves design and deliver classes about the law and legal process which also cover the knowledge and skills that school pupils can use to recognise, prevent and in some cases, resolve legal problems.’[footnoteref:34] further initiatives are also undertaken by the university of birmingham, where the birmingham pro bono group present street law sessions to secondary school students, local charities and unrepresented litigants through the birmingham employment tribunal streetlaw project.[footnoteref:35] finally, kings college london have created kcl streetlaw.[footnoteref:36] this pro bono society is populated by student volunteers who ‘aim to educate members of the community, who would otherwise not have access to legal knowledge, with a basic overview of the law.’[footnoteref:37] as in the programs discussed above, the legal information is targeted to issues that are of particular relevance within a community group. students are responsible for researching the selected legal information and then presenting ‘the information to the community in a way that helps them better understand the law and how it affects them.’[footnoteref:38] the community cohorts are broad, with workshops being ‘run for various focus groups throughout london, ranging from under-privileged schools to small businesses, from lgbt youth groups to ethnic minority centres.’[footnoteref:39] [30: grimes, above n 8, 8.] [31: the journal of the law society of scotland, ‘street law’ in running for european training initiative award (11 january 2017) <http://www.journalonline.co.uk/news/1022751.aspx#. wldj8lfh3jx>.] [32: law society of scotland, street law (2017) <http://www.lawscot.org.uk/education-and-careers/schools/street-law/>.] [33: ibid.] [34: ibid.] [35: university of birmingham, streetlaw (2016) <https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/ law/life/pro-bono/streetlaw.aspx>.] [36: king’s college london, streetlaw (2018) <https://www.kcl.ac.uk/law/professional-skills/kings-legal-clinic/streetlaw.aspx>.] [37: ibid.] [38: ibid.] [39: ibid.] similarly, the law society of ireland has developed a street law clinic in conjunction with georgetown university law centre.[footnoteref:40] volunteer trainee solicitors attend an intensive workshop to prepare them for their interactions with secondary school students, who in turn benefit from the program in that it allows them ‘to see how the law affects their daily lives and promotes lifelong civic engagement.’[footnoteref:41] [40: law society of ireland, street law (2017) <https://www.lawsociety.ie/public/transition-year-programmes/street-law/>.] [41: ibid.] iv. the rise of electronic outreach interestingly, with respect to street law in south africa, mcquoid-mason has identified that ‘lectures are the least effective means of teaching people.’[footnoteref:42] as such, interactivity is a vital consideration when designing a street law program, or any form of legal outreach for that matter. this has resulted in a variety of techniques being adopted to better convey legal information to the selected community groups. community legal centres (clcs) throughout australia are increasingly utilising technology to connect with and help educate their client base.[footnoteref:43] as the national association of community legal centres explains: [42: mcquoid-mason, above n 4, 27.] [43: national association of community legal centres, working smarter: community legal centres using innovation and technology (2015) <http://www.naclc.org.au/resources/ naclc_tech_web2.pdf>.] clcs have been swift in developing mobile and web based applications (or apps) to engage with the community, provide people with access to information to resolve their legal issues, and to tell prospective clients about the services the clc offers. apps are a particularly cost-effective way to directly access specific groups and communities who may otherwise not be aware of, or seek out, a clc and its services. mobile phones are the most common and accessible source of information and communication for many disadvantaged and hard to reach groups, such as young people. as an information source, they also have the great advantage of almost always being with the client![footnoteref:44] [44: ibid 2. see also anusha goonetilleke and alexandra wolhuter, ‘law within reach: qplich takes rural, regional and remote initiative’ (2013) 33(7) the proctor 22 for a brief discussion regarding how technology is being used to provide legal assistance to rural, regional and remote communities. ] colleagues from the university of newcastle law school and australian national university have created ‘bernie’, an app that is designed to help prevent domestic violence reoffending by individuals who are subject to apprehended domestic violence orders (advos).[footnoteref:45] this significant form of electronic outreach plays a vital role in supporting defendants’ understanding of information relating to the orders, and reinforcing behavioural expectations that accompany advos.[footnoteref:46] similar to the ‘know the law’ site, bernie provides ‘legal and psycho-educational resources’ as well as ‘contact numbers for counselling, legal advice, and financial and housing assistance.’[footnoteref:47] [45: the university of newcastle, avo app ‘bernie’ to help address domestic violence reoffending (28 november 2017) <https://www.newcastle.edu.au/newsroom/featured-news/avo-app-bernie-to-help-address-domestic-violence-reoffending>. see also hunter research foundation centre, app to reduce domestic violence order breaches (9 october 2017) <http://www.hrf.com.au/news-events/latest-news/app-to-reduce-domestic-violence-order-breaches>; lisa allan, ‘hunter to trial new app to help protect domestic violence victims’, newcastle herald (online), 28 november 2017 <http://www.theherald.com.au/story/5085433/hunter-to-trial-new-app-to-protect-domestic-violence-victims/>.] [46: allan, above n 45.] [47: the university of newcastle, above n 45.] on an international level, there has been a marked rise in the use of technology, and mobile applications in particular, when providing legal information to a client base or facilitating easier exchanges between law firms and clients. in the united states and canada, this is especially evident in the field of personal injury law, where ‘apps legal’ has created mobile applications for over 400 law firms.[footnoteref:48] a quick online search reveals entire articles dedicated to the best apps for legal help,[footnoteref:49] that range from general legal questions,[footnoteref:50] road accidents,[footnoteref:51] immigration,[footnoteref:52] employment,[footnoteref:53] contracts[footnoteref:54] and police powers.[footnoteref:55] [48: apps legal, our clients <http://www.appslegal.com/>.] [49: joe dysart, 20 apps to help provide easier access to legal help (april 2015) aba journal <http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/20_apps_providing_easier_access_to_legal_help>.] [50: google play, ask a lawyer: legal help <https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com. absmallbusinessmarketing.askalawyer&hl=en>; bernie sez <https://www.berniesez.com/>.] [51: the stellute law firm, smart driver app <http://www.stellutelaw.com/stelluteapp/app/index .html>.] [52: citizenshipworks, about us <https://www.citizenshipworks.org/>.] [53: united states department of labor, dol-timesheet <https://www.dol.gov/general/apps/ timesheet>.] [54: shake by legal shield, product <http://www.shakelaw.com/product/>.] [55: new york civil liberties union, stop and frisk watch app <https://www.nyclu.org/en/stop-and-frisk-watch-app>.] v. the development of the pilot project this pilot project aimed to achieve the goals of providing international students with relevant information and directing them to other resources for further guidance. it has been designed to be accessible either by computer or via mobile phone. the site is now available in both english and mandarin, allowing it to reach an even wider pool of international students. the concept of street law underpins the unlc’s decision to deliver detailed and relevant legal information to international students and satisfy their potentially unmet legal needs through the provision of the mobile site. while the site is not street law in the traditional sense, it draws on the same principles. since 2010 penultimate and final year students, under the supervision of unlc staff, have delivered legal information seminars to international students. the involvement of law students in this process is a key principle of street law[footnoteref:56] but is not within the direct scope of this paper. the content provided for the site is tailored to meet the particular issues that international students most frequently seek to discuss at the free legal advice clinics run by the unlc being tenancy, employment and driving. seminars can then be structured accordingly to contain the most relevant legal information for international students, empowering this particular demographic within the community. the pilot project has subsequently drawn on these experiences of international students who are being exposed to the australian legal system for the first time. [56: grimes, above n 7, 146: ‘as well as the public benefit, it was also clearly shown that law students can be closely involved in preparing and delivering presentations / workshops and in doing so can gain considerably in terms of their own education, appreciating both substance and context. knowledge, skills and wider ethical considerations can all be effectively studied through involvement in ple [public legal education] in general and street law in particular. for all (the law student and the wider public) to realise that law involves not just individual rights and responsibilities but choices and values is, it is suggested, an important lesson.’ see also asnida mohd suhaimi and nur farzana mohd zulkifli, ‘street law based cle: a student-impact-assessment’ (2012) 18 international journal of clinical legal education 218, 221.] as with any form of legal outreach, street law is not without difficulty. this is mainly due to the fact that ‘[d]iscussions with the community do not just happen.’[footnoteref:57] with regard to international students, there is a need to act with both ‘sensitivity and . . . genuine respect for cultural and social diversity.’[footnoteref:58] initially the newcastle street law model involved legal information being delivered during in-person seminars, providing content that is considered to be most relevant for this particular cohort. it can be very difficult for international students to anticipate the significant legal issues which may arise until they have already faced them. thus, while the in-person legal seminars play a vital role in increasing student knowledge and confidence, the sessions were often criticised by international students as being delivered too late. as some students had already settled in new south wales, they reported having previously experienced some of the legal issues discussed at seminars, particularly surrounding tenancy and employment. [57: grimes, above n 3, 227.] [58: ibid 227.] the pilot project is designed to combat the concerns raised about early access to legal information, as the site now enables international students to access relevant legal sources online well before they arrive in australia. the site aims to prevent legal problems arising before they affect international students. further, it provides information regarding what students should do in certain situations, for example when interacting with police, and directs them where to go if they require additional information or personalised legal advice. this is in line with traditional principles of street law, as the site does ‘not solve legal problems for their target communities.’[footnoteref:59] rather, it provides relevant information and links to further sources, including the names and contact details of helpful organisations. ‘know the law’ is not a substitute for seeking legal advice, and a disclaimer to this effect features prominently on the site. [59: mcquoid-mason, above n 4, 44.] interactivity is another key component in the success of street law programs.[footnoteref:60] as grimes et al state, ‘[t]he more you engage the audience the more likely they are to take on board what it is you are trying to get across.’[footnoteref:61] the site is interactive and user-friendly, providing ‘a flexible and appropriate tool through which wider social justice issues can be addressed.’[footnoteref:62] its flexibility, portability and convenience ensures international students are able to easily access useful information from their devices anywhere, anytime. this provides a clear advantage over more traditional forms of street law, as students can use the site whenever and wherever it suits them. [60: ibid 31.] [61: grimes, above n 3, 232.] [62: ibid 238.] vi. the effectiveness of the site a. marketing the site is promoted through several means. these include: an announcement circulated to all university staff; an email to incoming international students and a subsequent email to all international students at the university of newcastle; the publication of facebook messages; the circulation of marketing postcards to student hubs on campus, the unlc and offices across campus; information on the faculty of business and law webpage, the newcastle law school webpage and the unlc webpage; the provision of information to student associations; and a presentation during orientation to newly arrived international students. the effectiveness of the pilot project has been measured by two main sources: analytics relating to the site; and qualitative survey responses provided by international students after being shown the pilot project. b. website analytics the unlc used google analytics to track the use of the site. data obtained covered the period from when the site was launched in early 2016 through to 30 june 2018. the following terminology is used by google analytics[footnoteref:63] to explain the relevant data: [63: for more information, see google analytics solutions, analytics <https://www.google.com/ analytics/analytics/features/>.] sessions: a session is the period of time a user is actively engaged with your website, app, etc. all usage data (screen views, events, ecommerce, etc) is associated with a session. users: users that have had at least one session within the selected date range. includes both new and returning users. pageviews: pageviews is the total number of pages viewed. repeated views of a single page are counted. pages / session: pages / session (average page depth) is the average number of pages viewed during a session. repeated views of a single page are counted. avg. session duration: the average length of a session. bounce rate: bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits (ie visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page without interacting with the page). % new sessions: an estimate of the percentage of first time visits. in the relevant period, there were a total of 1643 sessions, which peaked in january 2016 (376 sessions). a higher number of sessions was also evident in june 2016 (119 sessions) and november 2016 (169 sessions), most likely preceding the start of semester 2 in july 2016 and the arrival of new students ready to study in 2017 respectively. there was also high traffic on the site in october 2017, with 111 sessions recorded. there were 1004 total users, 1643 sessions and 5019 page views. the pages per session were calculated at 3.05 with an average session duration of 3 minutes and 57 seconds. 91.3% of the audience were estimated to be new visitors, with 8.7% thought to be returning. the bounce rate was recorded as 54.60%. the site was only available in english for the majority of this time, as the mandarin translation had not yet been activated. it is hoped that this new translated version of the site will have a two-fold effect: increase the number of users, sessions and average session durations; and decrease the current bounce rate. c. survey responses as highlighted by mcquoid-mason, ‘[s]treet law programs should be continually evaluated regarding their impact on the target communities and the students in order to improve them,’ and questionnaires following the initiative ‘can give an indication of how successful they were at transferring knowledge and skills.’[footnoteref:64] at the conclusion of the 2017 in-person legal information seminar to newly arrived international students, attendees were shown the site and then asked to complete a short anonymous survey.[footnoteref:65] a small sample of students in attendance completed the survey and the results were as follows: [64: mcquoid-mason, above n 4, 46-47.] [65: university of newcastle human research ethics committee approval h-2017-0048.] question 1 – before being shown the ‘know the law’ site, my knowledge of the laws in new south wales was: very good good average little knowledge no knowledge 22% 78% question 2 – after being shown the ‘know the law’ site, my knowledge of the laws in new south wales has: increased significantly increased stayed the same decreased no opinion 89% 11% question 3 – i think the content included in the ‘know the law’ site is: very useful useful some useful content little useful content no useful content 67% 22% 11% question 4 – i think the ‘know the law’ site is: very easy to use easy to use fairly easy to use a little hard to use very hard to use 11% 89% two further questions were asked of the students who completed the survey, and the following qualitative comments were offered in response: question 5 – what did you like most about the ‘know the law’ site? ‘easy to access, the laws that are very practical to us – rent, online shopping, work, driving.’ ‘it will raise awareness to us, international students, regarding the laws that are in power, it will be helpful to us.’ ‘being able to provide information comprehensively.’ question 6 – are there areas in which the ‘know the law’ site could be improved? ‘it will be helpful if information about accommodation be given early to international students.’ ‘sample incidents will help understand the points raised.’ d. further development of the site throughout 2017, the legal content for the site was periodically updated to reflect changes in the law. recently, a major development within the site has been undertaken by information technology (it) services in the resource division of the university of newcastle. it services has implemented an artificial intelligence (ai) chatbot aspect within the ‘know the law’ site, which enables users to ask questions about legal matters. users are greeted with the following introduction when first arriving at the site: ‘hi! i am the know the law chatbot. i can talk about any of the following topics: managing credit and debt, driving in nsw, working in nsw, moving to nsw, police powers and fines in nsw, tenancy in nsw. would you like to talk about any of these?’ the user is then able to type in their specific question or topic of choice and subsequently directed to relevant content within the site. there is an option to turn off the chatbot function if visitors would prefer to browse the content for themselves. it services are hoping to further refine this feature to enhance the ai capabilities of the site, making it even more user-friendly and accurate in the content provided. the chatbot has proved popular with users. from 1 july 2017 to 1 june 2018, the chatbot has been asked questions relating to each of the six topic areas within the site. from the data gathered, it appears that visitors to the site had the most questions regarding police powers & fines in nsw, with 19 separate entries to the chatbot. these were mainly related to being arrested and the search powers of police officers. traffic fines were also a key area of concern. users were also seeking information about working in nsw, with 18 questions being entered. they covered issues such as pay, giving notice, tax, workplace harassment or discrimination, entitlements and superannuation. driving in nsw was the third most popular topic, with the questions relating to licence requirements, drink driving, and what to do if you have been involved in a car accident. users were also seeking information regarding tenancy in nsw, and were mostly concerned with rent, how to terminate a lease, and the conditions that come with leasing a property. finally, the chatbot was asked questions about moving to nsw, including student insurance and visa conditions, and managing credit & debt, which related to either loans or what to do if they were in debt. in 2018, law students are working on adding additional legal content to the site. further topics include family law and consumer claims, covering issues such as scams and seeking redress for defective products. in light of the qualitative response above, examples of typical legal scenarios will also be provided to assist users. other content areas that are being considered for inclusion on the site include: domestic violence; sexual harassment; car accidents, with respect to both property damage and personal injury; and financial literacy. vii. conclusions the traditional principles of street law provided the impetus for the development of the ‘know the law’ site, which has enabled the expansion of the provision of legal information and outreach to cohorts of international students. the site intends to assist these students with any transitions they may face when coming to study and live in new south wales. they are able to access legal information in a convenient and efficient way, anywhere and anytime from their computer or mobile device. international students speak positively of the site, as observed in their quantitative and qualitative responses above. the intent of the site – to provide information about typical legal matters that international students may encounter following their arrival in australia – has clearly been achieved through this pilot project. 27 ijple 4 (1) 2020 1 editorial public legal education sharing best practice in changing times sarah morse northumbria university, uk sarah.morse@northumbria.ac.uk i hope that this editorial finds you safe and well. undoubtedly these are scary and challenging times and the global pandemic has had far reaching and long lasting consequences for us all. in times of crisis, inequalities in our society are highlighted and it is increasingly important that individuals have access to legal information in order to be able to deal with legal issues they face, seek redress and know how and when to seek support. public legal education plays a vital role in this. it is therefore important that our work continues and that we support each other by sharing best practice and resources in a time when we may have to revisit or reconsider our normal practice and programmes. with this in mind, we begin this issue with an article by amy wallace. amy explores the ‘special partnership’ between the charter high school for law and social justice and new york law school providing a fascinating insight into its origins, development and future. this provides valuable food for thought about the viability and potential for ambitious ple projects or models. mailto:sarah.morse@northumbria.ac.uk ijple 4 (1) 2020 2 our second article is by frances ridout who provides an excellent round up of the 4th uk and ireland best practice street law conference which took place at queen mary university of london in the autumn semester. this article provides a wealth of information about on-going work in the street law field and frances captures the ideas, discussions, good practice and challenges explored by the delegates. the final item in this issue is a handbook designed for the united nations development programme access to justice initiative, afghanistan, 2017. it is reproduced here with the kind permission of the author, dr richard grimes, as a potential resource for others who are encouraged to adopt or adapt it to meet their own needs. moving forward, many of us will be considering how and in what way we can continue to deliver our ple programmes and activities in the current climate bearing in mind all stakeholders involvedparticipants, recipients and others. to name a few, we may potentially be preparing for: • restrictions within our environment such as social distancing or less face to face contact; • the need to use different resources or technologies; • different modes of delivering legal education to the public; or • increased demand from the public and/or in certain areas of the law; ijple 4 (1) 2020 3 we invite submissions for our next issue of the journal which will be a special issue focussing on these issues including your ideas, successes and challenges. please submit proposals by 24/08/20 to sarah.morse@northumbria.ac.uk. your proposal should include the following information: • title • name of author[s], including title[s], role and organisation • contact details: email, phone • abstract: 300 words maximum we will then invite authors to submit full texts of their proposals. as a final point, the 5th annual uk and ireland street law best practice conference scheduled to take place in september 2020 at the law society of scotland has unfortunately been postponed until 2021. in the meantime, the conference organisers have planned an online roundtable entitled ‘delivering streetlaw in a socially distanced world’ which is scheduled to take place virtually on 3rd september 2020 – 2.30-4.30 p.m. for now, let us stay connected and safe and do let me know if any other events are taking place in the field of public legal education. mailto:sarah.morse@northumbria.ac.uk ijple 3 (1) 2019 education, empowerment and access to all public legal education and massive open online courses at the law society of ireland dr. freda grealy, steve collender, john lunney, rory o’boyle[footnoteref:1] [1: head of diploma centre, solicitor, law society of ireland; multimedia coordinator, diploma centre; solicitor, course manager; solicitor, course manager, law society of ireland.] abstract since 2014, the diploma centre at the law society of ireland (‘the society’) has implemented a programme of moocs; ‘massive open online courses’ in key areas of practice. this article outlines the provision of public legal education at the society and how moocs align with the mission to widen access to legal education and the legal profession. of interest to others who may be developing moocs, we discuss the instructional design process and feedback from mooc participants. moocs are very much on trend and have received a mixed reception but, subject to course design, they can provide substantial educational benefit and operate as an effective means to widen access to education. 1. introduction the annual massive open online course (mooc) presented by the diploma centre[footnoteref:2] embraces the law society of ireland (‘the society’)’s public interest mission to provide access to legal education and the legal profession. the society’s strategic objectives[footnoteref:3] were recently updated to specifically reference “our tradition of engaged citizenship and civic responsibility by promoting legal awareness and encouraging social diversity within the profession…” to date, the diploma centre’s moocs have attracted in excess of 12,000 registrants from over 70 countries. the core aim for the moocs is to design and deliver a course that fits with the law society’s mission to widen access to legal education, i.e. a course that is easily accessible and free for everyone. [2: the diploma centre, as part of the education department at the law society of ireland, has provided continuing professional legal education for over twenty years, offering a diverse range of postgraduate courses which are available both onsite and online. these courses are open to solicitors, trainees, and barristers, with a number of courses welcoming suitably qualified non-legal professionals.] [3: awaiting publication, law society of ireland.] the core structure of our moocs has stayed broadly similar since they first launched in 2014. our approach is to deliver an education programme over five weeks consisting of a weekly module release. the main learning resources consist of the weekly release of a set of video recordings on the weekly topic supplemented by further reading and discussion forum threads. from an educational design point of view, the modules are structured to encourage peer-to-peer learning, fostering online engagement on the course forum as a means to enhancing the learning experience and encourage the development of a community of practice. course delivery emphasises a hands-on practical learning approach, with clear learning outcomes outlined for each module and a comprehensive video introduction curated by the team at the outset of each week. later in the week, there is an opportunity for real time engagement with an expert through an online question &answer session. each weekly module is then bookended by a self-assessed multiple-choice quiz (mcq). in terms of the demographic profile of our participants over 50 per cent are educated to postgraduate level or above, with a further 32 per cent holding undergraduate degrees. students from a legal background accounted for 37 per cent of the total participants of mooc courses between 2016 and 2018. although participants are predominantly based in ireland, the percentage of international students has increased each year to a record high of 13 per cent in 2018[footnoteref:4]. [4: appendix a: mooc demographic profile 2016 – 2018:] moocs provide individuals and businesses with a greater understanding of the law, and also provide educational value while highlighting a commitment to embrace technology and provide public legal education online. this article explores the positive opportunity moocs provide for a professional representative and educational body such as the law society of ireland to open up legal education and to welcome the public; thus increasing overall knowledge and understanding of the law. 2. what is public legal education? public legal education (ple) covers a wide range of activities aimed at empowering participants and increasing their confidence and capability to deal with law-related issues[footnoteref:5]. ple is provided worldwide in many different guises and by a myriad of organisations, from state and private organisations to volunteer entities and universities. in many countries, such as the uk, canada, and the usa, ple is closely aligned to access to justice and encouraging the public to increase their confidence and empower them to deal with law-related issues. in this process, the increasing legal literacy levels contribute to enhancing access to justice more generally[footnoteref:6]. [5: solicitor general’s committee on public legal education, ‘a ten year vision for public legal education’ (lawworks, 31 october 2018), <https://www.lawworks.org.uk/sites/default/files/files/10yearvisionforple-web.pdf> ] [6: richard grimes, ‘evaluating legal literacy programmes – aims, challenges, models and a call to action’ (2018) 2(1) international journal of public legal education 28.] the breadth of ple initiatives globally and the various modalities employed make it somewhat amorphous and difficult to define. one important factor to emphasise particularly, bearing in mind that the society is a member organisation for solicitors, is that ple is fundamentally about education and information and not the provision of legal advice[footnoteref:7]. a working definition of ple was used by the authors of the report of the pleas taskforce[footnoteref:8]; [7: for a fuller discussion of the distinction between legal advice, legal information and legal self-help see: ashley falk, michelle korpan & noah wernikowski, ‘legal information, legal advice & access to justice’ (university of saskatchewan dean’s forum, 1 march 2017) <https://law.usask.ca/documents/research/deans-forum/paper%201%20-%20legal%20information,%20legal%20advice%20access%20to%20justice%20.pdf> ] [8: public legal education and support (pleas), ‘developing capable citizens: the role of public legal education’ (law for life, july 2007) <https://lawforlife.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/pleas-task-force-report-14.pdf> accessed 12 december 2018 ] ple provides people with awareness, knowledge and understanding of rights and legal issues, together with the confidence and skills they need to deal with disputes and gain access to justice. equally important, it helps people recognise when they may need support, what sort of advice is available, and how to go about getting it. ple has a further key role in helping citizens to better understand everyday life issues, making better decisions and anticipating and avoiding problems. as the law society of canada outlines, some organisations call this work “community legal education (cle), law-related education (lre), legal literacy, legal capability, or legal empowerment.” they observe that “[the] terms ‘education’ and ‘information’ are also used interchangeably!”[footnoteref:9]; however grimes[footnoteref:10] differentiates between these two headings and notes that despite a wide range of activities, ple can generally be grouped into two categories; [9: lois gander, ‘defining ple’ (public legal education canada, 2015) <http://www.plecanada.org/what-is-ple/defining-ple> accessed 12 december 2018] [10: richard grimes, ‘evaluating legal literacy programmes – aims, challenges, models and a call to action’ (2018) 2(1) international journal of public legal education 28] i. the provision of information, and ii. more formal education interface such as one off presentations or structured courses and programmes. furthermore, terms such as ‘street law’ to connote community legal education are also prominent forms of ple, as are seminars and clinics in the community. many law students are involved in these worthy initiatives offering experiential learning opportunities, which teach valuable skills and develop them as lawyers. significant supports exist for ple initiatives from bar associations, regulators, and law societies but unlike the law society of ireland, few, if any, of these organisations actually fund and offer these initiatives directly[footnoteref:11]. the american bar association in the usa has a public education division, that offers law-related resources and programs to educators, students, journalists, legal professionals, opinion leaders, and the public to promote understanding of law and its vital role in our society.[footnoteref:12] the canadian bar association is very forthright in its support of ple, as this note from its website attests; [11: encouraged by the response to moocs at the law society of ireland, the law society of scotland ran their first mooc in 2017. they collaborated with a large local firm who specialised in shipping law and indicate that they plan to launch another mooc. see further: <http://www.journalonline.co.uk/magazine/62-12/1024127.aspx#.xdyusc_7rok> accessed 12 january 2019] [12: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_education/)] in every province in canada, organizations have been set up to provide essential legal information to members of the public. these non-profit and non-governmental groups believe that canadians cannot fully exercise their rights unless they know about and understand the laws and the justice system that affects them. providing easy access to information on the law is fundamental to a fair justice system.[footnoteref:13] [13: the canadian bar association, ‘public legal education and information in canada’ (the canadian bar association, 2018) <http://www.cba.org/for-the-public/public-legal-education-and-information-in-canada> accessed 21 december 2018] the solicitors regulatory association in the uk is likewise supportive and has published a number of resources and reports[footnoteref:14]. most notable in the uk is the 2018 announcement by solicitor general robert buckland qc mp of a ten-year vision for ple which listed seven goals.[footnoteref:15] [14: the law society, ‘public legal education’ (the law society, 2018) <https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/support-services/public-legal-education> accessed 21 december 2018] [15: robert buckland qc mp & attorney general’s office, ‘our vision for legal education’ (government uk, 31 october 2018) <https://www.gov.uk/government/news/our-vision-for-legal-education> accessed 31 october 2018] 3. public legal education at the law society of ireland the law society of ireland is the educational, representative, and regulatory body for the approximate 18,000 members of the solicitors profession in ireland.[footnoteref:16] the provision of legal information to the public has historically been provided by the law society of ireland in tandem with its three pillar functions. currently the society’s website[footnoteref:17] is the main repository for information for the public and has its own dedicated section for this purpose. while the society cannot provide legal advice, there is a helpful ‘legal guides’ section where the public can access information on a range of legal areas such as employment law, dispute resolution, and legal aid. [16: approximately 11,000 of our 18,000 members hold practicing certificates] [17: https://www.lawsociety.ie/public/] in 2013, the society moved beyond merely providing information to the public and offered for the first time a more formal ple course designed for the community. this was offered through a street law programme developed by the diploma centre, where trainee solicitors were placed in local schools to teach transition year students[footnoteref:18] about law. at the heart of street law is a social justice ethos promoted through the use of learner-centred teaching methodologies and pedagogy. initially, the main objective for our ple project was simply to provide law-related education in the community and to encourage and support an ethos of public service amongst trainee solicitors. we also recognised the potential educational benefits to trainee and practicing solicitors who delivered ple. [18: in ireland, the transition year (ty) is a one-year programme offered between the junior and senior cycle at secondary school – see <https://www.education.ie/en/schools-colleges/information/curriculum-and-syllabus/transition-year-/>] our list of programmes has also expanded in addition to our street law schools programme; · street law prison[footnoteref:19], collaborating with organisations such as solas[footnoteref:20] and working with detainees in wheatfield, mountjoy prison, oberstown and the dochas centre. [19: https://www.lawsociety.ie/public/public-legal-education/streetlaw-prison/] [20: http://solas.ie/] · solicitors of the future[footnoteref:21] , an innovative work experience programme for school students which provides students with an introduction to the solicitor’s profession [21: https://www.lawsociety.ie/futuresolicitors] · certificate in public legal education[footnoteref:22], which aims to develop the skills of solicitors to run an effective ple programme in their own communities [22: https://www.lawsociety.ie/public/public-legal-education/certificate-in-public-legal-education/] · working with community service organisations such as public interest law alliance (pila) and future voices[footnoteref:23] to assist a group of youths in making a submission to the law reform commission on proposed cyber-bullying legislation. [23: http://futurevoices.ie/] in addition, our street law orientation model run in collaboration with professor richard roe and fellows of the georgetown street law clinic[footnoteref:24] has become a launch pad for other educational institutions to develop their own ple street law programmes. each year, we facilitate institutions interested in launching their own programmes in attending at this weekend training, which has supported new street law programmes at law society of scotland, letterkenny it, open university, middlesex university, university of birmingham, national university of ireland, galway and the university of limerick. [24: sean arthurs, melinda cooperman, jessica gallagher, freda grealy, john lunney, rob marrs, & richard roe, ‘from zero to 60: building belief, capacity and community in street law instructors in one weekend’ (2017) 24(2) international journal of clinical legal education, 118-241] 4. how moocs fit within ple moocs have developed as a stream of the open education movement generally and feature common traits including being open, participatory, distributed, and supporting lifelong learning. given that they are open to all, moocs have contributed to a democratisation of education; they have the advantage to providers of scalability and extending reach globally. online learning can still be regarded as problematic and the quality of learning offered may be suspect if the proper learning supports are not in place[footnoteref:25]. more recent research advises educators to “harness the enormous opportunities that moocs might afford for providing access to knowledge and education, whilst equally addressing problematic issues like high dropout rates and sustainable cost models”[footnoteref:26]. [25: five factors found within landmark study of three moocs: (1) problem-centric learning with clear exposition, (2) instructor accessibility and passion, (3) active learning, (4) peer interaction, and (5) using helpful course resources. hew, k. f. (2014) ‘promoting engagement in online courses: what strategies can we learn from three highly rated moocs’, british journal of education technology, 47(2), pp. 320-341. doi: 10.1111/bjet.12235] [26: olaf zawacki-richter, aras bozkurt, uthman alturki & ahmed aldraiweesh, ‘what research says about moocs – an explorative content analysis’ (2018) 19(1) international review of research in open and distributed learning 252. 10.19173/irrodl.v19i1.3356] buoyed by the enthusiastic reception for street law and mindful of the public’s increased demand and interest in understanding the law and the solicitor profession, we piloted the inaugural mooc in 2014 in ‘aviation leasing and finance’, an industry which has a significant presence in the jurisdiction. the society as an institution has always had a strong sense of corporate social responsibility (csr) represented by a vision for responsible and sustainable business practice through the adoption and implementation of best practice in csr[footnoteref:27]. the society strives, in partnership with members, trainee solicitors, and employees, to work in a responsible and ethical way, to lead by example, to be a champion of csr among the profession, and to continuously improve activities and processes. [27: law society of ireland, ‘corporate social responsibility statement’ (law society of ireland, 2018)] the ple initiatives have significant institutional support amongst staff and management. the national plan on csr in ireland 2017-2020[footnoteref:28], also identifies “community” as one of its four core dimensions (workplace, marketplace, environment and community). in relation to this core pillar of community, the ple project aligns with the dual objectives of provision and promotion of legal information and community engagement. we are mindful of the privilege of our position and keen to instil in future generations of the profession the positive contribution that they can make to the community with their legal training. we are keen to support the public interest in encouraging wider access to legal education and to the legal profession, and our ple programmes deliver on both counts. significantly the most recent version of the law society of ireland future strategy statement includes a goal that the society specifically promotes ‘[e]ngaged citizenship and civic responsibility by promoting legal awareness’. the society has identified the potential of moocs to align with this strategy by raising legal literacy levels and engaging the public in free legal education[footnoteref:29]. [28: department of enterprise and innovation, ‘towards responsible business, irelands national plan on corporate social responsibility 2017 -2020’ <https://dbei.gov.ie/en/publications/publication-files/towards-responsible-business-ireland%e2%80%99s-national-plan-csr-2017-2020.pdf> accessed 21 february 2019] [29: approximately 11,000 of our 18,000 members hold practicing certificates. confusing use of certificates, diplomas.] the success of our mooc series is reflected in the upward trajectory in participant numbers – from a student count of 900 on the inaugural offering in 2014 to over 3,200 in 2017, and a cumulative total of 10,000 students over the five year period since 2014. the goal of moocs at the society was to widen the provision of public legal education and in the process extend our reach by introducing our educational offerings on a larger scale to potential diploma centre students both nationally and internationally. this digital initiative opened up the law society to a large audience of legal and non-legal professionals alike and demonstrated the commitment of the organisation to the public interest and increasing access to justice and an understanding of the law. the themes of the annual moocs at the society are aligned to topical subject matter areas likely to have widespread appeal for lawyers and non-lawyers alike and cover areas of practice including technology law, data protection, finance, employment law and media, arts and entertainment law. it is made clear that the subject of our moocs is the law as it applies in ireland, but where appropriate with eu and international dimensions fully explored. the importance of the topic and its applicability across learning domains and countries creates a unique space for lawyer and non-lawyer engagement (as peers) and aligns with the society’s mission to widen access to legal education and to the legal profession. the mooc has consistently appealed to students outside of the legal sphere. moocs are easily accessible and the ability for students to direct their own learning in a self-paced manner suits the schedule of the busy professional or full-time student. in 2018, 50 per cent of students identified their highest education level attained as within the non-legal sphere. similarly, 41 percent of students on the 2017 employment law mooc were from non-legal backgrounds. figure 2: student background by year (2015 – 2018) the intrinsic role of the mooc as a knowledge provider has also been noted in our survey responses. 93 per cent of students on the final evaluation survey of the 2018 sports law mooc noted that their primary motivating factor for undertaking the course was to enhance their knowledge of the topic. attending the course was purely to gain knowledge, so accreditation was not their primary interest. the law society recognises that imparting legal knowledge is fundamentally a public good, and the mooc is utilised as an effective resource to impart this knowledge for free. however, the purpose of our approach is to go beyond merely providing information and stating what the law is in a particular area, and to provide examples of law in action and how the law can be applied. a deeper understanding is encouraged by exposing students to the law in applied situations and affording an opportunity to problematise and deepen the learning, turning the information into knowledge, and maximising the educational benefit. our 2017 mooc, for example, explored current employment law issues relevant to a variety of topics concerning law, business, and human resources in the digital age. these included social media in the workplace; equality law in ireland; anatomy of an unfair dismissal; dispute resolution mechanisms; industrial relations in ireland; and employment consequences for ireland post-brexit. we also drew on speakers from a myriad of other professions outside of the legal sphere, in keeping with our ethos of openness and collaboration with other sectors. by taking a multifaceted approach which emphasises different modalities, the moocs have been tailored to provide a meaningful learning experience that goes beyond the mere descriptive or the provision of information and are of educational benefit. development of the mooc programme has also allowed us to expand outwards to public education initiatives in other jurisdictions. in 2017, the diploma centre was part of an international group awarded a grant by the european commission for the provision of a training course on the eu victims’ impact directive using our mooc infrastructure. the course utilised the same format as the mooc and attracted interest from the gardaí[footnoteref:30], victims support groups, civil liberty advocates, and related professions in ireland and abroad. [30: gardaí is the name for the irish policing authority.] in summary, the primary objectives and motivators for the law society of ireland in the design and delivery of moocs is to provide a course that: 1. aligns with the public interest and corporate social responsibility ethos of the society to serve the community 2. fits within the society mission to widen access to legal education and to the profession 3. provides individuals and businesses with a greater understanding of the law 4. enhances the positive reputation of the profession and the professional body of the society 5. highlights the society’s commitment to embrace technology and online learning and upskills team members 6. creates a positive online experience for students to incentivise uptake of further diploma offerings 5. designing a mooc with a ple focus one of the key challenges in distance education is preventing student drop off. research from 2013 indicates that typically fewer than 7 per cent of students complete mooc programs[footnoteref:31]. harvardx and mitx have gone further, reporting in january 2017 that only 5.5 per cent of people who enrol in one of their open online courses earn a certificate[footnoteref:32]. many students undertake moocs as a means of adding to their professional knowledge and skills and future employability. they are keen to receive an official document confirming their successful completion of the course, which is why the certificate is provided as an optional purchase under a ‘freemium’ model common to other mooc providers[footnoteref:33]. [31: times higher education, ‘mooc completion rates “below 7%”’(times higher education, 2013)] [32: massachusetts institute of technology, ‘study of moocs offers insights into online learner engagement and behavior’, (mit office of digital learning, 2017) <https://blog.edx.org/study-moocs-offers-insights-online-learner-engagement-behavior> accessed 29 august 2018] [33: porter, s. (2015) ‘the economics of moocs: a sustainable future?’, the bottom line, 28(1/2), pp. 52-62. doi: 10.1108/bl-12-2014-0035 ] our moocs have consistently bettered these dropout rates, with completion levels of 12.6 per cent and 11 per cent most recently on the 2017 and 2018 courses, respectively. the courses follow best practice by implementing a variety of learner-centric activities such as videos, discussion forums, learning resources, weekly quizzes, and social media tasks. the experience is intended to engage the learner with tasks and activities provided so that participants have a chance to apply the learning objectives each week and are incentivised to earn a weekly badge for successful completion of these tasks and for posting to the discussion forum. the practices employed on mooc offerings by the diploma centre were a huge driver in unlocking the potential for development of online learning on our standard suite of courses. we have utilised the addie (analysis, design, development, implementation, evaluation)[footnoteref:34] model of instructional design to structure the development of these moocs. in addition to the sequential model of addie as the principle development framework, we have retained the flexibility to adopt and adapt ideas from other instructional design models. the key outcome of our analysis phase, as noted previously, was the fundamental importance of the topic choice. from a public legal education perspective, our goal was to create a unique online space where lawyer and non-lawyer could engage as peers. this necessity creates the requirement that the selected area of law has applicability across learning domains and countries. [34: rebecca a. croxton and anthony s. chow, ‘using addie and systems thinking as the framework for developing a mooc: a case study’ (2015) 16(4) quarterly review of distance education 83; norazah nordin, mohamed amin embi, & helmi norman, ‘towards envisioning the future of learning in malaysia: development of a malaysia mooc: based on the iterative addie instructional design framework’ in envisioning the future of online learning (springer 2016) 269-279] the mooc was hosted on moodle, our existing learning management system (lms), rather than investment in an external platform as other mooc providers such as futurelearn and coursera. we recognised that by creating our own bespoke learning environment for the mooc, we placed ourselves in a position to make continuous improvements to our lms, which in turn would impact positively on the online learning environment for our standard diploma and certificate offerings. furthermore, this mode of delivery was a means of achieving cost effectiveness in offering a free course to the public and provides continuity to our other offerings. at the design stage, our approach was to remove obstacles and to ensure the course was easily accessible via an intuitive course interface design. a common criticism of moocs is that they are “well packaged; [but] their instructional design quality is low”[footnoteref:35]. feedback from previous moocs and our profile of online learners was incorporated into the design stage when working with our e-learning solutions partner enovation[footnoteref:36]. this helped us to orient the learning environment around user experience; developing an interface that would be user-friendly, engaging and appealing to users of all technical levels. factors to consider were: [35: anoush margaryan, manuela bianco & allison littlejohn, ‘instructional quality of massive open online courses (moocs)’ (2015) 80 computers & education 77. doi: 10.1016/j.compedu.2014.08.005] [36: https://enovation.ie/] · high dropout rates; · risk of student isolation; · the need to cater for mixed profile of participants; and · varying student motivations for taking part. best practice suggests prioritising user experience at the core of course design decisions. our standard online system has been adapted to the needs of our typical student profile, the ‘busy, time poor professional’ who requires a system which enables them to learn on-the-go. however, our moocs have attracted interested persons of all ages, from younger students in their twenties to retirees in their seventies, and therefore appealing to students across the age spectrum and from a broad range of demographics was a key concern. a welcoming, friendly tone is adopted in course communications with guidance and support provided by the diploma team, who personalise the experience and act as essential points of contact to bridge the gap between students and the weekly presenters. the provision of a weekly opportunity for real time engagement with subject matter experts aims to overcome the criticism often levelled at moocs of lack of instructor accessibility[footnoteref:37]. a low level of instructor accessibility is likely to exacerbate student feelings of isolation, whereas a high level of accessibility is shown to encourage student engagement[footnoteref:38]. since the 2017 mooc, we have incorporated a weekly lunchtime ‘question & answer’ session filmed on location at the offices of legal experts contributing to the course, whereby students could tune in and engage in discussion with the experts via a live video chat. [37: joe warren, scott rixner, john greiner & stephen wong, ‘facilitating human interaction in an online programming course’ in proc. sigcse 2014 (acm press 2014) 665 – 670] [38: khe foon hew, ‘promoting engagement in online courses: what strategies can we learn from three highly rated moocs’ (2014) 47(2) british journal of education technology 320-341. doi: 10.1111/bjet.12235] at development stage each year, the creation of video recordings is the dominant aspect in our considerations. from a practical perspective, the work of guo et al[footnoteref:39] on the effect of video production on student engagement has proved a significant resource. the authors of this empirical study, which was ground-breaking in terms of its scale (data measured from 6.9 million video-watching sessions across four mooc courses), produced a set of video production recommendations[footnoteref:40] that now provide educators with a template of best practice, which we have utilised as a framework for developing the video content on our moocs. [39: philip j. guo, juho kim & rob rubin, ‘how video production affects student engagement: an empirical study of mooc videos’ in proceedings of the first acm conference on learning@scale conference 2014 (acm press 2014) 41-50 juho kim, philip j guo, daniel t seaton, piotr mitros, krzysztof z gajos, robert c miller, ‘understanding in – video dropouts and interaction peaks in online lecture videos’ in proceedings of the first acm conference on learning@scale conference 2014 (acm press 2014) 31-40] [40: ibid, supra n. 16, p 42.] readers may also be interested to learn that following on from the goal of the mooc to provide public legal education and widen access to legal information, expert practitioners have been willing to contribute on a pro bono basis to the course. during pre-production, we take the time to discuss with our contributors how best to set up their presentations and suggest methods for effectively engaging students, before commencing work with a video production team to record and edit the presentations. different modalities are used to impart lecture content, e.g. some videos take the form of an informative straight-to-camera featurette with a solo participant, while others involve multiple interviewees talking together in a relaxed, informal style. in order to successfully complete the course, students are required to have actively engaged with the discussion forum by posting at least three times to any of the forums over the duration of the course. integrating the discussion forum requirement with the assessment is an effective means to both increase the volume of conversation online and the quality of comments offered by participating students. as nagel and kotzé[footnoteref:41] have found, “[w]hen students engage in online activities and take responsibility for the quality of interaction, they can have a superior learning experience”[footnoteref:42]. [41: lynette nagel & theuns g. kotzé, ‘supersizing e-learning: what a coi survey reveals about teaching presence in a large online class’ (2009) 13(1) internet and higher education. doi:10.1016/j.iheduc.2009.12.001] [42: ibid, p.50] this space is also unique in creating the opportunity for meaningful engagement between the public and legal experts as peers. the use of discussion forums on online courses has also been proven to correlate with higher student retention rates and higher grades upon completion[footnoteref:43]. online socialisation has become an important component in the success of our moocs, with participants encouraged to interact on the discussion forums with fellow students. in the evaluation survey for the 2018 course, 91 per cent of students rated the discussion forum favourably in their assessment of the course. a dedicated thread was also available for students to post any technical queries and a member of the course team was assigned to monitor and respond promptly to such issues. [43: derrick coatzee, armando fox, marti a. hearst, & björn hartmann, ‘should your mooc forum use a reputation system?’ in proc. cscw 2014 acm (2014) 1176 – 1187] our evaluations suggest that when designed and managed properly, moocs have the capability to offer effective learning through practical student engagement. many students noted in the survey responses that they come back for the mooc year on year. for some, it started as their first foray into legal education, and the provision of an annual free learning resource has enriched their understanding of the law, as well as encouraged them to partake in further legal education and register for a diploma or certificate course. we contend that our mooc experience showcases the potential of online courses as a means of developing public legal education initiatives. while our moocs have been led by seasoned professionals, we propose that there may be an opportunity for educational institutions to develop programmes in collaboration with law students. as the literature now looks at spocs (small private online course) [footnoteref:44] in addition to moocs, we pose the question of whether involving law students in the provision of a bespoke online law courses could potentially benefit the law students in acquiring the type of transferable skills required by law graduates? involving law students in the development and delivery of such courses could potentially provide them with a framework to gain inter disciplinary experience, project management skills and the ability to understand and employ technology skills which have all been identified as essential for the future practice of law [footnoteref:45]. this would be an interesting area for future research. [44: armando fox, “from moocs to spocs”. commun. acm, 56(12) ( 2013 ) pp.38-40. kaplan, andreas m., and michael haenlein. "higher education and the digital revolution: about moocs, spocs, social media, and the cookie monster." business horizons 59.4 (2016): 441-450.] [45: michael. legg, "new skills for new lawyers: responding to technology and practice developments." (2018).] 6. conclusion the overall ple programmes have a long-term impact in shaping and empowering the education, skills and values of the public and those of the profession who deliver the programmes. our provision of moocs plays a part in this, equipping professionals in the sector with improved legal capability and the ability to make better choices concerning the legal issues they face daily. the solicitor general’s committee on ple[footnoteref:46] in the uk identifies the goal of scaling ple through delivery by the legal community. our experience is testament to the positive impact that this can have on a legal education institution and on legal professionals. the mooc series has generally portrayed the legal community in a positive fashion and broken down barriers between the public and the profession through the creation of a free space for interaction and engagement as peers. [46: robert buckland qc mp & attorney general’s office, ‘our vision for legal education’ (government uk, 31 october 2018) https://www.gov.uk/government/news/our-vision-for-legal-education> accessed 31 october 2018 ] the profile of the society as a flagship for online learning and public legal education has also been enhanced; as evidenced by increased student numbers on our diploma courses and the uptake from international learners. prior to 2014, there were no students outside of ireland registered on certificate and diploma courses, whereas 148 students based outside of ireland have undertaken a diploma or certificate course since the first mooc launch. technically, we have improved the user experience by enhancing our online tools and producing higher quality learning content through more efficient use of the team’s resources, leading to a more energised team and furthering possibilities for subsequent courses. our ultimate goal was to increase the provision of public legal education on a wider scale and introduce students to our enhanced online learning system. as part of our findings, the experience affirmed a strong interest and uptake internationally for online learning. we have seen the benefits of peer interaction on an unprecedented scale, and gained experience in producing effective and engaging learning content at low cost. subject to course design, this can provide substantial educational benefit and operate as an effective means to widen access, market courses through ‘testers’, and promote a providers brand for high quality online courses. this digital initiative has opened up the law society to a large audience of legal and non-legal professionals alike and demonstrated the commitment of the organisation to public interest and increasing access to justice and an understanding of the law. appendix a: mooc demographic profile 2016 – 2018:   gender   male female 2016 total registered % 64% 36% 2016 total completed % 51% 47% 2017 total registered % 29% 71% 2017 total completed % 37% 63% 2018 total registered % 55% 45% 2018 total completed % 50% 50%   age   20-29 30-39 40-49 50-59 60-69 over 70 2016 total registered % 23% 38% 25% 11% 3% 0% 2016 total completed % 22% 39% 22% 11% 6%   2017 total registered % 24% 37% 25% 12% 2% 0% 2017 total completed % 24% 39% 23% 12% 2%   2018 total registered % 25% 33% 25% 12% 3% 0% 2018 total completed % 24% 29% 23% 14% 3% 0%   location   international national 2016 total registered % 4% 96% 2016 total completed % 6% 94% 2017 total registered % 10% 90% 2017 total completed % 3% 97% 2018 total registered % 13% 87% 2018 total completed % 5% 95%   education   secondary school undergrad cert/diploma undergrad degree postgrad phd 2016 total registered % 6% 10% 31% 50% 3% 2016 total completed % 4% 9% 34% 52% 1% 2017 total registered % 5% 10% 33% 50% 2% 2017 total completed % 4% 8% 31% 56% 1% 2018 total registered % 6% 10% 34% 48% 2% 2018 total completed % 5% 8% 34% 52% 1% 3 editorial 1 special issue – clinical and public legal education: responses to coronavirus hugh mcfaul and francine ryan, the open justice centre at the open university law school, uk. the following special issue of the journal is published jointly with the international journal of clinical legal education. the contents are therefore duplicated online for both publications. proverbial wisdom has it that ‘its an ill wind that blows nobody any good’ and, thankfully, the experiences of the cle community suggest that this may ring true for pandemics as well as storms. in this special issue the reader will benefit from an initial analysis of the experiences of law teachers living through an unprecedented crisis and grappling with the unexpected requirement to rapidly adjust their practice to continue to meet the needs of both their students and the users of their pro bono legal services. the challenges faced by cle practitioners are discussed from a variety of perspectives across eight practice reports drawn from the uk, usa and india. although the difficulties discussed are significant, the responses and novel solutions presented across all the papers attest to the creativity, energy and commitment that is the hallmark of the cle community, and they point to new pathways for clinics to engage with their communities. http://www.open.ac.uk/openjustice editorial 2 our invitation to edit this special edition arose after we submitted an article for publication to the ijcle in summer 2020, which is now included as our contribution to this edition with the title ‘taking clinical legal education online: songs of innocence and experience.’ this article reflects on our four-year journey towards making clinical legal education accessible to distance learning students at the open university. our paper highlights experiments with technology, efforts to foster positive working relationships for remote student teams and how we have tried to reimagine the role law schools can play in promoting the development of legal capabilities in their communities. professor elaine hall recognised that many other law schools were now attempting to adapt their teaching in a similar fashion, but in a considerably compressed timescale, and that this this experience should be highlighted in a special edition of the ijcle. we were delighted to accept the invitation to guest edit the journal and have benefitted from the insights, reflection and analysis offered in the practice reports submitted for this special pandemic edition. codd et al focus their reflections on an innovative prison-based business and tax law clinic run by the university of central lancashire. their discussion highlights the need to take a flexible and solution based approach to the planning and delivery of prison based clinics, not just because of the pressures of the pandemic, but also due to the need to negotiate a shifting landscape of government guidance and changes in priorities of prison and university management. a perspective from india is provided editorial 3 by gigimon and nandwana. this paper considers how the decision of the indian judiciary to utilise virtual courts, and how a similar move by the national legal aid service to conduct virtual lok adalats, impacts upon clinical legal education in india. the authors propose a working model for how legal aid clinics should respond. wallace provides valuable insights from the usa in her article ‘classroom to cyberspace: preserving street law’s interactive and student-centered focus during distance learning’ around the transfer of street law methodologies into an online setting. the article discusses some of the challenges of recreating the interactive elements of street law that are at the core of its delivery in a virtual environment. readers will learn a lot about how to adapt their own street law programmes and about the potential to consider new ways of reaching out and engaging schools beyond the borders of the physical classroom. the pandemic has proved challenging for our students and there is a considerable amount of concern around the impact on mental health, which is why the article from wapples makes such a valuable contribution to this edition. ‘promoting positive mental health in international postgraduate law students at a time of global uncertainty: a case study from qlegal at queen mary university of london’ provides a practical example of what can be done to support students to help overcome feelings of isolation and maximise engagement in a time of uncertainty. readers with international students will find this article particularly interesting as it offers insights editorial 4 into the specific challenges they face and the importance of building networks of support. matt et al argue that despite the negative impact of the pandemic, clinical legal education programmes can find new and sustainable ways to deliver legal services to their clients. their article explores the university of exeter’s transformation from an in person to a remote delivery service and offers insights into the lessons learned. what comes across strongly is no matter what the mode of delivery, the heart of all clinical work is the human connection. setting up a new clinic is challenging, but to do that during a pandemic only intensifies the challenge. in ‘royal holloway university of london and the afghanistan and central asian association: new partnerships and challenges during covid-19 in the clinical legal world’ antoniou et al share their experiences of adapting an emerging service in a time of uncertainty. this article shows the power of partnership to tackle inequality and respond to high levels of unmet legal need that impact on marginalised communities. the experience of setting up a new clinic and then dealing with the challenge of the pandemic is also the focus of papers by thurston and kirsch (university of hertfordshire) and howells (university of derby). both papers argue for the value of the continued use of virtual clinics in addition to face to face engagement. many of us working in law clinics have a legal practice background and some find the prospect of writing for journals to be a little daunting! we are really pleased that this editorial 5 edition has encouraged a number of colleagues to submit their work for publication to the journal for the first time. we hope that the discussions presented in these papers will encourage others to share their experiences by submitting work for future editions. practice report 107 promoting positive mental health in international postgraduate law students at a time of global uncertainty: a case study from qlegal at queen mary, university of london emily wapples1 abstract law student mental health and wellbeing was already a growing concern in the uk prior to covid-19, but when the pandemic occurred, widespread uncertainty placed an unprecedented level of mental health burden on students. law students were faced with dashed hopes, uncertain futures and the fear of negative academic consequences. this burden was exacerbated in respect of postgraduate international students in london, who were often also forced to decide whether to return home to their families, or to continue their studies abroad, albeit online. this paper uses a case study approach to discuss how one provider of postgraduate clinical legal education (cle), approached the promotion of positive student mental health both before, and in response to, the pandemic. qlegal at queen mary, university of london provides cle to postgraduates studying for a one year law masters, and in 2019-2020, qlegal delivered cle to 134 students from 27 countries. 1 emily wapples is the qlegal project coordinator at the centre for commercial law studies, queen mary, university of london practice report 108 the impact that the pandemic had on the mental health of international postgraduate law students was therefore witnessed first-hand. this paper discusses the challenges faced, and concerns raised by international postgraduate law students at qlegal as a result of the pandemic. it examines the steps taken by qlegal to maximise student engagement and promote positive student mental health when rapidly switching to a model of online delivery. the paper concludes by outlining the steps qlegal will take to monitor and address the impact that online delivery in this period of global uncertainty has on the mental health of the next cohort of postgraduate cle students. introduction law student mental health and wellbeing was already a growing concern in the uk prior to the covid-19 pandemic (the ‘pandemic’). the global uncertainty resulting from recent events has exacerbated these concerns and placed an unprecedented level of mental health burden on students, especially those studying internationally. this paper adopts a case study approach to discuss how qlegal, the pro bono commercial law clinic within the centre for commercial law studies at queen mary, university of london (‘qmul’) approached the promotion of positive student mental health both before, and in response to, the pandemic. it discusses the challenges faced by qlegal and our students in the wake of the pandemic, and reflects on the steps practice report 109 taken to maximise student engagement and promote positive student mental health when rapidly switching to a model of online delivery of clinical legal education (‘cle’). this paper aims to highlight the urgent need for cle providers to integrate the promotion of positive student mental health into their online offerings and provides suggestions for ways to do so. as a result, it is hoped that we can equip law students with the emotional intelligence and skills they need to meet their potential in an increasingly demanding profession. before discussing the impact of the pandemic on our students, it is necessary to first set the scene by discussing qlegal’s cle offering, the concerns which international students faced prior to the pandemic, and our approach to student mental health generally. part 1: context what is qlegal? now in its seventh year, qlegal operates as a simulation of an innovative commercial law firm. it offers pro bono legal advice and support to start-ups and entrepreneurs in areas such as intellectual property law, data protection, corporate structure and commercial contracts. qlegal students have the opportunity to participate in its practice report 110 programmes either in addition to their studies, or as an assessed, credit-bearing module. in 2019-2020, student programmes included (for example): 1. legal advice clinic: under the supervision of a qualified lawyer, student advisers interview clients, undertake research, and provide tailored preliminary written advice to clients. 2. public legal education (‘ple’): students research, prepare and deliver workshops, or draft toolkits to raise legal and business awareness in schools, and among the start-up community. this includes qlegal’s street law and business initiative (‘streetlab’), where students design and deliver lessons on law and entrepreneurship to pupils in disadvantaged areas, culminating in an incubatorstyle ‘pitch it’ competition for the pupils, run with external lawyers. 3. legal design: in teams, students use legal design methodology to produce solutions to law-related problems. together, the qlegal programmes aim to equip postgraduate law students with the legal and practical skills they need to succeed as lawyers in the 21st century: skills which legal employers often regard junior lawyers as lacking, such as commerciality and client care2. 2 bpp university law school (2018), the law training report: what skills do firms expect new entrants to possess in the post sqe era?, pp.18-22 [online] available at https://s3-eu-west1.amazonaws.com/bppassets/public/assets/pdf/brochures/uni-law-sqe-focus-groups-report2018.pdf https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/bppassets/public/assets/pdf/brochures/uni-law-sqe-focus-groups-report-2018.pdf https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/bppassets/public/assets/pdf/brochures/uni-law-sqe-focus-groups-report-2018.pdf https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/bppassets/public/assets/pdf/brochures/uni-law-sqe-focus-groups-report-2018.pdf practice report 111 in 2019-2020, the qlegal team comprised three full-time and one part-time employees with diverse backgrounds spanning cle, legal practice, entrepreneurship, coaching and project management3. two of the employees are also trained as mental health first aiders4. london: the student capital of the world in 2019, london was ranked as the number one city in the world for students5. students are attracted to the excellent academic offerings; diverse nature of the city and the employment prospects london brings (among other things)6. qmul offers a truly international experience for students, achieving 18th place in the 2018 times higher education international students table, with 44.8% of its students coming from abroad7. in 2019-2020, qlegal provided cle to 134 postgraduate students from 27 countries studying for a one year law masters. the countries with the highest number of qlegal applicants were india, china, italy and greece, with students regularly 3 http://qlegal.qmul.ac.uk/about/team/ 4 the mental health first aid (“mhfa”) programme began in australia in 2000, and has since evolved into a global movement that is delivered by an active community of licensed providers in 24 countries. mhfa training first came to england in 2007, and between 2018-2019 mhfa england trained over 140,000 people in mental health skills. mhfa england (2018-2019), mhfa england impact report 2018-2019, p.1 and p.9 [online] available at https://issuu.com/mhfaengland/docs/mhfa_england_impact_report_2019/2?ff 5 qs quacquarelli symonds (2019), rankings revealed: the best student cities of 2019 [online] available at https://www.qs.com/rankings-revealed-the-best-student-cities-2019/ 6qs quacquarelli symonds (2020), qs top universities – london [online] available at https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings-articles/qs-best-student-cities/london 7times higher education (2018), the world university rankings. international student table 2018: top 200 universities [online] available at https://www.timeshighereducation.com/student/bestuniversities/international-student-table-2018-top-200-universities http://qlegal.qmul.ac.uk/about/team/ https://issuu.com/mhfaengland/docs/mhfa_england_impact_report_2019/2?ff https://www.qs.com/rankings-revealed-the-best-student-cities-2019/ https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings-articles/qs-best-student-cities/london https://www.timeshighereducation.com/student/best-universities/international-student-table-2018-top-200-universities https://www.timeshighereducation.com/student/best-universities/international-student-table-2018-top-200-universities practice report 112 citing a desire to gain practical experience of the london legal market as their motivation for applying. concerns of international students it is acknowledged that international students frequently have additional concerns to domestic students, including being away from friends and family, learning different study methods and learning in a new language8. qmul students complete their law masters in one year; a third of the time law students spend studying for their undergraduate degrees. the process of adjusting to their new studies and environment, and forming new friendship and support groups is therefore accelerated and intensified for international postgraduate law students. qlegal’s approach to teaching and pastoral support has been developed, and continues to be refined to address the additional concerns that our international students commonly face. law student mental health it is acknowledged that “law student mental health and wellbeing is a growing concern in the uk”9 (lawcare, n.d.). this paper adopts the following definitions and understanding of mental health: 8 uk council for international student affairs (2020), mental health support in the uk, [online] available at https://www.ukcisa.org.uk/information--advice/studying--living-in-the-uk/mentalhealth-support-in-the-uk 9 lawcare (date unknown), wellbeing in law teachers & students workshop [online] available at https://www.lawcare.org.uk/news/wellbeing-in-law-teachers-students-workshop https://www.ukcisa.org.uk/information--advice/studying--living-in-the-uk/mental-health-support-in-the-uk https://www.ukcisa.org.uk/information--advice/studying--living-in-the-uk/mental-health-support-in-the-uk https://www.lawcare.org.uk/news/wellbeing-in-law-teachers-students-workshop practice report 113 “mental health is a state of wellbeing, in which an individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and is able to make a contribution to his or her community”10 (world health organization, 2019). mental health can be “seen as a continuum, ranging from having good mental health to poor mental health and from having no diagnosis of mental illness to a diagnosis of severe mental illness”11 (mhfa england, 2016). people become ill when the stress they face becomes more than they can cope with12. qlegal’s approach to student mental health prior to the pandemic appleby and bourke (2014) assert that law students are a particularly ‘at risk’ group of mental ill health, stating that “[m]any law students experience elevated levels of emotional distress during their time at law school…[which]…are statistically significant predictors of serious mental illnesses”13. in our experience, postgraduate 10 world health organization (2019), mental health: fact sheet, p.1 [online] available at https://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/404851/mnh_factsheet_eng.pdf 11 mhfa england (2016), adult mhfa manual (publisher unknown), p.32. 12 ibid 11 p.44. the ‘stress vulnerability model’ was “proposed by zubin and spring in 1977. the idea behind it is that people become ill when the stress they face becomes more than they can cope with. also, people’s ability to deal with stress – their vulnerability – varies, so problems which one person may take in their stride might be enough to cause another person to become depressed or develop other mental health issues…”. 13 appleby, m. and bourke, j. (2014), promoting law student mental health literacy and wellbeing: a case study from the college of law, australia, ijcle vol 20, no 1 (2014), p.494 [online] available at https://www.northumbriajournals.co.uk/index.php/ijcle/article/view/18 https://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/404851/mnh_factsheet_eng.pdf https://www.northumbriajournals.co.uk/index.php/ijcle/article/view/18 practice report 114 law students may experience heightened levels of emotional distress in situations when they feel lacking in control, do not have a good support network or feel isolated, and are placing unreasonable expectations on themselves. we recognise that students’ ability to deal with these potentially stressful situations varies; situations which one student may be able to take in their stride, may cause another student to develop a diagnosable mental health condition. qlegal aims to prepare students for real life and we understand that “working as a law professional can be very stressful, with overwhelming workloads and emotionally challenging cases”14. we expect our students to meet the same high standards they would in legal practice, but we are cognisant that many students may not be prepared for the additional pressures this brings. it is a difficult balance to strike. we do not shield students from the demands of legal practice in the uk, but equip them with the tools to be able to thrive within it. specific techniques used to promote positive student mental health promoting positive student mental health and wellbeing has always been an important focus for qlegal, and two team members are trained mental health first aiders. our mental health strategy involves addressing the topic consistently throughout the programmes and embedding it within the student experience. 14 the law society (n.d.), stress and mental health [online] available at https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/career-advice/career-development/stress-and-mental-health https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/career-advice/career-development/stress-and-mental-health practice report 115 the commitment to the promotion of positive student mental health for our 2019-2020 cohort began at the student induction day; the focus of the event being mental health in the legal profession. the aim was to destigmatise the topic by addressing it headon. at the beginning of the year, students were given ‘journey guides’ and asked to reflect on and record how they were feeling about their goals, skills and the way they worked (among other things). they were then encouraged to review these at the end of the programmes, to consider the ways in which they had developed as a result of their qlegal experience. this process of reflection helps students to develop self-awareness and encourages them to take responsibility for their development, which in turn, nurtures their emotional intelligence. emotional intelligence and resilience are often cited as skills which employers consider valuable in junior lawyers15. our students are therefore encouraged to develop their resilience and their ability to adapt to new and unforeseen circumstances, or to cope with setbacks and frustrations. again, this concept is peppered throughout the qlegal training programme16. students received extensive training on how to give and receive feedback, and were encouraged to adopt a peer coaching approach to problem solving. by discussing 15 ibid 2, p.17. 16 for example, the qlegal manifesto which students have to agree to at their induction provides that “[students] agree to welcome constructive feedback and provide it when it is asked of [them]…[students] cultivate resilience by trying [their] best, and letting [themselves] be seen”. practice report 116 unforeseen problems or setbacks with their peers, students were able to form solid support networks with one another. coupled with these formal approaches to learning and development, care and attention has been paid to developing the ‘qlegal student experience’; that added social and emotional connection students feel with qlegal and their peers. “a positive student experience is defined by a high quality, modern teaching experience in an environment where students are made to feel safe and welcomed”17. the message that ‘qlegal is a big family’ and that everyone has something to contribute to it is constantly reinforced during the programmes, and after graduation with our alumni network. building on this, students were told to treat each other, and qlegal as colleagues. they were encouraged to shift their mind-set from seeing qlegal as part of their academic studies, to seeing it as an opportunity to gain real life, practical experience of the london legal market. students were held to high professional standards and were accountable to each other. qlegal modelled the professional behaviour we expected students to adopt. we knew that their qlegal experience may be challenging at times, but we wanted to give students an insight into the pressures of legal practice within the safe and supportive qlegal environment. 17 qs quacquarelli symonds (2020), qs international student survey: volume 3 defining the student experience p.8 [online] available at https://info.qs.com/rs/335-vin-535/images/qs_vol3international_student_survey_2020.pdf https://info.qs.com/rs/335-vin-535/images/qs_vol3-international_student_survey_2020.pdf https://info.qs.com/rs/335-vin-535/images/qs_vol3-international_student_survey_2020.pdf practice report 117 finally, the requirement for students to conduct their confidential case work in the qlegal office facilitated, albeit indirectly, the opportunity for students to interact with others on their programme and the qlegal team on an informal basis. we also operated an ‘open door policy’ during business hours. these serendipitous encounters contributed to a greater sense of inclusion and the creation of a collegiate atmosphere among students and the team. together, these initiatives aimed to equip students with the professional, personal and emotional skills necessary to succeed in their future careers. by educating students on the importance of developing self-awareness, emotional intelligence and resilience, and encouraging them to form good support networks with their peers, students were better placed to thrive when placed under pressure. part 2: the challenges faced, and concerns raised by qlegal’s students as a result of the pandemic homeward bound: qlegal’s immediate response to the pandemic in line with government guidelines for academic institutions, all qlegal operations were taken online from 17th march 2020. in the preceding weeks, our international students frequently shared their concerns with us. students were often worried about family members back home, they were upset that people in the uk were not taking practice report 118 the situation seriously enough, and were concerned that they may not make it to their home countries before international borders closed. the increasing levels of uncertainty placed greater emotional burdens on our students. mindful of this, qlegal began to formulate our response to the pandemic. in doing so, we were conscious of the need to provide students with regular, clear communication confirming what was happening, and what we expected of them. we acknowledged the uncertain times and encouraged students to remain positive and upbeat, so far as possible. our response required significant flexibility and creative thinking on the part of both qlegal and our students. two illustrative examples of the approach taken to facilitate the remainder of the activities, and the challenges faced as a result will be discussed before turning to the challenges faced more generally by qlegal students. ple/streetlab students students had delivered lessons to pupils in two local schools for two semesters, which would culminate in a ‘pitch it’ competition between the schools. the grand finale was due to take place in early march, at the city offices of a global organisation, in front of external judges. however, the organisation’s internal pandemic policy prevented them from hosting the event. an alternative venue could not be sourced in time, due to the schools’ internal policy for obtaining advanced parental/guardian consent to any off-site activities. practice report 119 the solution adopted was to run two separate competitions; one at each school. pupils would compete only against their fellow students, in front of a panel of qlegal judges. all qlegal streetlab students attended both competitions. there was widespread uncertainty in the uk regarding how organisations and individuals should be responding to the pandemic, and guidance from the government, within qmul, and within our external partners often changed with very little notice. consequently, the logistics for the event were only finalised in the days immediately preceding the competition. the uncertainty of whether the competition would take place (and if so, how) was a key concern for our students. knowing that students respond well to structure and routine, we increased the frequency of our communications with them. we organised additional in-person meetings and updated students regularly by email on the state of play. a big draw to the streetlab programme for qlegal students was the opportunity to attend the offices of the global organisation for the competition. students were disappointed at no longer being able to do so. we were conscious that these dashed hopes could lead to a general lack of motivation and feelings of failure for students. we addressed this in two ways: (1) by qlegal remaining positive and upbeat about the event, hoping that students would begin to mirror our behaviour; and (2) by encouraging the students to re-frame the pandemic as an opportunity to demonstrate their adaptability and resilience, skills which employers often consider lacking in junior lawyers. practice report 120 legal design students legal design is a methodology used by law firms to innovate, and put clients, and ultimate end-users, at the heart of legal service delivery. it is built on empathy and requires lawyers to research and create personas of the end-users, before designing and testing prototype solutions to meet end-users’ needs. the idea is that law should not be delivered in a way that only suits other lawyers. students had been working for the whole semester to prepare for their second legal design challenge, which required them to use design thinking methodology to redesign the qlegal legal design programme. in teams, they would pitch their ideas to a panel of external judges and the winning idea will be implemented by qlegal next year. the pitch was due to take place in late march, after the lockdown began in the uk. consequently, the competition took place remotely, with a mixture of external and qlegal judges. again, the students were disappointed that the competition could not take place in the circumstances they had initially envisaged. in response, we were keen to ensure that the online event had a real sense of occasion to it and reiterated to students just how seriously the judges were taking their responsibilities. the students rose to the challenge, despite the difficulties they faced during this time. the majority of the international students had returned home before the competition took place. further, at the time of the competition, one student had been admitted to hospital in india, and another was in self-isolation in kenya. notwithstanding this, practice report 121 the teams agreed that they all wanted to participate in the finale, and students from india, russia, cyprus and kenya all pulled together to deliver their pitches. the students’ enthusiasm and commitment to finishing their programme was a testament to their resilience. challenges and concerns across all qlegal programmes in addition to the specific challenges faced by students on these two programmes, there were a number of difficulties which were experienced by students across all programmes. foreseeing that these issues could be of great concern to students, we were keen to adopt an empathetic, yet professional manner when communicating with students. these challenges faced by students across all programmes fell broadly into two categories. availability issues although in theory the adoption of technology gave students the ability to work anytime, anywhere, the requirement that students worked in teams to complete their work often created challenges when working remotely. some students were unavailable to work on their case for up to 48 hours as they made the journey back to their home country. other international students stayed in london but changed their living arrangements. consequently, these students often found their study routine disrupted by their newfound family commitments. practice report 122 anticipating that the availability of their teammates and coordinating work across time-zones may have proved frustrating for some students, we were keen to encourage students to be understanding of each other’s circumstances and exercise patience. although qlegal expects students to meet their deadlines, a degree of flexibility was displayed, especially to students on the legal advisory programme (who worked in pairs, meaning the unavailability of one student placed a heavier workload burden on the other). technology issues despite frequently being described as ‘digital natives’ because of their familiarity with, and access to, technology, some students still experienced occasional difficulties using the new platforms adopted. unreliable internet connections often prohibited the use of cameras on video calls. further, some students appeared hesitant, at least at first, to use their camera when attending calls with us: finding this new experience a little daunting. again, we encouraged students to be patient with each other, and qlegal while we all familiarised ourselves with the new technology. we shared the difficulties we had experienced in an attempt to demonstrate that we were ‘all in this together’ as part of a larger qlegal team. additional concerns raised by international students practice report 123 the global nature of the health crisis meant that students’ concerns for family members in other parts of the world began long before the uk lockdown. students began confiding in the qlegal team about their concerns for family members back home and began making arrangements to return to their home countries before the government closed international borders. the practicalities involved in securing their return home played on the minds of many students. but the decision whether or not to return to their home country was not always an easy one. students were often conflicted. some students were keen to finish the year in london, gaining as much exposure to the local culture and employers as possible. others continued to embrace the collegiate environment fostered by qlegal and its students, not wanting their academic and social experience to fizzle out when their fellow students began to leave campus. there was clear tension between the pull to return home, and the desire to remain in london until the end of term. whether students remained in london or returned home, they experienced a shakeup in their network of friends and support. with their fellow students relocating with little warning, students often found themselves without a nearby support network, at least in the days immediately following the 17th march. qlegal check-in sessions one international student (who had chosen to stay in london) confided that they were finding things more difficult given the lack of contact they were having with their fellow students, as many close friends were now abroad. they also noted that they practice report 124 did not want to approach tutors and academic staff to discuss the course and next steps generally, for fear of “being a burden”. in response, we introduced informal online check-in sessions for students with a member of the qlegal team. the optional sessions ran three days a week between may and july 2020. the aim was to give students the opportunity to talk to a member of the team in a confidential, but informal setting; whether about their programmes, careers, or just to tell us how they were spending their time. sessions were drop-in, on a first-come basis, for 15 minutes and took place using microsoft teams. student take-up of the check-in sessions was lower than anticipated. possible explanations could reasonably include: students’ attention already being elsewhere (such as on their dissertation or employment); availability issues; or lack of promotion of the sessions. the students who did use the service appeared to find it useful, occasionally having a further check-in with another member of the team a few weeks later. the time commitment involved in organising and attending the check-in sessions was minimal and despite the small take up from students, the initiative was considered a success and will be repeated next year. concerns shared with domestic students international students also shared a number of additional concerns with domestic students, the most pressing one being the impact that the pandemic would have on practice report 125 their academic achievements and career prospects. the removal of the structure and routine that classroom-based learning provides students, along with the increased requirement for students to learn independently were also concerns for all students. to combat this, we increased the frequency of our communications with students, ensuring that clear instructions were given regarding the opportunities available to, and responsibilities placed on students. reflections on our experience the pandemic placed a greater emotional burden on all students. widespread uncertainty caused students to feel a lack of control, cancelled in-person events led to dashed hopes, and difficulties using new technology to communicate with teammates across time-zones proved frustrating. our strategy to minimise the effect that these concerns could have on our students was two-fold. firstly, we increased the level of communication we had with students, making sure we communicated our instructions and expectations clearly and offering additional opportunities to meet with students online. secondly, we always remained upbeat and encouraged students to re-frame the pandemic as an excellent opportunity for them to demonstrate their adaptability and resilience. part 3: maximising student engagement and promoting positive student mental health in an online classroom environment practice report 126 what we did the legal design and streetlab competitions were stand-alone events involving students on specific programmes. when the pandemic hit, two further (optional) programme-wide opportunities were outstanding: (1) a cv workshop: training students how to make the most of their qlegal experience on their cv; and (2) the graduation ceremony: where students celebrated their qlegal successes and began the transition to qlegal alumni. we decided early on that the students should not miss out on these opportunities and that we would offer them online18. however, we knew that just having the technology in place to facilitate online learning would not be enough, and careful consideration was given to how we would encourage students to engage with the technology and opportunities provided. we curated the events with a view to maximising student engagement and interaction. the events took place in early june, at times of the day which would accommodate maximum numbers of students across various time-zones. of the 134 students on our programmes, 18 students attended the cv workshop and 24 the graduation ceremony. of the students who did attend, the vast majority were international students, many of whom had returned to their home country but were keen to see and interact with their fellow students again. we asked students to confirm where they were joining 18 we used blackboard collaborate, a virtual classroom solution. practice report 127 from, which broke the ice and demonstrated the global nature of their student network and the ability of technology to bridge global borders, thereby allowing students to feel a sense of connection to each other. specific care and attention was given to ensuring that the graduation ceremony was viewed as, and felt like a party; and not simply another webinar. we provided students with clear instructions about the event; setting the agenda and our expectations of them. to create a sense of occasion, students were encouraged to ‘dress up’ and have a drink close by to toast their cohort. students really embraced the positive and playful tone of the event, and our preparations paid dividends. feedback we received from students regularly cited the personal celebration of the achievements of each student as a significant factor in making the event “enjoyable and memorable”, allowing students to end their experience on a high. reflections on our experience creating and delivering an engaging online cle learning environment takes a lot of effort. the way in which all aspects of the qlegal programmes were delivered was reexamined and re-imagined, to ensure that students were still being given the best possible experience online. the online learning experience can feel dehumanising and isolating to students. it is important to engage with students meaningfully and to encourage them to bring aspects of their personality to the session. for example, at the graduation, students practice report 128 were asked to share answers to personal questions such as ‘who do they look up to?’. this was done to encourage students to bond in this new online environment. less is more when it comes to the length and frequency of online learning activities: our sessions were capped at 90 minutes, with a short screen break. each session was curated to meaningfully add to the students’ development, and sessions were well structured and interactive. they included small group discussions, practical exercises and made full use of the instant messaging facility. the aim was to build students’ trust, and ultimately their engagement in the online learning process. if students had initially been hesitant to speak on camera at the start of the pandemic, or saw technology as a barrier to natural discussion, they were now more open to, and confident using their cameras. the possible perceived safety of being behind a computer screen gave some students increased confidence to contribute to group discussions. we noticed that certain international students whose behaviour had been extremely professional and reserved throughout their experience now displayed more playful and personable attributes. in these times of instability and uncertainty, students have greater independence over their studies and how they spend their time. the purpose and benefits of each online event must be clearly publicised in advance to encourage and maximise attendance. the low attendance rate at the cv workshop and graduation ceremony was disappointing and suggests a shift in behaviour by students, who were under increased pressure and wanted to focus on their credit bearing modules rather than practice report 129 their extracurricular activities. in future, extra effort will be made to clearly advertise the benefits that students will obtain by attending optional online events. the ideas and techniques adopted in these examples were not novel; it is anticipated many, if not all, were being adopted by cle providers across the world. however, what made them a success was the effort we made in ensuring that the teaching was deployed with care; in a personal, individualistic way. when curating the online events, we were conscious to continually provide students with sufficient information and opportunities to help them regain control over their studies. we remained upbeat throughout and encouraged students to do the same. it was hoped that if students felt positive about their studies and secure within their support networks, they would be better placed to deal with the increased pressure caused by the pandemic. part 4: steps qlegal will take to monitor and address the impact that postpandemic online delivery has on students having worked with international postgraduate law students for the past six years, qlegal has a good understanding of the needs of our students and the specific concerns they have over and above many domestic ones. the focus on delivering the ‘qlegal student experience’, and a holistic approach to student development, breaks down cultural barriers, and builds cohorts of close-knit students armed with the practice report 130 practical skills and emotional intelligence needed when entering the legal job market. this, coupled with a shared desire for constant innovation and growth, makes qlegal well placed to adapt its offerings, where necessary, to meet the needs of students in this pandemic era. the steps we will take in the 2020-2021 academic year to monitor and address the pandemic’s impact on student mental health fall into three broad categories. building online engagement as with many, if not all other cle providers, qlegal will deliver cle using blended learning in the 2020-2021 academic year, combining online and in-person activities. we will deliver cle using a flipped classroom approach. students will be expected to watch training videos introducing them to the topics, and will then attend live webinars where they can discuss those topics in more detail with qlegal and their peers. the techniques used to deliver quality, personal online learning opportunities to cle students last year will continue to be deployed across programmes. in doing so, it is anticipated that students will be proactively encouraged “to become fully invested in the online learning experience and to enthusiastically embrace it as a crucial component of their higher education experience”19 (qs quacquarelli symonds, 2020). 19 qs quacquarelli symonds (2020), qs stars rating system – how to access your university’s online learning capabilities (2020) p.10 [online] available at https://www.qs.com/portfolio-items/how-toassess-your-universitys-online-learning-capabilities/ https://www.qs.com/portfolio-items/how-to-assess-your-universitys-online-learning-capabilities/ https://www.qs.com/portfolio-items/how-to-assess-your-universitys-online-learning-capabilities/ practice report 131 building resilience and positive wellbeing mental health education and support will continue to be embedded throughout the programmes largely in the manner adopted previously. additional training and guidance will be provided on how to stay safe online and the potential detrimental impact overusing technology can have on mental health and wellbeing. as part of the reflective journal students are required to keep, students will be asked to complete a short (anonymous) survey recording how they feel about the future, the support they are receiving from the qlegal team and peers, and their attitudes towards online learning (among other things). the survey will be completed at the start and end of the academic year for students to monitor their progress during the programme. the results will also be used by qlegal to assess the effectiveness of the offering to students, specifically in the context of online delivery. the drop-in, confidential check-in sessions will be offered in the format trialled earlier this year, but with increased publicity to students at the start of the year. building student networks to compensate for the lack of in-person opportunities students will have to socialise with each other, qlegal will host additional weekly online events for students across all programmes. students with a live case or ple project will be required to attend weekly breakfast meetings. they will reflect on, and share their experience on their cases, thereby encouraging a peer coaching approach to student development. in practice report 132 doing so, students will expand their friendship and support network, and gain a sense of ownership and belonging within the qlegal community. all students will also have the option of joining an informal online ‘qlegal friday social’. students and the qlegal team will share photographs of themselves as a baby and will compete to guess who each photo belongs to. they will be encouraged to show their fellow students an object which says something about their personality and contribute a recipe for inclusion in a qlegal international recipe book. the aim of these activities is to encourage students to really get to know one another and to build a collegiate atmosphere. neither of these scheduled events will make up for the serendipitous nature of students running in to one another in the qlegal office. however, they are a way of encouraging students to build their personal friendship and support networks and to feel part of qlegal, with the ultimate aim of preventing student isolation. conclusion it is clear that the pandemic has placed unprecedented levels of mental health burden on all students, not just international ones studying postgraduate law. students are faced with a new way of learning, uncertain futures and increased pressures. international students also experience additional concerns as a result of being away from home and learning in a new language. practice report 133 if these pressures become greater than an individual can cope with, they have the ability to trigger a diagnosable mental illness. accordingly, it is important that steps are taken to minimise these pressures, and simultaneously increase students’ ability to cope in times of extreme pressure, thereby seeking to prevent the occurrence of mental ill health. the initiatives qlegal adopt have the dual aims of delivering quality cle programmes to postgraduate students, and facilitating their personal, professional and emotional development. we equip students with the skills and resilience to adapt to these unprecedented times. extra care will be taken to provide clear and bounded instructions for students, to develop a structure and routine around the online learning environment. students will be encouraged to build their own support networks and adopt a peer coaching approach to problem solving. finally, qlegal will continue to promote the pandemic as an opportunity for students to demonstrate their adaptability and ability to persevere in the face of adversity. none of these ideas may, of themselves, seem novel or significant. however, by deploying these ideas consistently throughout the qlegal programmes, it is hoped that students will experience a reduction in the external pressures they face, while simultaneously developing an increasing tolerance to such pressure. as a result, students will be better placed to thrive in the highly demanding legal profession. we would encourage other providers of cle to consider the ways in which they can also practice report 134 encourage their students to thrive within this increasingly uncertain and pressurised environment. it is also important to remember that these unprecedented times bring uncertainty for everyone. although the strategies and initiatives discussed in this paper may reflect our current conclusions on the best way forward for delivering cle to our 2020-2021 cohort, all students offerings should remain flexible and adaptable, being tailored to the specific needs of the students at any given point in time. qlegal will have open channels of communication with students and will welcome feedback on the manner in which they are taught, with offerings constantly reviewed and updated to better suit the present needs of our students. we would encourage other cle providers to do the same. ijple 2 (1) 2018 46 blogs as a teaching tool and method of public legal education: a case study* victoria roper key words: blog, business clinic, clinical legal education, legal education, public legal education, social media introduction social media, and blogs specifically, can potentially have a dual raison d'etre: enriching a law student’s educational experience whilst simultaneously educating the general public. through a case study analysis of a blog project employed in a clinical legal education module at northumbria university, the opportunities, challenges and limitations of using blogs in this way will be explored from both a pedagogical and public legal education perspective. 1. the opportunities social media and blogs the law society of england and wales describes social media as ‘websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to ijple 2 (1) 2018 47 participate in social networking’. 1 it comes in a wide range of forms including social networking sites (e.g. facebook, linkedin), weblogs, micro-blogging sites (twitter, tumblr etc.) and other interactive forums and discussion boards. facebook 2 continues to be the largest social networking service in the uk followed by twitter3 and then linkedin4 . facebook has 40.7 million users, twitter 21.6 million users and linkedin 20.7 million users respectively. 5 blogs are also very popular (being regularly updated web pages ‘consisting of several posts or distinct chunks of information per page, usually arranged in reverse chronological order’).6 there are many legal blogs, sometimes referred to as ‘blawgs, covering matters relating to the law.7 services like wordpress8 allow people to set up and maintain blogs with relative ease. wordpress has grown to be the most used blogging tool in the world with over 60 million websites, its * victoria roper is a senior lecturer at northumbria university in the united kingdom. 1 see http://www.lawsociety.org.uk/support-services/advice/practice-notes/social-media/ (accessed 24 november 2017). 2 facebook is a free website that allows users to create profiles and share photos and videos and socialise with friends and family members. 3 twitter is a micro-blog. registered users can make posts, referred to as ‘tweets’, of up to 280 characters in length. it is possible to follow other registered users. 4 linkedin is a social networking site designed primarily for business networking. users create profiles and can then connect to their contacts through the site. 5 ofcom, the communications market report (2015) at p.361 available at http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research/cmr/cmr15/cmr_uk_2015.pdf (accessed 27 november 2017). 6 p. bausch, m. haughey and m. hourihan, we blog (wiley publishing, 2002) at p. 7. 7 p. black, ‘uses of blogs in legal education’ (2006) 13 james cook university law review 8 at p.13. 8 see https://wordpress.com/ (accessed 24 november 2017). http://www.lawsociety.org.uk/support-services/advice/practice-notes/social-media/ http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research/cmr/cmr15/cmr_uk_2015.pdf https://wordpress.com/ ijple 2 (1) 2018 48 popularity no doubt attributable in part to the fact it does not charge for most of its services.9 how can blogs be used in legal teaching? blogs are quite a flexible tool and can be adapted to suit a user’s requirements. they may be created and maintained by one person (such as a lecturer) but they can also be managed by a small group of people or involve large communities of contributors.10 a lecturer might set up and maintain a blog as a way of communicating with students, posting relevant material to the blog site (legal updates, links to relevant webpages etc.) and giving students the ability to make comments and ask questions.11 it is also possible to set up blog networks, where, for example, the lecturer and each student has their own blog for teaching and learning purposes.12 in addition to the content and functionality envisaged with a lecturer maintained blog, the additional purpose of the blog network is to allow students to develop a reflective journal of sorts and to receive comments from their lecturer and their peers.13 these types of blog have a learning and teaching focus and accordingly the intended readers of the blog(s) are primarily all part of the relevant teaching module. however, as the following northumbria 9 see http://www.forbes.com/sites/jjcolao/2012/09/05/the-internets-mothertongue/#53e6734055fe (accessed 17 february 2016). 10 p. black, ‘uses of blogs in legal education’ (2006) 13 james cook university law review 8 at p. 9. 11 ibid, p. 16. 12 ibid. p. 17. 13 ibid. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jjcolao/2012/09/05/the-internets-mother-tongue/#53e6734055fe http://www.forbes.com/sites/jjcolao/2012/09/05/the-internets-mother-tongue/#53e6734055fe ijple 2 (1) 2018 49 university case study will illustrate, another form of blog is where law students are the primary content creators, writing posts with the specific intention of these being read by individuals external to the university. as well as potentially being of educational value, this type of blog is also more aligned to a public legal education agenda (discussed further below). 2. northumbria university case study the student law office northumbria university has one of the longest running live-client law clinics in the united kingdom (uk)14. all students enrolled on the four-year m law exempting law degree 15 must undertake a year-long assessed clinical module, known as student law office (slo), in their final year. the students provide a free advice service to members of the public under the supervision of qualified practitioners. approximately 20 solicitors, barristers and caseworkers supervise an average of 170 students each academic year in the slo who provide advice and representation to the general public. students work in teams of six, referred to as ‘firms’ which 14 j. hall, c. sylvester and e. hall, ‘problem-based learning and clinical legal education: what can clinical educators learn from pbl?’ (2004) international journal of clinical legal education 4 at p. 40. 15 this degree incorporates a qualifying law degree, a master’s degree, and exemption from the legal practice course allowing a student to progress straight to their period of recognised training. ijple 2 (1) 2018 50 specialise in their supervisor’s area of expertise: civil litigation, crime, welfare benefits, employment, family etc. in 2007, the slo established a specialist business and commercial law clinic.16 in the current academic year (2017-2018) twenty nine students worked in the business and commercial law clinic offering a range of advice and assistance to entrepreneurs, companies, charities and social enterprises. typical enquiries include requests for advice in relation to corporate governance, intellectual property and contracts. the work is predominantly noncontentious. the blog project has been running in the business and commercial law clinic since autumn 2014. blog project overview in the summer of 2014, the author and a colleague registered with wordpress, the free blog publisher discussed above, and created a blog using the web address https://wetakecareofbusiness.wordpress.com (the ‘blog’). the author and her colleague are the only people who have administrative rights to the blog. they occasionally produce short editorial posts when the students are absent from the university, but it is the students themselves who mainly produce and direct the content. constructivism suggests that students learn best when they are given the opportunity to 16 e. campbell, ‘a dangerous method? defending the rise of business law clinics in the uk’ [2015] the law teacher 49:2, 165 at p 168. https://wetakecareofbusiness.wordpress.com/ ijple 2 (1) 2018 51 build their own knowledge. 17 in line with this theory, students are encouraged to decide for themselves what would be appropriate to write about and to build their knowledge by researching and writing their blog posts without any significant lecturer input. lecturers provide editorial oversight to ensure that any legal content is accurate however, a blog post or idea has never been rejected and students are given a lot more creative freedom than they usually have in traditional teaching which is ordinarily more lecturer-led. the blog has the functionality to allow readers to make comments but we decided to disable this feature because we were concerned about having to constantly monitor comments. whilst the slo module is compulsory for all fourth year law students, the blog is voluntary for those students who work in the business and commercial clinic. students are encouraged to get involved, they do not have to. the blog itself is not credit-bearing but as students are assessed widely on activities undertaken in the slo, with marks being given for their personal contribution to the slo as well as their academic skills, any contribution towards the blog can be taken into account in the overall mark they receive.18 17 k. exley and r. dennick, small group teaching: tutorials, seminars and beyond (london, routledge, 2004) at p.5. 18 students are assessed on their practical work evidenced by a portfolio (70% of the overall mark) and by two reflective essays (30% of the overall mark). ijple 2 (1) 2018 52 when we set up the blog we hoped that it would have a pedagogic value and encourage the collaborative and constructivist learning environment discussed by rambe and nel, as students are responsible for choosing the topics they want to write about and for developing their own learning.19 we also hoped they would gain an appreciation of the importance of maintaining a good social media image and the role social media can play in marketing and business development. blog content when we set up the blog we thought that students would predominantly write about legal topics they encountered in advising clients and this has proven to be the case. there is an ‘information for businesses’ tab on the blog which helps direct readers to business related content. topics students have chosen to write about include: choice of business ownership20; limited liability partnerships 21 ; trade marks 22 ; copyright 23 ; the small business, enterprise and employment act24; and the consumer rights act25. as well 19 p. rambe and l. nel, 'technological utopia, dystopia and ambivalence: teaching with social media at a south african university' (2015) 46 british journal of educational technology 629 at p. 630. 20 see blog post dated 29 january 2016, ‘which business medium is best for you?’ available at https://wetakecareofbusiness.wordpress.com (accessed 27 november 2017). 21 see blog post dated 11 january 2017, ‘limited liability partnerships: a new way forward’. ibid. 22 see blog post dated 5 april 2016, ‘trade marks 101: part 2’ and blog post dated 23 march 2016, ‘‘trade marks 101: part 2’. ibid. 23 see blog post dated 20 april 2015, ‘keeping yourself informed in the information age: a quick guide to copyright’. ibid. 24 see blog post dated 24 february 2016, ‘the small business, enterprise and employment act – how will it affect you?’. ibid. 25 see blog post dated 19 january 2016, ‘the consumer rights act: some key issues’. ibid. https://wetakecareofbusiness.wordpress.com/ ijple 2 (1) 2018 53 as helping to consolidate and reflect on the knowledge the student has gained in the clinic, the blog posts are available to the public and therefore have a public legal education aspect too. some might question whether businesses and business people need educating about legal matters, but the author firmly believes that there is unmet legal need for businesses as there is for individuals. small businesses in england and wales often cannot afford to obtain legal advice and business link, the government funded network of local business advisors, was axed in 2011. 26 the solicitors regulation authority has reported that the majority of small businesses in england and wales have little contact with legal providers and that over half of businesses that experienced a problem tried to resolve it on their own.27 the blog is also designed to promote the work of the business and commercial clinic in the same way a law firm might use social media to help attract clients 28 and on occasion clients have been happy to take advantage of the free publicity and to feature in blog posts with our students. when a new blog post becomes available, we promote it through twitter. 26 see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/yourbusiness/8093448/business-link-scrapped-andreplaced-by-call-centre.html (accessed 27 november 2017). 27 solicitors regulation authority, the changing legal services market (2015) at p. 16 available from www.sra.org.uk/risk/resources/changing-legal-services-market.page (accessed 27 november 2017). 28 see, for example, the blog post dated 11 september 2017, ‘can we help you?’ available at https://wetakecareofbusiness.wordpress.com (accessed 27 november 2017). http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/yourbusiness/8093448/business-link-scrapped-and-replaced-by-call-centre.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/yourbusiness/8093448/business-link-scrapped-and-replaced-by-call-centre.html http://www.sra.org.uk/risk/resources/changing-legal-services-market.page https://wetakecareofbusiness.wordpress.com/ ijple 2 (1) 2018 54 as well as writing about legal topics, students sometimes also choose to write about networking events they have attended and visits of important guests. unexpectedly, students have also chosen to produce content which is aimed more at other students or legal practitioners. we have been impressed by our students’ ability to be creative and to reflect on their studies and the wider legal profession. see for example the post entitled ‘the legal hunger games’ (reflecting on the competitive nature of university generally)29 or ‘how is artificial intelligence affecting the legal profession?’30. commercial awareness, and how to acquire it, has also been a recurring theme. 31 acting on their own initiative, students have often worked collaboratively to produce posts, even on occasion working with students outside the business and commercial clinic. blog statistics to date the blog has had over 7,000 views from people in over 100 countries so it is also clearly reaching an audience outside of the slo and the wider university.32 as would be expected, the majority of viewers have been from the uk (approx. 78%), followed by other english speaking countries such as the united states (approx. 9%) and australia (approx. 2%). whilst the 29 see the post dated 17 march 2015. ibid. 30 see the post dated 23 march 2017. ibid. 31 see, for example, the post dated 2 march 2016, ‘are you commercially aware’. ibid. 32 data correct as at 11 june 2018. wordpress automatically collects visitor data and it can be viewed by the relevant webpage administrator(s). ijple 2 (1) 2018 55 limitations of this data are acknowledged below, the number of views and geographical spread support the view that blogs can potentially reach a very wide audience. this is potentially very useful from a public legal education perspective. student engagement despite the voluntary nature of the blog, students have generally engaged well with it and to date we have worked with over 50 students. informal student feedback from those who have engaged has been positive and indicates that students found it to be of value from both an educational perspective and also in terms of commercial awareness and employability (discussed further below). however, the author regrets not collecting data in a more systematic way, or specifically collecting data from those who did not engage to find out the reasons why. in subsequent projects the author has used an online survey to collect data. 33 this has the advantage of automatically collating and displaying the survey results, allowing the researcher to avoid having to do this manually. other impact and success in 2016 the blog was shortlisted for the routledge/alt teaching law with technology prize 2016, a prize which ‘rewards and champions innovation 33 the author’s university has a subscription with bristol online surveys https://www.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/ (accessed 27 november 2017). https://www.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/ ijple 2 (1) 2018 56 in teaching and learning’. 34 following the success of the business and commercial firm blog, the family law firms in the slo have recently launched their own blog, ‘a family affair’ also using wordpress.35 at a recent legal clinic conference in poland 36, at which the author spoke about the blog project, a number of delegates expressed an interest in starting to use blogs in their teaching. reflection is not just for students… whilst the author regards the blog as an overall success, analysis of the project has highlighted a number of lessons to be learnt. the author acknowledges that a more formal method of gathering feedback should have been employed at the outset. secondly, thought also needs to be given to the ethical considerations involved in adopting social media in teaching. a large-scale 2013 study of 251 colleges and universities students in the united states concluded that learners are sensitive to the boundaries between their personal and academic lives and using technology with them has its limits.37 this suggests that academics should avoid incorporating social media into legal education in a way that students may view as 34 see https://www.routledge.com/law/posts/9620 (accessed 27 november 2017). 35 see https://afamilyaffairsite.wordpress.com (accessed 27 november 2017). 36 xxviii conference of academic legal clinics, ‘20 years of academic legal clinics in poland achievements, future goals and development opportunities’ (2017) krakow, poland. 37 educause center for analysis and research, ecar study of undergraduate students and information technology (2013) at p.6 available at https://library.educause.edu/resources/2013/9/ecar-study-of-undergraduate-students-andinformation-technology-2013 (accessed 28 november 2017). https://www.routledge.com/law/posts/9620 https://afamilyaffairsite.wordpress.com/ https://library.educause.edu/resources/2013/9/ecar-study-of-undergraduate-students-and-information-technology-2013 https://library.educause.edu/resources/2013/9/ecar-study-of-undergraduate-students-and-information-technology-2013 ijple 2 (1) 2018 57 intrusive. having considered privacy issues, the author is of the view that that such concerns are valid and need to be addressed at the design stage of any teaching incorporating social media. the fact that such issues were not considered initially when the blog project was implemented, highlights the importance of institutions adopting best practice policies and guidance. the voluntary nature of our blog perhaps mitigates some of these concerns. however, any teaching design requiring students to set up their own social media accounts and/or with compulsory participation is potentially problematic. thought also still needs to be given to privacy issues even if the use of social media is voluntary. is it clear to the student that it really is voluntary? might they be penalised in any way for not engaging? 3. potential advantages of using blogs as a teaching tool and method of public legal education student learning and development as long ago as 2006 black, writing from an australian legal educator perspective, argued that ‘blogs as an educational tool promote deep learning and critical, analytical and analogical thinking’.38 there is a body of literature exploring the pedagogy of social media in education and black’s views could therefore be regarded as grounded in educational 38 p. black, ‘uses of blogs in legal education’ (2006) 13 james cook university law review 8 at p. 29. ijple 2 (1) 2018 58 theory.39 cao et al. cite, amongst others, bosman & zagenczyk who argue that social media can help achieve learning objectives. 40 evans has suggested that social media has many qualities that make it suitable for use in higher education including the fact it can promote knowledge sharing, collaboration and participation.41 rambe and nel point to various studies which appear to confirm that social media can have a positive impact on active learning and performance and state that social media’s ability to support collaboration and social constructivist teaching is ‘welldocumented’. 42 whilst a number of academics appear convinced, it is worth noting that some academics like tess have suggested that the research on the effectiveness of social media in higher education, which would include blogs, is not fully supported by empirical data. 43 the educational value of any learning and teaching activity will of course vary 39 for a more detailed review of the relevant literature see for example y. cao, h. ajjan and p. hong, ‘using social media applications for educational outcomes in college teaching: a structural equation analysis’ (2013) 44 british journal of educational technology 581 or p. rambe and l. nel, 'technological utopia, dystopia and ambivalence: teaching with social media at a south african university' (2015) 46 british journal of educational technology 629. 40 y. cao, h. ajjan and p. hong, ‘using social media applications for educational outcomes in college teaching: a structural equation analysis’ (2013) 44 british journal of educational technology 581 citing l. bosman and t. zagenczyk, ‘revitalize your teaching: creative approaches to applying social media in the classroom. social media tools and platforms in learning environments’ in b. white, i. king, p. tsang. (eds) social media tools and platforms in learning environments (springer-verlag berlin heidelberg, 2011). 41 c. evans, ‘twitter for teaching: can social media be used to enhance the process of learning?’ (2013) 45 british journal of educational technology 902 at p. 902. 42 p. rambe and l. nel, 'technological utopia, dystopia and ambivalence: teaching with social media at a south african university' (2015) 46 british journal of educational technology 629 at p. 630. 43 p. tess, ‘the role of social media in higher education classes (real and virtual) – a literature review’ (2013) 29 computers in human behavior a60 at a60. ijple 2 (1) 2018 59 according to what students are required to do, the extent they engage, and how well tasks align with the lecturer’s intended learning outcomes. our view, based on our experiences of the blog project and student feedback, is that blogs can be of educational value to students. for example, some of our students have commented that writing blog posts helped them to understand the relevant legal issue more fully because it required them to concisely summarise the key issues. a recurring theme in the student law office is that students find it difficult to adjust their academic writing to a style which a layperson, such as a client, would find accessible. as students know they will need to be able to master this skill if they wish to become a solicitor, some have commented that writing blog posts was useful practice in this regard. students have also told us that the blog has been something which they felt helped them to stand out in training contract and paralegal interviews. law firms are very image conscious and increasingly use social media, blogs and newsletters to promote their services. the law society practice note on social media acknowledges that “social media is an increasingly popular and growing area…that can offer many professional…benefits”. 44 it suggests that social media can be used to engage with clients and to 44 see http://www.lawsociety.org.uk/support-services/advice/practice-notes/social-media/ (accessed 17 february 2016). http://www.lawsociety.org.uk/support-services/advice/practice-notes/social-media/ ijple 2 (1) 2018 60 facilitate marketing and professional networking. law firms are likely to value applicants who can demonstrate that they recognise this as an aspect of commercial awareness and can contribute to the production of promotional materials. public legal education value the disadvantages and limitations of the use of blogs as a method of public legal education are explored in part 4, but let us first consider some of the advantages. the public legal educational value of a blog is that, like street law and similar initiatives, it can be used to educate the public about the law and how it affects them. students, under the supervision of a lecturer, can write about legal issues, and legal updates. blogs tend to be written in an informal, concise style, avoiding jargon and legalese. this style is complimentary to a public legal education mission that is driven by the need to make legal issues and information as accessible as possible to lay people. also, as demonstrated by the northumbria case study, blogs published on the internet and available for anyone to access can potentially reach a very wide audience. rather than being limited to a particular geographic area or even a specific country, a blog post can be read by anyone, anywhere in the world who has access to an internet enabled device or computer. the united nation’s agency for information communication technology, the itu, suggests that in developed countries ijple 2 (1) 2018 61 81% of the population use the internet (94.3% of 15-24 year olds) and in developing countries 41.3% (67.3% of 15-24 year olds) use the internet.45 in the uk, the most recent office of national statistics data suggests that 89% of people use the internet regularly putting the uk slightly above the average for a developed country.46 blogs also appear to be cost effective from a university perspective. the blog project discussed in our case study did not involve any costs and one of the advantages of blog sites like wordpress are that they are free and easily accessible.47 a blog which is truly student-led should also be time efficient, likely involving less hours and resources than face-to-face public legal education. students do not need to undergo any training to write a blog post (our students normally find it sufficient to read prior posts) and they can choose when they want to get involved, making it easier to fit around their other commitments. 4. challenges and limitations of using blogs as a teaching tool and method of public legal education staff development and time constraints 45 see http://www.itu.int/en/itu-d/statistics/documents/facts/ictfactsfigures2017.pdf (accessed 24 november 2017). 46 https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/itandinternetindustry/bulletins/internetuser s/2017 (accessed 24 november 2017). 47 whilst all are free to establish a basic account some do charge for premium services or functionality. http://www.itu.int/en/itu-d/statistics/documents/facts/ictfactsfigures2017.pdf https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/itandinternetindustry/bulletins/internetusers/2017 https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/itandinternetindustry/bulletins/internetusers/2017 ijple 2 (1) 2018 62 whilst social media may have a range of pedagogical uses, rambe and nel have highlighted that any ‘utopian’ views about social media do not necessarily reflect the reality facing educators. 48 interaction with technology is more complex than this and there are possibly a number of barriers, or perceived barriers, to the incorporation of social media within teaching.49 an obvious challenge in using social media as a teaching tool is that some staff may not be familiar with the technology or, to use prensky’s terminology, they may be ‘digital immigrants’ rather than ‘digital natives’.50 whilst black suggests it does not take long to master the requisite technology51 and we have found applications like wordpress easy to use, it is acknowledged that this is a valid concern. the author agrees with kukulska-hulme though who argues that academics should commit to their own life-long learning and try to adapt to a world saturated with social technologies. 52 it is clear to do so they will need institutional support and guidance. one issue is that institutions may be reluctant to provide such 48 p. rambe and l. nel, 'technological utopia, dystopia and ambivalence: teaching with social media at a south african university' (2015) 46 british journal of educational technology 629 at pp. 644-645. 49 ibid. 50 m. prensky, ‘digital natives, digital immigrants’ (2001) 9(5) on the horizon 1, p. 2. 51 p. black, ‘uses of blogs in legal education’ (2006) 13 james cook university law review 8 at p. 21. 52 a. kukulska-hulme, ‘how should the higher education workforce adapt to advancements in technology for teaching and learning?’ (2012) 15 the internet and higher education 247 at p. 253. ijple 2 (1) 2018 63 support and guidance due to concerns about the lack of control the institution might have over such open platforms. 53 academics also face increasing pressure on their time and, unsurprising, the time required to effectively incorporate social media enhanced tasks into teaching was raised as a concern in a 2015 study of educators’ experiences of using various social media.54 as the amount of time involved will depend on the type of social media employed and how much interaction/maintenance is required from the relevant academic, it is important to bear these practical considerations in mind at the design stage. although, as noted above, once familiar with the relevant technology, a student-led blog should not be overly time consuming to maintain. perhaps having assessed, rather than voluntary, projects may be preferable as well because at least then the lecturer should be formally allocated teaching hours. student acceptance another related issue identified by krause and reiterated by black is that just because you give students the opportunity to use technology does not 53 as suggested in d. ng' ambi, ‘effective and ineffective uses of emerging technologies: towards a transformative pedagogical model’ (2013) 44 british journal of educational technology 652 at p. 660. 54 p. rambe and l. nel, 'technological utopia, dystopia and ambivalence: teaching with social media at a south african university' (2015) 46 british journal of educational technology 629 at 641. ijple 2 (1) 2018 64 mean they will want to use it.55 whilst many of our students have engaged with the blog, a significant number who have been given the opportunity to participate have not done so. to ensure the teaching remains as inclusive as possible, it is probably best not assume all students will be familiar with blogs. academics need to bear in mind that there may be cost implications for students too in terms of equipment and access to the internet, particularly where students are expected to participate off campus. this is likely to be a greater issue for institutions in resource–poor settings as rambe and nel have highlighted. 56 this is not a concern if, as we do, lecturers deal with the maintenance of the blog. slipping standards? selwyn and grant suggest that some academics may resist the use of social media out of a belief it could have negative effect on traditional skills and literacies. 57 it is probably correct to say that the language used in social media is generally more informal than that used in academic writing. we have not found this to be an issue with the blog because, as black suggests, we provided clear guidelines to students about tone and style and act as 55 p. black, ‘uses of blogs in legal education’ (2006) 13 james cook university law review 8 at p. 21 referring to s. krause, ‘blogs as a tool for teaching’ (2005) 51(42) the chronicle of higher education b33. 56 p. rambe and l. nel, 'technological utopia, dystopia and ambivalence: teaching with social media at a south african university' (2015) 46 british journal of educational technology 629 at p. 640. 57 n. selwyn and l. grant. ‘researching the realities of social software use—an introduction’. learning, media and technology, 34 (2), 79 at pp. 80-81. ijple 2 (1) 2018 65 editors.58 plagiarism has also been raised as a potential fear with students ‘research[ing] by google’ or to plagiarise by copying and pasting material from elsewhere.59 again, the author agrees with black that a lecturer can counter this by outlining a clear policy as to what is expected in terms of research and referencing. from a public legal education perspective the informality referred to above, is actually likely to be beneficial. the intended audience is far more likely to relate to, and understand, information written in an unfussy, plain english style after all. some caution is needed though as over simplistic explanations could lead to confusion. this is why we take the view that, even where a student has followed referencing policies, it is prudent for us to act as editors and check the law and the clarity of the explanations. a poor substitute for street law? it is acknowledged that educating others through face-to-face interactions, such as is advocated in traditional street law programmes, has a number of advantages over online content in blogs. firstly, when teaching is delivered in person, there is much greater scope for judging understanding, modifying delivery if things are not working, and making changes to future delivery according to past experience. none of this is really possible with a 58 p. black, ‘uses of blogs in legal education’ (2006) 13 james cook university law review 8 at p. 22 59 ibid. ijple 2 (1) 2018 66 blog. a blog is also perhaps less interactive than some other forms of social media and there are limited opportunities to obtain feedback (discussed further below). on the other hand, a blog could complement other forms of public legal education or clinical work, and might be useful where these other types of programme are not possible due to time or budgetary constraints. a poor substitute for bespoke legal advice? like some other forms of public legal education, a blog is not, nor intended to be, a substitute for advice from a qualified legal professional and there will be times when a person or business needs to obtain bespoke advice. our blog includes a statement confirming that it is intended for general information only and that readers should obtain professional advice before taking, or refraining to take, any action. arguably though, public legal education can still have an important role in educating people about legal matters on a more general level, informing them about their legal rights and responsibilities, and helping them to identify legal issues they need to seek help with. how effective is this form of public legal education? whilst the data cited above suggests the majority of people in the uk regularly use the internet, not everyone uses the internet in the same way and some groups will be far more adept at searching and locating useful ijple 2 (1) 2018 67 information than others. a blog, promoted using social media, might be a good way of getting information to school children, but much less effective at educating the elderly or targeting groups with low levels of literacy. additionally, while a blog post can be read by anyone in the world who has access to the internet, the legal information in question may be jurisdiction specific and therefore not relevant, or even misleading, to some readers if this is not made clear. the nature of a blog also makes it difficult to evaluate its effectiveness as a method of public legal education. it is not possible to physically hand out questionnaires to people who read a blog post in the way that you might after face-to-face teaching. whilst we know how many views the blog has had, and how many views each post has had, we do not know how useful readers find the blog or what kind of background they come from (student, business person, academic etc.). in fact, geographic location of visitors aside, we know nothing about who is reading the blog unless someone contacts us directly after a reading a post (which has happened on occasion). more information might be gleaned from activating the comments function of a blog, but this is still an unreliable way of collecting data. the best way of collecting data would probably be to include some kind of survey on the blog itself, a link to such a survey, or a downloadable questionnaire with instructions to send it to a specific email address. the response rate would ijple 2 (1) 2018 68 likely be significantly lower than in a face-to-face environment though, so the data obtained might not be representative of the blog readers as a whole. conclusions the author regards the blog project as a success from the perspective of building a collaborative learning environment which allows students to select their own learning topics and build their own knowledge. a number of academics believe that blogs and social media more generally can have an educational value for students but further empirical studies are perhaps required to test this hypothesis further. blogs should never replace face-to-face teaching but they may be able to complement more traditional forms of learning. likewise, blogs should not replace valuable public education initiatives like street law, but they could supplement such projects or be employed where such projects are not possible. the principal advantages of blogs are that they are relatively cheap and easy to set up and maintain and can reach a wide audience. the use of blogs warrants careful planning and consideration. academics should ensure that the teaching design is inclusive and does not inadvertently invade a student’s privacy. particular thought needs to be given to any use of social media where participation is mandatory and students are required to have a public profile they may not be comfortable ijple 2 (1) 2018 69 with. it is recommended that lecturers spend time planning and considering the time required to set up and maintain teaching involving blogs. where a teaching team involves a number of lecturers, it must be remembered that some may not be comfortable with the technology and this form of teaching. a successful project will require buy in from all involved. the author also recommends that consideration is given at outset to what the project’s aims are and how its success will be measured. it seems sensible to ask students to provide feedback, including those who did not engage to find out the reasons why. obtaining data from the readers of the blog, and measuring the value of the blog in furthering public legal education, is particularly tricky. discussion needs to revolve about how such data might be gathered and whether enough responses are received to make the data useful. ideally, best practice exemplars for working with blogs and other social media should be disseminated by institutions 60 , training provided and policies dealing with ethical matters published. if institutions are reluctant to endorse the use of social media, the author suggests that it would still be better to introduce policies and guidelines rather than ignore it. to do so risks piecemeal and inconsistent adoption, and risks unexpected problems arising. perhaps both institutions and lecturers might heed the advice of 60 p. rambe p and nel l, 'technological utopia, dystopia and ambivalence: teaching with social media at a south african university' (2015) 46 british journal of educational technology 629 at p. 644. ijple 2 (1) 2018 70 siemens and tittenberger that teaching with technologies requires ‘a spirit of experimentation’ and a ‘tolerance of failure’.61 61 g. siemens and p. tittenberger, handbook of emerging technologies for learning. (university of manitoba, 2009) at p. 15. blogs as a teaching tool and method of public legal education: a case study* as long ago as 2006 black, writing from an australian legal educator perspective, argued that ‘blogs as an educational tool promote deep learning and critical, analytical and analogical thinking’.p37f p there is a body of literature exploring the peda... our view, based on our experiences of the blog project and student feedback, is that blogs can be of educational value to students. for example, some of our students have commented that writing blog posts helped them to understand the relevant legal i... students have also told us that the blog has been something which they felt helped them to stand out in training contract and paralegal interviews. law firms are very image conscious and increasingly use social media, blogs and newsletters to promote ... public legal education value the disadvantages and limitations of the use of blogs as a method of public legal education are explored in part 4, but let us first consider some of the advantages. the public legal educational value of a blog is that, like street law and similar ini... 28 the journey to legal capability: challenges for public law from public legal education abiodun michael olatokun1 introduction citizens whose rights are infringed by a public authority are often unable to attain a court judgment to challenge those adverse decisions. the trite explanation is the most compelling; judicial review is a prohibitively expensive process.2 this high cost of litigation combined with the fees charged by public lawyers can make fighting for one’s legal rights inaccessible to those without independent means or publicly funded legal representation. there is no question that this is a complete explanation for many instances of unmet legal need, but this paper seeks to raise another important barrier to access to justice that is seldom discussed in the recent literature. legal capability is defined as the knowledge, skills and confidence required to participate in legal systems and to deal with one’s legal issues. it is thought to be improved through 1 barrister (lincoln's inn), lecturer in law (london south bank university) and inaugural member (solicitor general's public legal education committee). former research leader in citizenship and the rule of law (bingham centre for the rule of law) 2 sarah nason, “justice outside london? an update on ‘regional’ judicial review” (uk constitutional law association, november 16 2016) https://ukconstitutionallaw.org/2016/11/16/sarah-nason-justiceoutside-london-an-update-on-regional-judicial-review/ accessed 25th july 2022 https://ukconstitutionallaw.org/2016/11/16/sarah-nason-justice-outside-london-an-update-on-regional-judicial-review/ https://ukconstitutionallaw.org/2016/11/16/sarah-nason-justice-outside-london-an-update-on-regional-judicial-review/ 29 programmes of public legal education (ple).3 whilst the author reiterates that legal education is no replacement for state-funded legal advice for the poor, ple is a crucial tool in helping people to challenge public decision making. the un, amongst others, has suggested that governments can prevent civil legal problems from spiralling out of control by giving those affected the tools to self-diagnose and, where appropriate, act with support to enable them to intervene.4 the author is both an academic representing pedagogical ideas to the government and a civil society activist working to implement programmes of ple in varied settings. these experiences will be used to examine the (minimal) effectiveness of initiatives such as the placement of human rights into the national curriculum for citizenship education in 2013 and the requirement that all english schools promote the ‘fundamental british value’ of the rule of law. this article further argues that the state can provide meaningful information about public authorities’ duties and citizens’ entitlements through public legal information, and that there is a moral impetus for it to do so. a concrete plan for doing so would work to ensure 3 genn et al, “developing capable citizens: the role of public legal education the report of the pleas task force” https://lawforlife.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/pleas-task-force-report-14.pdf accessed 25th july 2022 4 united nations general assembly, “legal empowerment of the poor and eradication of poverty report of the secretary-general” (july 2009) https://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/reports/legal%20empowerment%20of%20the%20poor.pdf accessed 25th july 2022 https://lawforlife.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/pleas-task-force-report-14.pdf https://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/reports/legal%20empowerment%20of%20the%20poor.pdf 30 that those subject to unlawful administrative decision making have the legal capability to mitigate further damage to their interests and pursue the correct decision. access to justice and the rule of law are broader than legal aid access to justice has underpinned english notions of fairness in the legal system since magna carta stated that “to no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.”5 this was echoed some 800 years later by british judge lord bingham of cornhill, who laid out a definition of the rule of law that is striking in its clarity. he described two hallmarks of the rule of law which are of major relevance to this paper; the first that “the law must be accessible and so far as possible, intelligible, clear and practicable.”6 the second principle is that “means must be provided for resolving, without prohibitive cost or inordinate delay, bona fide civil disputes which the parties are themselves unable to resolve.”7 the practical significance of these principles is that the law should be comprehensible in order to justify its binding role on the actions of citizens, and that the state should provide opportunities to resolve incorrect decisions made about those citizens; there should be access to justice. this line of thinking was key to the reasoning of the supreme court in 5 magna carta article 40 6 tom bingham, “the rule of law” (penguin 2010)pp 37 7 ibid, pp 85 31 unison where lord reed goes so far as to say that access to the courts is “inherent in the rule of law.8” the idea that the government has a necessary role to play in ensuring access to justice is baked into the psyche of the british state. how did it come to be so pivotal? as a welfarist political consensus emerged after the second world war, the atlee government enacted the legal aid and advice act 1949. this act created the legal aid board which would provide those of “small or moderate means” with the necessary funding to secure legal representation for their civil legal problems.9 legal aid has been largely viewed as a welcome achievement, but its operation has not been without criticism. eligibility for legal aid has always been targeted at the most hardpressed, and as such decisions to grant funding are subject to a means test.10 this means test has the potential to leave lower-middle class individuals subject to a legal problem undercompensated if they take a party to court, as they are unlikely to recover all of the costs of representation even if successful.11 this was exacerbated by a change of policy by the uk government as the country entered the second decade of the 21st century. conservative party chancellor of the exchequer 8 r (on the application of unison) (appellant) v lord chancellor (respondent) [2017] uksc 51 9 joint committee on human rights, the implications for access to justice of the government’s proposals to reform legal aid, 13 december 2013, hl paper 100 of session 2013–14, p 7. 10 catherine jennings, “accessing justice: civil legal aid, the public interest and judicial action” (january 30, 2018). https://ssrn.com/abstract=3396591 accessed 25th july 2022 11 duncan watts, “aqa government and politics as” (aqa 2014) https://ssrn.com/abstract=3396591 32 george osborne announced an ‘emergency’ budget in june 2010 that significantly reduced the ministry of justice budget. this was wrought by the legal aid, sentencing and punishment of offenders act 2012 (laspo) which paved the way for the legal aid budget to be cut by over 1billion over the next ten years,12 creating a situation described by the law society as ‘a wide[r] and detrimental effect on society’’.13 drilling down to the regional level, there are whole areas of the united kingdom in which there are no qualified legal aid solicitors specialising in given areas of law. this problem has become so pronounced that industry estimates suggest that in 2021, 40% of the population of england & wales did not have a local legal aid provider working in the area of housing law.14 more worryingly for present purposes, these ‘advice deserts’ are most stark in the public law jurisdiction, where approximately 80% of judicial reviews between 2018-2020 were heard in london, despite the region containing approximately 7% of the uk population.15 thomas argues that this “large but largely hidden and ignored landscape” operates “outside the main political agenda” and is thus not a prominent or 12 statista, “resource department expenditure limit (rdel) of criminal and civil legal aid in england and wales from 2005/06 to 2020/21” https://www.statista.com/statistics/1098628/legal-aid-spending-inengland-and-wales/ accessed 25th july 2022 13 law society, “access denied? laspo four years on: a law society review” 14 law society, “housing – legal aid deserts” https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/en/campaigns/legal-aiddeserts accessed 25th july 2022 15 sarah nason and liam edwards, “reviewing judicial review in wales” (april 2021) pg 11 figure 1 https://research.bangor.ac.uk/portal/en/researchoutputs/reviewing-judicial-review-in-wales(60911944778a-47a9-8159-872534c22bb5).html accessed 25th july 2022 https://www.statista.com/statistics/1098628/legal-aid-spending-in-england-and-wales/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1098628/legal-aid-spending-in-england-and-wales/ https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/en/campaigns/legal-aid-deserts https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/en/campaigns/legal-aid-deserts https://research.bangor.ac.uk/portal/en/researchoutputs/reviewing-judicial-review-in-wales(60911944-778a-47a9-8159-872534c22bb5).html https://research.bangor.ac.uk/portal/en/researchoutputs/reviewing-judicial-review-in-wales(60911944-778a-47a9-8159-872534c22bb5).html 33 oft-discussed public policy issue.16 it is clear that there is unmet legal need for judicial review in most parts of the country; if you live outside the capital, your ability to challenge public decision making is severely limited. it is worth reminding ourselves of the importance of legally aided litigation. cases of central importance to our democracy have arisen from legally aided claimants who would otherwise have been unable to bring these cases, of which donoghue v stephenson is the most infamous. had ms donoghue not been able to bring her case, she would not have been compensated for the harm that she suffered, but more crucially the principle that we owe each other a duty of care to prevent reasonably foreseeable harms would not have resulted. it is uncontroversial to say that legal aid, and the legal assistance that it facilitates, is much needed in realising rights. legal aid is irreplaceable and serves an important role, but its apotheosis as the main element of the post-atlee welfare state is highly problematic. as the replacement of the legal aid board with the legal services commission and later the legal aid agency would show, the body was prone to severe disruption by changing political priorities. legal aid was born in an era of post-war political consensus in which conservative politicians were more comfortable with supporting social welfare programmes.17 this 16 frances gibb, “administrative justice and tribunals service comes out of the shadows” https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/administrative-justice-and-tribunals-service-comes-out-of-theshadows-bqfpjjzsv5p accessed 25th july 2022 17 andrew marr, “the making of modern britain” (macmillan 2010) https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/administrative-justice-and-tribunals-service-comes-out-of-the-shadows-bqfpjjzsv5p https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/administrative-justice-and-tribunals-service-comes-out-of-the-shadows-bqfpjjzsv5p 34 would not last into the thatcher administration.18 by contrast the rather tentative establishment of ple has been a more politically palatable concept accepted by both labour and conservative mps.19 the practical significance of this point is that in a situation where the justice sector is at loggerheads with the government over the funding of legal representation, ple may be an easier tactical target for public interest campaigns than legal aid. beyond this further support for ple is a sustainable investment for creating active, knowledgeable citizens. some of the greatest gains in legal rights are achieved by using the law outside of the courtroom. civic participation in scotland, the so-called ‘snowdrop campaign’ saw the uk government pass the firearms (amendment) act 1997 to prohibit the possession of small firearms. the national farmers’ union organised blockades in order to argue for a reduction in fuel tax. though unsuccessful in this aim, they succeeded in securing a freeze of fuel prices.20 these were sophisticated operations in which professional activists used their knowledge of the different ‘levers’ that could be pulled in order to achieve societal change. such an assessment requires the knowledge, skills 18 harrison, “the rise, fall and rise of political consensus in britain since 1940” (vol. 84, no. 274 april 1999) pp. 301-324 19 there are numerous indicators of this cross-party appreciation for ple including the all-party parliamentary group on ple and pro bono, which has been chaired by a conservative mp in successive parliamentary sessions: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmallparty/220722/public-legaleducation-and-pro-bono.htm accessed 25th july 2022 20 firearms (amendment) act 1997 https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmallparty/220722/public-legal-education-and-pro-bono.htm https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmallparty/220722/public-legal-education-and-pro-bono.htm 35 and confidence to deal with law related issues in one’s life; in other words, ‘legal capability’.21 we don’t currently have a legal obligation to teach about the law it has been established above that widespread legal capability is crucial to the achievement of access to justice through the rule of law. as the public legal education and advice service task force stated, ple is the tool needed to achieve legal capability.22 one might then ask the question, what levers does the uk government pull in order to ensure provision of ple? the political geography of the uk makes this question more complex. education is a devolved competence in the uk, meaning that the devolved administrations of northern ireland, scotland and wales maintain their own national approaches. there is an awkwardness in the fact that we wish to teach students about the english and welsh legal system, yet england and wales pursue different approaches to education. the author is a product of the english education system and this chapter focuses explicitly on the english context. 21 wintersteiger, “legal needs, legal capability and the role of public legal education a report by law for life: the foundation for public legal education” (law for life 2015) https://www.lawforlife.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/legal-needs-legal-capability-and-the-role-of-publiclegal-education.pdf accessed 25th july 2022 22 pleas taskforce report cited above at footnote 2 36 there is currently no effective legal obligation requiring the uk government to ensure that every english citizen has legal capability; nor is there an obligation to implement ple across england. ple has not been the subject of litigation in the united kingdom, and so the common law does not provide any assistance in this area. similarly, there are several international treaties that reference ple’s cognate concepts (especially citizenship education) but these are not directly effective in the uk; the uk is a ‘dualist’ system in which international law and treaties need further national legislation in order to confer real rights. the major treaties calling on the uk government to implement aspects of ple are: ● un declaration human rights education and training (‘udhret’)23 ● un convention on the rights of the child ● council of europe charter on education for democratic citizenship and human rights education (‘the charter’)24 despite a clear thread throughout these instruments that young people should be taught about their rights, these treaties are seldom referred to in the work of parliament.25 the inability of these instruments to encourage action from politicians was illustrated in an 23 unga, res 66/137 declaration on human rights education and training (19 december 2011) 24 council of europe, recommendation cm/rec(2010)7 of the committee of ministers to member states on the council of europe charter on education for democratic citizenship and human rights education 25 searches for these instruments in hansard suggest that the charter and declaration have never been referred to in proceedings of the commons or the lords. 37 almost two-hour-long westminster hall debate in which members failed to reference any of these obligations.26 domestic legislation involving ple has also been threadbare. the most compelling provision is s1(g) of the legal services act 2007 (lsa 2007) which imposes an obligation upon the legal services board (lsb) to “increasing public understanding of the citizen's legal rights and duties.” though the placement of this obligation in statute is novel, and of relevance to the current discussion it is deficient in several respects. put simply, imposing the obligation on the lsb doesn’t guarantee any ple activity. legal professionals are not best placed to provide such an onerous duty alongside their core role, representing clients. the lsb itself is not a ‘front-line regulator’ but instead a ‘regulator of regulators’ in essence acting through regulators such as the bar standards board and solicitors regulatory authority to influence lawyers. this means that the lsb has made a modest number of ple interventions (such as running the collaborative ‘justice week’ campaign) and the impact of the lsa 2007 has been limited in respect of legal capability. 26 hc deb 15 may 2018, vol 641 col 80wh https://legalservicesboard.org.uk/news/justice-week-event-on-ple-monday-24-february-2020 38 lsb justice week events the most authoritative and influential obligation to deliver ple is the framework surrounding the education act 2002. s78 of the act states that maintained schools should provide a ‘balanced and broadly based curriculum’ which ‘promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils at the school and of society’. this obligation would go on to be known as ‘smsc’ by the teaching profession. the department for education modified this requirement in september 2014 to require smsc to include promotion of the ‘fundamental british values’. these ‘fbvs’ comprise: 1. democracy, 2. the rule of law, 3. individual liberty and 4. mutual respect and tolerance for those of different and no faiths. this new requirement was complemented by the department for education guidance, ‘promoting fundamental british values through smsc’. this document sets out a highly 39 rigid and conformist notion of law with the rather regrettable expression that “the school’s ethos and teaching, which schools should make parents aware of, should support the rule of english civil and criminal law and schools should not teach anything that undermines it.”27 these highly individualised forms of legal education focus specifically around the individual’s responsibility to shape their family life and home affairs in such a way as to avoid criminal liability. this is important, but incomplete; these incentives do not encourage students to consider how they might campaign collectively to achieve societal justice or how they might pursue law reform or how they might act with others to create political change. they encourage the idea that the status quo is optimal without consideration of alternatives.28 the attorney general’s office would make another significant intervention in this area in 2017 in the formation of the solicitor general’s ‘ple panel’,29 which would later be renamed the ‘solicitor general’s ple committee’. this group comprised a group of experts who would work with the minister to produce a ple action plan over the next 18 27 department for education, “promoting fundamental british values as part of smsc in schools departmental advice for maintained schools” (november 2014) https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/promoting-fundamental-british-values-through-smsc accessed 25th july 2022 pg 4 28 hugh starkey “human rights, cosmopolitanism and utopias: implications for citizenship education” (2012) cambridge journal of education 29 uk government, “new panel launched to drive public legal education” https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-panel-launched-to-drive-legal-education 40 months.30 the author worked with then-solicitor general robert buckland qc mp to launch a government vision statement at a combined meeting of the all-party parliamentary group (appg) on the rule of law and the appg on ple and pro bono.31 the action plan32 stated that seven goals should be pursued in order to correct deficiencies in the delivery of ple: 1. ple will be supported by a robust evidence base, showing what the need is and what works best, 2. ple will be of high quality, maintained to ensure that it remains accurate and accessible and useful for the people who need it, 3. ple will be universal and reach across all demographics, prioritising children, young adults and vulnerable groups, 4. ple will be scaled up through delivery by the legal community, 5. ple will harness technology and be delivered through innovative methods, both on and offline, 6. ple will be embedded into public services and government departments 7. ple will be understood as beneficial and utilised by other sectors. 30 members included young citizens, law for life, the law society, the bar council, inns of court, the bingham centre for the rule of law, the magistrates’ association, the legal services board, the national justice museum and others. 31 the solicitor general’s public legal education committee, “10 year vision for ple” https://www.lawworks.org.uk/sites/default/files/files/10yearvisionforple-web.pdf accessed 25th july 2022 32 attorney general’s office, “press release our vision for legal education’ solicitor general robert buckland qc mp launches a new ple vision statement” (october 2018) https://www.lawworks.org.uk/sites/default/files/files/10yearvisionforple-web.pdf 41 although this launch was enthusiastically attended by the justice sector, and overtures were made to ple in the attorney general’s business plan for 2020-2021, the action plan has so far resulted in minimal activity at the time of writing this piece some three years later.33 this could be in part due to the de facto role the solicitor general has assumed in representing ple within government. the solicitor general post suffered from the politically unstable zeitgeist as six appointments were made to the role between july 2019 and september 2022. this period also saw the longest-running minister in this period, michael ellis qc mp, given additional responsibility for the government’s response to the covid-19 pandemic. as a leading member of the group it is my view that the solicitor general’s ple committee has not been able to achieve the radical promise set out in its vision. the curriculum operationalised ple through citizenship education another major attempt to place ple at the heart of the english learning experience has been through the curriculum. the crick report in 1999 facilitated the creation of a new national curriculum subject, citizenship education.34 it set out the following as essential 33 attorney general’s office, “ago business plan 2020-2021” (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/9061 62/2020-21_ago_business_plan.pdf accessed 25th july 2022 34 the advisory group for citizenship, “education for citizenship and the teaching of democracy in schools: final report of the advisory group on citizenship” (qualifications and curriculum authority 1998) https://dera.ioe.ac.uk/4385/1/crickreport1998.pdf accessed 25th july 2022 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/906162/2020-21_ago_business_plan.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/906162/2020-21_ago_business_plan.pdf https://dera.ioe.ac.uk/4385/1/crickreport1998.pdf 42 concepts: ‘fairness, justice, the rule of law, rules, law and human rights’. it stated that ‘civility and respect for the rule of law’ were essential values and dispositions. essential elements of knowledge and understanding were ‘legal and moral rights and responsibilities of individuals and communities’ and also encouraged teaching ‘britain’s parliamentary political and legal systems at local, national, european, commonwealth and international level, including how they function and change’. all of these areas of knowledge were meant to lead to the development of skills and aptitudes that would provide the ‘ability to identify, respond to and influence social, moral and political challenges and situations’. there is an international consensus that citizenship education should include teaching about law and politics, and that it is the appropriate place in the english student’s experience during which they should learn about the rule of law.35 though not all schoolteachers include ple in their citizenship education lesson plans, english/european citizenship education frameworks have been designed to make law a crucial part. for this reason citizenship education and ple will be used interchangeably throughout this paper. the placement of this subject as a compulsory element of the curriculum was a welcome boost to legal capability. educational awarding bodies created gcse (secondary school 35 council of europe, “knowledge for critical understanding, education for democratic citizenship” figure 20a. knowledge and critical understanding of politics, law and human rights 43 leaver exams) and a levels (exams typically taken prior to higher education) based on the principles above. university graduates trained specifically to teach citizenship on specialist teaching courses. though we should not think that these years saw perfect provision of ple throughout the country, this was certainly its heyday, because over the subsequent twenty five years there would be significant decline in this subject. the early days of the 2010 coalition government saw the department for education introduce the academies act 2010, which facilitated the transformation in legal status of schools formerly attached to their local authority that would now become ‘academies’ without an obligation to follow the curriculum. it was at this point that teaching citizenship became a voluntary, rather than compulsory subject for many academised schools.36 citizenship allowed to degrade to a parlous state several members of the house of lords who had been involved in the creation of citizenship education were concerned about its lack of universality across england. reacting to this concern, lord blunkett (who had been the secretary of state for education presiding over its introduction) and others set up an ‘ad hoc’ select committee 36 commons library, “house of commons briefing paper number 06798: the school curriculum in england” (26 march 2021) pg 5 para 1.3 https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/sn06798/sn06798.pdf 44 in 2017, an accountability and oversight mechanism designed to enable short-term inquiries into specific issues of interest to members of the lords. their educational concerns ran in parallel with wider social issues, such as a downward trend in election turnout over the post-war period.37 the ‘ad hoc select committee on citizenship and civic engagement’ heard from an extensive network of experts and reported its findings in 2018. its report produced damning findings of the operation of citizenship education in england and wales. they concluded that citizenship education in england had been allowed “to degrade to a “parlous state”38 where it was essentially unclear whether a random young person leaving the compulsory school system had experienced high quality citizenship education at all. the government response to this was unsatisfactory and did not engage with the major challenges involved. the (then) department for housing, community and local government wrote a response that reiterated the importance of citizenship as a subject on the curriculum, spoke of the role that fbvs serve(d) in promoting the rule of law and stated that the varying coverage of citizenship education was not a problem because it 37 the commons library, “turnout” https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/cbp8060/cbp-8060.pdf accessed july 15th 2022 38 ad hoc select committee on citizenship and civic engagement, “the ties that bind: citizenship and civic engagement in the 21st century” (2018) house of lords pg 147 para 162 https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/cbp-8060/cbp-8060.pdf https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/cbp-8060/cbp-8060.pdf 45 represented a parochial kind of autonomy in which individual schools could make choices on the basis of what would be most appropriate.39 the upshot of this is that the government prioritises local selection of curriculum content over the imposition of compulsory parameters. whilst this gives schools additional flexibility, it introduces a much lower common denominator in terms of legal capability. in a system where there is no true ‘national’ curriculum requiring citizenship education, a child can go through the entire system without developing any measure of legal capability. the author argues that this contributes at least in part to major challenges for access to justice, such as the legal services board suggestion that up to 36% of the british public possess low legal confidence, leading 52% of those to worse legal outcomes than others with high legal confidence.40 challenges from a parlous state the fragile state of ple in england was put to the test as the constitution strained under the weight of a febrile atmosphere in which national politics became increasingly polarised and tribal. following the uk’s decision to withdraw from the eu (‘brexit’), the 39 ministry of housing, communities and local government, “government response to the lords select committee on citizenship and civic engagement” (june 2018) accessed 25th july 2022 40 legal services board, “ple research insights: how access to justice and outcomes vary by legal capability”, pg 5 https://legalservicesboard.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/lsb-ple-event-feb-2020for-web.pdf accessed 25th july 2022 https://legalservicesboard.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/lsb-ple-event-feb-2020-for-web.pdf https://legalservicesboard.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/lsb-ple-event-feb-2020-for-web.pdf 46 uk government entered into extensive negotiations with the eu about the future relationship between the nation and the bloc. the eu placed a longstop on those negotiations; existing obligations would expire on 31st december 2020 and the uk would ‘crash out’ of the provisional arrangements if no deal had been reached by that point. uk prime minister johnson tried unsuccessfully to persuade parliament to pass the eu withdrawal agreement bill, a legislative instrument that would give effect to his negotiated settlement. in a widely criticised move, johnson sought to end the session of parliament, reducing the number of opportunities mps would have to scrutinise the legislation. the supreme court ruled that this was an unlawful act as its effect was to stymie the ability of parliament to hold the executive to account.41 ‘miller 2’ suggested that the operation of the checks and balances in the uk constitution were operating effectively; the judicial branch of government acted effectively to restrain the executive branch from acting outside of its powers. but in the words of ms miller’s counsel, she is extraordinary; a combative democrat and an immensely wealthy woman with high legal and political capability. where were the normal citizens standing up for their rights? 42 this raises a question about how ple can contribute to the breadth of engagement in our democracy. should there have been 41 r (miller and others) v prime minister 2019 uksc 41 42 the bingham centre, “the article 50 ‘brexit’ appeal: the rule of law after miller” https://youtu.be/f1ckngrssva?t=3467 accessed at 25th july 2022 47 greater social pressure from the public, and a more widespread section of it, upon their elected representative to resist this? must a citizen be well-advised and wealthy to bring a major constitutional challenge? this point struck most resonantly in the wake of the ‘miller 2’ case. a yougov instant response poll asked, “the supreme court has said that prime minister boris johnson acted unlawfully in proroguing parliament. do you agree or disagree with the ruling?”43 up to 30 percent of the public disagreed with the court’s orthodox decision, and another 21 percent stated that they did not know how they felt. these figures partially illustrate the widespread deficiency in legal capability as well as the complex tribalism effected by the referendum and the post-2019 johnson administration. irrespective of the merits of the decision, enforcement of the constitutional order by citizens is a contemporary challenge described by the bingham centre as an urgent need to ‘democratise’ the rule of law. this is an area in which ple is better placed than judicial review representation orders in improving the quality of democratic participation. the executive can only be held accountable for breaches of its obligations if individuals are able and prepared to challenge public decision making. 43 yougov, “by 49% to 30%, britons agree with the supreme court’s ruling that proroguing parliament was unlawful” https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/09/24/49-30-britons-agreesupreme-courts-ruling-prorogui accessed 25th july 2022 https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/09/24/49-30-britons-agree-supreme-courts-ruling-prorogui https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/09/24/49-30-britons-agree-supreme-courts-ruling-prorogui 48 the uk government can successfully deliver ple by reference to similar initiatives there is clear evidence that the uk government can educate and influence the public where it desires to do so. during the covid-19 pandemic, the uk government increased its advertising spend on public health messaging by almost 800%.44 similarly the document ‘why the government believes that voting to remain in the european union is the best decision for the uk’ (the leaflet) was issued to every household in the uk.45 this was a requirement of the european union referendum act 2015, and because it was placed in legislation this secured sufficient resources for this document. in unpublished research (2016) for the cabinet office, i found that the leaflet was an effective means of encouraging both private renters and home owners to engage with politics, even if the arguments in the leaflet themselves did not ultimately convince them. this example has not been followed in a major election or referendum but it provides insights that may assist with the current constitutional furore. amidst the turmoil of brexit the reigning conservative government fought the 2019 general election campaign on a manifesto (the manifesto) that heralded an extensive 44 the media leader, “nielsen confirms £164 million government ad spend for 2020” https://the-medialeader.com/nielsen-confirms-164-million-government-ad-spend-for-2020/ accessed 25th july 2022 45 cabinet office, “why the government believes that voting to remain in the european union is the best decision for the uk”accessed 25th july 2022 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/51506 8/why-the-government-believes-that-voting-to-remain-in-the-european-union-is-the-best-decision-forthe-uk.pdf https://the-media-leader.com/nielsen-confirms-164-million-government-ad-spend-for-2020/ https://the-media-leader.com/nielsen-confirms-164-million-government-ad-spend-for-2020/ 49 programme of constitutional reform including repeal of the fixed term parliaments act, a review of parliamentary constituency boundaries, introducing requirements for identification to vote at polling stations and a constitution, democracy and rights commission (cdrc) to ‘rebalance’ the uk constitution.46 this programme of reform was described by unlock democracy as a “new interventionist role” that “puts our fragile rights and liberties in the firing line.”47 political theorist aitchinson has described the crdc as an attempt to “remove the checks and balances of our constitution.”48 more than two years after the eventual conservative victory in the 2019 election, the crdc has not resulted in its full form. despite this it is clear at the time of writing that the manifesto established sky-high stakes for constitutional reform. the cdrc has been split up into smaller elements that have not been afforded the column inches that an omnibus process might have received. in relation to human rights, the government ran two consultations. the first, the ‘independent human rights act review’ was led by sir peter gross, with a final report that emphasised the crucial importance of broadening awareness about 46 conservative and unionist party, “get brexit done: unleash britain's potential the conservative and unionist party manifesto 2019” accessed 25th july 2022 pg 48 https://assets-global.websitefiles.com/5da42e2cae7ebd3f8bde353c/5dda924905da587992a064ba_conservative%202019%20manifesto.p df 47 open democracy, “this tory manifesto is chilling liberals must vote tactically to protect democracy” https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/tory-manifesto-chilling-liberals-must-votetactically-protect-democracy/ accessed 25th july 2022 48 aitchinson, ‘this tory manifesto is chilling liberals must vote tactically to protect democracy’ https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/tory-manifesto-chilling-liberals-must-vote-tactically-protect-democracy/ https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/tory-manifesto-chilling-liberals-must-vote-tactically-protect-democracy/ 50 human rights in order for the public to ‘own’ their rights and to be able to use them.49 the second consultation led by justice secretary dominic raab invited experts to respond to a series of proposals which included substantive amendment of human rights law, making little reference to sir peter gross’ review.50 it is worth reflecting on this process as it is instructive of the fragility of such ‘asks’ in an adverse political environment. the gravitas and expertise of the independent human rights review commissioners could not prevent the government from dropping the vast majority of their recommendations, including legal education about human rights. in an online event discussing this exchange sir gross remarked that the review of human rights law should not be premised on the government’s scepticism of a small number of highprofile cases, but should be based on a more widespread ownership of rights by citizens.51 i have argued elsewhere that the cdrc could represent a pivotal opportunity to facilitate a society-wide discussion about the future direction of our politics.52 it is not too late for the government to conduct a nationwide cdrc that represents the best of the principles 49 the independent human rights act review available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/10405 25/ihrar-final-report.pdf 50 ministry of justice, “human rights act reform: a modern bill of rights a consultation to reform the human rights act 1998” (2019) https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/10404 09/human-rights-reform-consultation.pdf accessed 25th july 2022 51 ucl, “the human rights actreviewed” (2022) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uke10pybqxa accessed 25th july 2022 52 m a olatokun, “consult beyond the usual suspects to renew the constitution” times red box 51 above; an opportunity for constitutional education accompanied with a concrete opportunity to feed back into current government proposals. one example of this model was run by the ucl constitution unit in 2021. the unit convened a stratified sample of citizens from across the country and presented them with a series of informational presentations by legal and political experts. after these presentations the citizens were asked for their views on matters at the heart of the uk democracy such as strengthening the role of parliament in holding the executive to account, maintaining the role of the courts in limiting the actions of governments and strengthening the code of conduct for mps and peers.53 these recommendations are very different from the aims of the cdrc and thus represent a very important potential contribution of citizens to the political discourse. poor legal capability is undermining parliamentary intention the most compelling argument in favour of mainstreaming legal capability through ple is that the present situation has the potential to undermine the implementation of rights that parliament confers upon citizens. the windrush lessons learnt review, an inquiry into the mistreatment of caribbean britons by the immigration system, recommended extensive training for civil servants on the human rights act 1998 and equality act 2010, 53 alan renwick, “people want politicians to act with integrity, says citizens’ assembly” (ucl constitution unit) https://www.ucl.ac.uk/constitution-unit/news/2022/jan/people-want-politicians-actintegrity-says-citizens-assembly accessed 25th july 2022 52 finding that senior civil servants were making decisions otherwise than in accordance with these legislative instruments despite the existence of a well-known legal framework and adverse court judgements in which their departments had been unsuccessful defendants.54 throughout 2020, i convened a series of roundtables with senior politicians and civil servants to hear from them about how the law could have better protected those affected. the closed ‘windrush roundtables’ made clear that the complexity of the rules around immigration made it very difficult for those affected to understand their legal position; another area in which the government has not provided sufficient clarity as to citizens’ rights on the one hand, and has made those rights inscrutable on the other. in a literature review of ple evaluations the author and others found that high-quality interventions that combine case work principles with a ple approach can work well for claimants in the social care setting.55 the application of ple to real-life legal issues involving public authorities is somewhat underexplored, but if done successfully it could prove transformative in improving access to justice in the public law space and could encourage further engagement in developing a rule of law culture across england.56 54 wendy williams, “windrush lessons learned review” https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/87402 2/6.5577_ho_windrush_lessons_learned_review_web_v2.pdf accessed 25th july 2022 55 wintersteiger et al, “effectiveness of public legal education initiatives a literature review” (2021) https://legalservicesboard.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/ple-systematic-review-report-feb2021.pdf accessed 25th july 2022 56 unesco, “strengthening the rule of law through education: a guide for policymakers” (2018) https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000366771 accessed 25/7/2022 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/874022/6.5577_ho_windrush_lessons_learned_review_web_v2.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/874022/6.5577_ho_windrush_lessons_learned_review_web_v2.pdf https://legalservicesboard.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/ple-systematic-review-report-feb-2021.pdf https://legalservicesboard.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/ple-systematic-review-report-feb-2021.pdf https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000366771 53 conclusion english ple is at an early point in its implementation. there have been a number of highly promising governmental initiatives that have not received sufficient political will or resources in order to make legal capability stick. the information distributed to influence citizens during the referendum and public health campaigns (e.g. smoking and coronavirus) show that the government is capable of disseminating compelling messages; choices about resources prevent it from exercising that ability. this knowing choice to baulk at recent opportunities to accompany major moments of constitutional reform with ple is distressing. it is problematic because of the scale of proposed reform, which will likely take place without most citizens being aware of its stark consequences. although superficial, the author has observed clear cross-party popularity for ple initiatives. advocates of access to justice can and should continue to pursue increasing the legal aid budget in order to assist people with resolving disputes they cannot resolve themselves. however ple should always be on the table whenever we make any argument about legal aid funding due to its invigorating effect on the democracy as well as the role it serves in bridging warring political ideologies. our advocacy of ple should be passionate but not uncritical. there is a possibility that ple becomes a neo-liberal political vehicle for the laissez-faire state providing nothing. 54 this is an undercurrent i am aware of from my several years advising ministers in this area and such an ideology ought to be resisted; we call for increased support and expansion of ple to complement a fully functioning, properly funded legal system. 4 from the field: law-related education as a branch of civics education in the united states latia ward1 introduction law-related education is “education to equip nonlawyers with knowledge and skills pertaining to the law, the legal process and the legal system, and the fundamental principles and values on which these are based.”2 law-related education is a branch of civics education although there is overlap between law-related topics and civics topics because both areas include the study of the bill of rights, the study of the function of government institutions, and the study of one’s rights with respect to voting, jury duty, etc. often, the terms law-related education and civics education are used interchangeably. however, there is a trend for law-related education to be associated with violence prevention. in this article, i provide an overview of the origin of law-related education, a discussion of a law-related education program that i developed for k-123 students, my reflections on implementing the program, key resources that i found during 1 research librarian at the arthur j. morris law library of the university of virginia school of law. my twitter handle is @tia_ward17. 2 law-related education act of 1978, pub. l. no. 95-561, 92 stat. 2216 (1978) repealed by 20 u.s.c. § 3863(a)(1) (1982). https://perma.cc/g75r-afkd and https://perma.cc/8taq-m8r6 3 in the united states, k-12 refers to the education of students in grades kindergarten through twelve before these students enter higher education such as college or university. generally, elementary school consists of grades kindergarten through five, middle school consists of grades six through eight, and high school consists of grades nine through twelve. see also macmillan dictionary. (n.d.). k-12. https://perma.cc/5d7a-sv6s https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3a%2f%2ftwitter.com%2ftia_ward17&data=05%7c01%7csarah.morse%40northumbria.ac.uk%7c17723c2b97fe493333be08da64d5f194%7ce757cfdd1f354457af8f7c9c6b1437e3%7c0%7c0%7c637933167309496085%7cunknown%7ctwfpbgzsb3d8eyjwijoimc4wljawmdailcjqijoiv2lumziilcjbtii6ik1hawwilcjxvci6mn0%3d%7c3000%7c%7c%7c&sdata=iwtxmyj%2bcb2zwennle144iwuatc3fagrcypyenhxfiw%3d&reserved=0 5 my planning, an overview of state laws that address k-12 law-related and civics education requirements, an analysis of north carolina’s civics education requirement, and an overview of civics education programs outside the k-12 classroom. origin of law-related education the late isidore starr, social studies teacher and lawyer, is the father of law-related education in the united states.4 in the 1950s and 1960s, he prepared case studies of current u.s. supreme court cases for use in the classroom.5 while starr is one of the more well-known people in the field of law-related education, with an american bar association award being named in his honor,6 there are others who were instrumental in the beginnings of law-related education in the united states. through the work of minna post peyser, the national assembly on teaching the principles of the bill of rights became affiliated with columbia university and teachers college.7 the 1970s were a particularly innovative time for law-related education.8 in 1972, law students founded the street law program to teach high school students practical legal principles at georgetown university law center in washington, dc.9 in 1975, west 4 feinstein, s., & wood, r. (1995). history of law-related education at 10. (ed401163). eric. https://perma.cc/kcl2-8vfm 5 id. 6 american bar association division for public education. (n.d.). isidore starr award for excellence in lawrelated education. https://perma.cc/4sz2-47a9 7 feinstein & wood, supra note 3 at 12. 8 i have prepared a timeline of juvenile law and related topics at https://civicsguide.com/chronology/. 9 arbetman, l. (2018). street law, inc.: context, history and future. international journal of public legal education, 2(1), https://perma.cc/p8rh-2e4d 6 published the textbook, street law: a course in practical law for schools across the nation.10 in 1977, the american bar association published the first issue of update on law related education.11 in 1978, congress passed the law-related education act of 1978.12 practical life lessons law-related education programs continue to this day. as a member of the young lawyers division of the north carolina bar association, i was invited to speak to a group of high school students regarding the north carolina bar association publication entitled life & laws 101: citizenship rights and responsibilities over 18.13 i began thinking about how to present rights and responsibilities concepts to high schoolers and my interest in law-related education continued well after the presentation had concluded. i began saving news articles that dealt with issues of civics education.14 later, as part of my course work in the master of science in library science degree program at the university of north carolina at chapel hill, i designed and completed a service-learning project called 10 national street law institute & district of columbia project on community legal assistance. (1975). street law: a course in practical law. west. 11 the american bar association replaced update on law related education with insights on law and society in 2000. 12 law-related education act of 1978, pub. l. no. 95-561, 92 stat. 2216 (1978) repealed by 20 u.s.c. § 3863(a)(1) (1982). https://perma.cc/g75r-afkd and https://perma.cc/8taq-m8r6 13 north carolina bar association young lawyers division civic education outreach committee. (2015). life & laws 101: citizenship rights and responsibilities over 18. http://web.archive.org/web/20150923012636/http://www.ncbar.org/media/95451/life-and-laws-101.pdf 14 also, during this time, i read a book entitled no one will lissen by lois forer about forer’s work as an attorney for indigent youth in the late 1960s in philadelphia. while the book focused on access to justice for youth rather than law-related education, it was useful for the insights that forer provided about youth and the legal system. forer, l.g. (1971). “no one will lissen”: how our legal system brutalizes the youthful poor. grosset & dunlap. 7 practical life lessons15 at a high school in durham, north carolina. my service-learning project included teaching ninth and twelfth graders their rights and responsibilities and allowing time for questions and discussion. knowing that not all students would speak up during the class discussion, i used exit tickets (end-of-class surveys in which students may write responses to questions i have asked them or write down questions to ask me) to see how the students were apprehending the information presented. for the session entitled “how to be safe on social media,” i discussed a student who had many facebook friends. the student told her facebook friends about her father’s confidential settlement with his employer.16 at the end of the lesson, students wrote responses on exit tickets such as “everything you post is linked to some form of personal information,” and “i will change my facebook privacy settings.” for the lesson, “never leave your luggage alone at the airport,” i discussed indonesia’s death penalty for smuggling drugs, the indonesian government’s sentencing to death of people caught drug smuggling,17 and how one should be vigilant regarding one’s luggage at the airport. one student wrote in an exit ticket, “i learned how to be more cautious with my luggage.” the students were 15 ward, l. (2015). practical life lessons [powerpoint slides]. slideshare. https://www.slideshare.net/practicallifelessons 16 green, t. (2014, february 28). who is dana snay? college student’s facebook bragging costs father $80,000 lawsuit settlement. international business times. https://archive.ph/6q0ga 17 phipps, c. (2015, april 28). who were the eight people executed by indonesia? the guardian. https://perma.cc/9ppq-e5m6 8 interested in the topics presented and they were learning about their rights and responsibilities. reflections i have had opportunities to reflect on the law-related education program that i designed and implemented for high schoolers. the first opportunity came in 2015 when i spoke at the north carolina school library media association (ncslma) 2015 conference and discussed the program’s content.18 in spring 2016, i reflected on the program when i created a version of the program for middle school students. another opportunity to reflect came when i wrote five key points for developing an informative “know your rights” seminar which was published in the fall 2016 issue of the american bar association young lawyers division public education committee newsletter. 19 these opportunities to reflect have led me to the following conclusions about law-related education programs: 1. providing attendees with information they can review later, even if the information is only a link to a website is key. in 2015, i provided the link to my slides for practical life lessons to the students. 18 ward, l. (2015, october 24). a sea of information: navigating the waters of digital citizenship, rights, and responsibilities [conference session]. north carolina school library media association conference, winston-salem, nc, united states. 19 ward, l. (2016). five key points for developing an informative “know your rights” seminar. american bar association young lawyers division public education committee newsletter, 2(1). https://perma.cc/9sts2vtu 9 2. providing content that fits the format of the program and the interests of the attendees is important. i have led law-related education programs in 20-minute and one-hour timeframes. the time-allotted affects the breadth and depth of what i am able to cover. in 20 minutes, i am able to introduce a topic and save the remaining ten minutes for discussion. in one hour, i am able to provide more details about the topic and lead a lengthier group discussion. the topics i selected for the initial iteration were based on students’ interests and experience. i selected “how to be safe on social media” because many students have social media accounts. i selected “never leave your luggage alone at the airport” because the students attending the program were at a high school that sponsored travel programs. key resources in preparing for the law-related education programs that i implemented in spring 2015 and 2016, i came across many resources, however six stand out: • the original street law textbook entitled street law: a course in practical law, • breaking rank by norm stamper, • the privilege of silence by steven m. salky, • once upon a crime by wanda cassidy and ruth yates, 10 • law-related education as a delinquency prevention strategy: a three-year evaluation of the impact of lre on students, by grant johnson and robert hunter, and • the law-related education act of 1978. the original street law textbook was published by west publishing company in 197520 and is the work of former and current law students of georgetown university law center as well as attorneys. it covers practical topics in the field of law such as consumer law, housing law, and criminal law. the book has an outline format and hypothetical problems for class discussion. while i was lesson planning, the book served as a reminder that even from the early days of law-related education programs, law-related education was meant to be practical and applied to everyday life. breaking rank by norm stamper21 and the privilege of silence by steven m. salky22 provided useful information such as what happens when average citizens encounter the police and the origin of the miranda warnings as i was planning the right to remain silent activity23 in 2015. wanda cassidy and ruth yates’ book once upon a crime24 was notable because it supports the notion that 20 national street law institute & district of columbia project on community legal assistance, supra note 9. 21 stamper, n. (2006). breaking rank: a top cop’s exposé of the dark side of american policing. nation books. 22 salky, s.m., et al. (2014). the privilege of silence: fifth amendment protections against self-incrimination. american bar association. 23 ward, l. (2015). practical life lessons [powerpoint slides]. slideshare. https://www.slideshare.net/practicallifelessons 24 cassidy, w. & yates, r. (2005). once upon a crime: using stories, simulations, and mock trials to explore justice and citizenship in elementary school. detselig enterprises. 11 even younger youth can be introduced to concepts of rights and responsibilities. in once upon a crime, cassidy and yates provide guidelines and plans for implementing mock trials in kindergarten through fifth grade classrooms. grant johnson and robert hunter’s report entitled law-related education as a delinquency prevention strategy: a three-year evaluation of the impact of lre on students prompted me to think about the impact of law-related education on students beyond the classroom. the report is particularly useful for its enumeration and explanation of features necessary for an effective law-related education program. these recommendations include “that the system be depicted neither as infallible nor as a nightmare.”25 the discussion of negative realities of the legal system and how people can work within the legal system to advocate for their rights needs to be balanced. from the beginning, law-related education programs have embraced controversial topics,26 however, law-related education was not intended to be a depressing session where people share grievances or engage in neverending arguments. in the law-related education program that i led in 2015, i spoke of practices students could implement in their daily lives such as not putting one’s or one’s parents’ daily schedule information on social media (and why). 25 johnson, g. & hunter, r. (1985). law-related education as a delinquency prevention strategy: a three-year evaluation of the impact of lre on students (adapted from law-related education project final report, phase ii, year 3) (publication number 99991). national criminal justice reference service. https://perma.cc/9zyaezqa 26 feinstein & wood, supra note 3. 12 the law-related education act of 1978 was part of a larger education amendments act, however, sections 346, 347, and 348 dealt specifically with law-related education. in section 346, congress stated that it had found that there was a “widespread lack of understanding of how our system of law and legal institutions work.” furthermore, “such an understanding is essential” for youth to become knowledgeable and responsible citizens and “there is an urgent need for federal involvement” to develop law-related education programs.27 section 347 included the definition of law-related education that i stated above and empowered a commissioner to carry out a program of grants so that local actors could implement law-related education programs at the local level. these programs would be for youth and adults, in community organizations, as well as schools and universities.28 section 348 authorized $15 million to implement the provisions of the act.29 accounting for inflation, the amount would be approximately $62 million in 2021.30 the law was repealed in 1982.31 27 law-related education act of 1978, pub. l. no. 95-561, 92 stat. 2216 (1978) repealed by 20 u.s.c. § 3863(a)(1) (1982). https://perma.cc/g75r-afkd and https://perma.cc/8taq-m8r6 28 id. 29 id. 30 united states bureau of labor statistics. (n.d.). cpi inflation calculator. https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm 31 law-related education act of 1978, pub. l. no. 95-561, 92 stat. 2216 (1978) repealed by 20 u.s.c. § 3863(a)(1) (1982). https://perma.cc/g75r-afkd and https://perma.cc/8taq-m8r6 13 state laws that address k-12 law-related education focus on violence prevention state statutes that address law-related education programs in the k-12 context focus on violence prevention as the goal and not necessarily the goal of educating students to learn the day-to-day rights and responsibilities of citizens. in alabama, law-related education is "[e]ducation which provides children and youth with the knowledge and skills pertaining to the law, the legal process, school safety, and citizenship responsibilities to promote law-abiding behavior with the purpose to prevent children and youth from engaging in delinquency or violence and enable them to become productive citizens."32 in arizona, schools may apply for funding to offset the costs of placing school resource officers, juvenile probation officers, school counselors and school social workers at the school. 33 schools that apply for the school safety program must have “[a] plan for implementing a law-related education program or a plan that demonstrates the existence of a law-related education program as a school safety prevention strategy.”34 in addition, the governing board of schools may “[e] nter into an intergovernmental agreement with a presiding judge of the juvenile court to implement a law-related education program as defined in section 15-154.”35 the colorado revised statutes mention “rights and 32 ala. code 1975 § 16-1-24.2(a)(2). http://alisondb.legislature.state.al.us/alison/codeofalabama/1975/coatoc.htm 33 ariz. rev. stat. § 15-154(a) and (b)(2) (2021). https://perma.cc/8jr8-n9z7 34 id. 35 ariz. rev. stat. § 15-342(34) (2021). https://perma.cc/fuw8-alcv 14 responsibilities of citizenship” as a topic within law-related education programs,36 however, these law-related education programs are not mandated but “strongly encourage[d]”37 and their goal is to promote “behavior which will reduce through education the incidence of gang or other antisocial behavior and substance abuse by students in the public school system.”38 in addition, entities such as schools that seek funding for comprehensive health education programs must “include provisions for the implementation of a law-related education program for the purpose of reducing the incidence of gang involvement and substance abuse by students through education" in their applications.39 iowa requires its department of education to “develop a statewide violence prevention program based on law-related education.”40 effective july 1, 2022, new mexico will require school resource officers to receive training in “a variety of instructional techniques as well as classroom management tools to provide law-related education to students.”41 in ohio, a certified training program for school resource officers must include “providing assistance on topics such as classroom management tools to provide law-related education to students and methods for managing the behaviors sometimes associated with educating children with special needs."42 new jersey requires 36 colo. rev. stat. ann. § 22-25-104.5(2)(b)(i) (2022). (lexis advance). 37 colo. rev. stat. ann. § 22-25-104.5(1)(b) (2022). (lexis advance). 38 colo. rev. stat. ann. § 22-25-104.5(1)(a) (2022). (lexis advance). 39 colo. rev. stat. ann. § 22-25-105 (2022). (lexis advance). 40 iowa code § 280.9b (2022). https://perma.cc/ey7z-duab 41 n.m. stat. ann. § 29-7-14(b)(4) (2021). https://nmonesource.com/nmos/nmsa/en/nav_date.do 42 ohio rev. code ann. § 3313.951(b)(3)(e)(20). https://perma.cc/6e8n-35c7 https://advance.lexis.com/api/document/collection/statutes-legislation/id/61p5-wtj1-dydc-j2tb-00008-00?cite=c.r.s.%2022-25-104.5&context=1000516 https://advance.lexis.com/api/document/collection/statutes-legislation/id/61p5-wtj1-dydc-j2tb-00008-00?cite=c.r.s.%2022-25-104.5&context=1000516 https://advance.lexis.com/api/document/collection/statutes-legislation/id/61p5-wtj1-dydc-j2tb-00008-00?cite=c.r.s.%2022-25-104.5&context=1000516 https://advance.lexis.com/api/document/collection/statutes-legislation/id/61p5-wtj1-dydc-j2tc-00008-00?cite=c.r.s.%2022-25-105&context=1000516 15 its police training commission to develop a training course for safe school resource officers and public school employees who are liaisons to law enforcement.43 in the legislative findings for the law, the new jersey session laws note that “most safe schools resource officers perform many roles, including law enforcement officer, law-related counselor and law-related education teacher.”44 throughout the aforementioned statutes, law-related education is associated with preventing violence in school and the work of school resource officers. colorado,45 washington,46 and wyoming47permit participation in a law-related education program as a sentencing option for youth in youth courts. associating law-related education only with policing and violence-prevention is problematic when there is controversy over whether police should work in schools at all. schools in columbus, ohio removed school resource officers in response to student protests against a police presence in the schools.48 schools in madison, wisconsin removed school resource officers to adopt 43 n.j. stat. § 52:17b-71.8. https://lis.njleg.state.nj.us/nxt/gateway.dll?f=templates&fn=default.htm&vid=publish:10.1048/enu 44 2005 n.j. laws chapter 276. https://perma.cc/29a8-t5xm 45 colo. rev. stat. ann. § 19-2.5-1004 (2022) (lexis advance). 46 participation in law-related education is a youth court disposition. wash. rev. code § 13.40.630(1)(a). https://perma.cc/ge95-dh42 participation in law-related education may be part of a youth court agreement. wash. rev. code § 3.72.020(2)(e). https://perma.cc/e75r-8636 47 wyo. stat. ann. § 7-13-1204(a)(viii)(b) (2021) (lexis advance). 48 schwartz, s., sawchuk, s., pendharker, e. & najarro, i. (2021, june 4). these districts defunded their school police. what happened next? educationweek. https://perma.cc/5zn5-zgbh https://advance.lexis.com/api/document/collection/statutes-legislation/id/62rw-71t3-ch1b-t4yc-00008-00?cite=c.r.s.%2019-2.5-1004&context=1000516 https://advance.lexis.com/api/document/collection/statutes-legislation/id/56vf-h861-73wf-607x-00008-00?cite=wyo.%20stat.%20%c2%a7%207-13-1204&context=1000516 16 a restorative justice approach and schools in oakland, california removed school resource officers to fulfill a request from the community.49 the origin of law-related education includes instruction on rights, responsibilities, government institutions, and current court cases of interest as topics to be taught during civics lessons in the classroom, therefore, mentions of law-related education in state law should not be confined to the context of violence-prevention and sentences in youth court. those involved with law-related education programs should advise state legislatures that law-related education is part of civics education and not primarily a sentencing option in youth court or a subject for police officers who work in schools. legislation that addresses civics education in the k-12 context throughout the united states law-related education is a branch of civics and as such may be taught in schools even though the terminology “law-related education” is not used. states that do not mention civics education in their laws as well as states that do mention civics education in their laws may require civics education through curricula approved by their departments of education and therefore, civics may still be taught in their schools.50 my research has 49 id. 50 the report strengthening democracy with a modern civics education focuses on civics education requirements set by local departments of education and lists all civics education requirements from local departments of education for k-12 curricula for all 50 states and the district of columbia. jeffrey, a. & sargrad, s. (2019). strengthening democracy with a modern civics education. center for american progress. https://perma.cc/z7vt-p9fw 17 yielded 28 states that address k-12 civics education in their statutes. alabama requires students to pass a course in government which includes a civics test.51 arizona provides for the recognition of k-12 students who excel in civics through a state seal of civics literacy program.52 arkansas’ requirements for social studies courses include civics. 53 colorado requires the teaching of history and civil government in schools and requires that the civics portion of social studies complies with the subjects outlined in the law.54 in connecticut, students are required to take a half-credit course on civics and american government to receive a high school diploma and the civics education requirement continues for classes graduating in 2023 and later.55 in florida, of the three social studies credits required to receive a high school diploma, a half-credit must be in government.56 idaho requires civics education or “instruction in citizenship” in all elementary and secondary schools and secondary students must pass a civics test and take a course in united states government.57 indiana requires that instruction in the constitutions of indiana and the united states must be included as part of a civics course.58 kansas requires instruction in civil government and united states history as well as passing a 51 ala. code 1975 § 16-40-10. https://perma.cc/ux52-ejpd 52 ariz. rev. stat. § 15-259 (2021). https://perma.cc/gcr4-hnzm 53 ark. code ann. § 6-16-148 (2022) (lexis advance). 54 colo. rev. stat. ann. § 22-1-104(1)(b) and (c) (lexis advance). 55 conn. gen. stat. § 10-221a(b) and (c). https://perma.cc/7cj6-j99g 56 fla. stat. § 1003.4282(d) (2021). https://perma.cc/pb4l-9aw5 57 idaho code § 33-1602(6) and (7). https://perma.cc/bb8c-qv76 58 ind. code § 20-30-5-1(b) (2021). http://iga.in.gov/legislative/laws/2021/ic/titles/001 https://advance.lexis.com/container?config=00jaa3ztu0ntizyy0zzdeyltrhymqtymrmms1imwixndgxywmxztqkafbvzenhdgfsb2cubrw4iftiwi5vlw6ci1ux&crid=805d4b59-b7bd-4fe6-aa23-71fe568e3f28 https://advance.lexis.com/container?config=0345494ejaa5zje0mdiyyy1knzzkltrknzktytkxms04ymjhnjblnwuwyzykafbvzenhdgfsb2e4capi4cak6laxlcwylbo9&crid=6e771603-baff-4610-8e85-4c81c78b1b31 18 course in united states government to graduate from high school.59 louisiana requires all public high schools to provide instruction in civics. 60 maine requires students to receive instruction in civics to receive a high school diploma.61 massachusetts requires all public schools to teach civics. 62 michigan requires students to take a civics course to receive a high school diploma.63 the civics course “shall include the form and functions of the federal, state, and local governments and shall stress the rights and responsibilities of citizens.”64 minnesota has set academic standards and civics are part of these standards.65 missouri requires students to take courses on the constitutions of the united states and missouri, american history, institutions, and civics, and to pass a test on the aforementioned subjects to receive a certificate of graduation.66 montana aims for students to “develop a sense of personal and civic responsibility” and for schools to “provide an in-depth understanding of the american political, social, and economic systems and the historical context from which they arose” as two of its goals for public elementary and secondary schools.67 nebraska requires each school board to form a committee on american civics which must ensure that the social studies curriculum is 59 kan. stat. ann. § 72-3217 (2020). https://perma.cc/nfx9-beag 60 la. rev. stat. § 274.1 (2021). https://perma.cc/6xej-rkcf 61 me. rev. stat. ann. tit. 20, § 4722(2)(b) (2021). https://perma.cc/3qdb-njle 62 massachusetts mass. gen. laws ch. 71, § 2 (2022). https://perma.cc/lm38-bprw 63 mich. comp. laws § 380.1278a(1)(a)(i) (2021). https://perma.cc/t9bw-b3bw 64 mich. comp. laws § 380.1166 (2021). https://perma.cc/m4lq-alag 65 minn. stat. ann. § 120b.021(4) (2020). https://perma.cc/7l8j-gzkh 66 mo. rev. stat. § 170.011(3) (2021). https://perma.cc/3hu2-g67r 67 mont. code ann. § 20-1-102(4) and (5) (2021). https://perma.cc/l6xg-u3k9 19 aligned with standards adopted by the state board of education and “teaches foundational knowledge in civics.”68 new hampshire requires students to take a halfcredit civics course to graduate from high school. 69 new mexico provides for civic engagement experiences for its students. a “civic engagement experience” is one of three options that students may select to complete for “college, career and civic readiness.”70 new york requires public day schools to teach civics. 71 north carolina requires students to pass the course “founding principles of the united states of america and north carolina: civic literacy” to graduate from high school.72 north dakota requires students to take one unit of social studies which may include civics to graduate from high school. 73 oklahoma requires students to take three units of history and citizenship skills to graduate from high school.74 oregon requires public schools to teach students civics. 75 rhode island requires middle and high school students to demonstrate proficiency in civics education.76 the tennessee state board of education must include civics in the social studies standards and “an understanding of how laws are enacted, and ways citizens shape and influence government and governmental actions.”77 utah has 68 neb. rev. stat. ann. § 79-724(1)(c). https://perma.cc/7jkz-vx7r 69 n.h. rev. stat. ann. § 189:11. https://perma.cc/963n-97v6 70 n.m. stat. ann. § 22-2f-2(c) (2022). https://nmonesource.com/nmos/nmsa/en/nav_date.do 71 n.y. educ. law § 3204 (2022). https://perma.cc/tfa6-7yjn 72 n.c. gen. stat. § 115c-81.45(d)(applicable to students entering the ninth grade in the 2021-2022 school year)(1). https://perma.cc/a3xg-ezjm 73 n.d. cent. code § 15.1-21-02.2(1)(d)(3) (effective through july 31, 2025). https://perma.cc/w9dt-5gpt 74 okla. stat. tit. 70 § 11-103.6(b)(4). http://www.oklegislature.gov/osstatuestitle.aspx 75 or. rev. stat. ann. § 329.025(8) (2019). https://perma.cc/w4nv-nm5b 76 r.i. gen. laws ann. § 16-22-2. https://perma.cc/3abc-uxg9 77 tenn. code ann. § 49-6-1028(b)(1) (2021) (lexis advance). https://advance.lexis.com/api/document/collection/statutes-legislation/id/50jb-s440-r03m-50fn-00008-00?cite=tenn.%20code%20ann.%20%c2%a7%2049-6-1028&context=1000516 20 implemented a pilot program in which the state board will assess whether it will require students to complete a civics engagement project to receive a high school diploma. 78 wyoming includes civics in the definition of a “basic academic educational program.”79 alaska,80 illinois,81 and vermont82 are states that have bills addressing civics education pending before their legislatures. the alaska state legislature’s s.b. 72 requires the board “to develop and periodically review a statewide civics education curriculum that is based on the civics portion of the naturalization examination used by the united states citizenship and immigration services of the department of homeland security and primary source documents. the curriculum must also include systems of government used by alaska natives.”83 the illinois general assembly’s s.b. 1830 requires two years of social studies and one of these semesters must be civics. 84 the vermont general assembly’s s. 17 requires students to take and pass a course in united states civics to receive a high school diploma.85 78 utah code § 53g-10-204(6)(a). https://perma.cc/kq7j-r984 79 wyo. stat. § 21-4-101(a)(6) (2021) (lexis advance). 80 s.b. 72, 32d leg., (alaska 2021). https://perma.cc/c6gb-k4yl and https://perma.cc/kml2-5eys 81 s.b. 1830, 102d gen. assemb., (ill. 2021). https://perma.cc/rb7u-b49r 82 s. 17, 2021 gen. assemb., (vt. 2021). https://perma.cc/r35w-2zqc and https://perma.cc/6ltj-uqnd 83 s.b. 72, 32d leg., (alaska 2021). https://perma.cc/c6gb-k4yl and https://perma.cc/kml2-5eys 84 s.b. 1830, 102d gen. assemb., (ill. 2021). https://perma.cc/rb7u-b49r 85 s. 17, 2021 gen. assemb., (vt. 2021). https://perma.cc/r35w-2zqc and https://perma.cc/6ltj-uqnd https://advance.lexis.com/document?crid=9873864d-cf51-4154-8259-08ab7adf1f1f&pddocfullpath=%2fshared%2fdocument%2fstatutes-legislation%2furn%3acontentitem%3a56vf-gxy1-73wf-654j-00008-00&pdsourcegroupingtype=&pdcontentcomponentid=234174&pdmfid=1000516&pdisurlapi=true 21 the united states citizenship and immigration services civics test has a role in the assessment of student learning. alabama,86 arkansas,87 kentucky,88 minnesota, 89 montana,90 nevada,91 tennessee,92 texas,93 and wisconsin require students to pass an examination that contains questions from that test.94 in addition, the michigan legislature has required the michigan state board of education to “revise the state curriculum content standards for high school social studies to ensure that those content standards cover the same content as covered by the 100 questions on the civics portion of the naturalization test used by the united states citizenship and immigration services as of december 1, 2016.”95 in, minnesota, an examination in civics must include questions from the united states citizenship and immigration services civics test, however a school district may not prevent a student from graduating for failing to provide accurate answers these questions.96 missouri requires that students pass a test that includes questions similar to those on the united states citizenship and immigration services 86 alabama requires students to pass a course in government which includes a test with questions from the united states citizenship and immigration services civics test. ala. code 1975 § 16-40-10(a). https://perma.cc/u3ek-cd9q 87 ark. code ann. § 6-16-149 (2022) (lexis advance). 88 ky. rev. stat. ann. § 158.141. https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/lrcsearch 89 minn. stat. § 120b.02 https://perma.cc/ke8l-5m5e 90 mont. code ann. § 20-7-119 (2021). https://perma.cc/5pxd-utrn 91 nev. rev. stat. § 389.009. https://perma.cc/s83s-26x5 92 tenn. code ann. § 49-6-408 (2021) (lexis advance). 93 texas requires students to pass a course in united states history which includes questions from the united states citizenship and immigration services civics test. tex. educ. code ann. § 39.023(c-9). https://perma.cc/h8j7-hjps 94 wis. stat. § 118.33(1m)(a)1 (2021). https://perma.cc/gvw4-dqfq 95 mich. comp. laws § 380.1166 (2021). https://perma.cc/m4lq-alag 96 minn. stat. ann. § 120b.02, subdivision 3 (2020). https://perma.cc/d6x4-2rdv https://advance.lexis.com/api/document/collection/statutes-legislation/id/62w2-rfg0-r03n-82sg-00008-00?cite=a.c.a.%20%c2%a7%206-16-149&context=1000516 https://advance.lexis.com/api/document/collection/statutes-legislation/id/4x55-gpr0-r03k-w4g4-00008-00?cite=tenn.%20code%20ann.%20%c2%a7%2049-6-408&context=1000516 22 civics test.97 south carolina requires students to take a test with questions from the united states citizenship and immigration services civics test, however, students are not required to pass the test.98 utah requires students to pass a “basic civics test” to receive a high school diploma.99 civics education and “the founding principles” – north carolina and other states north carolina general statutes 115c-81.45 addresses civics education. 100 in 2011, the north carolina general assembly adopted a version of the “founding principles act,”101 a model statute developed by the american legislative exchange council (alec).102 alec describes itself as “america’s largest nonpartisan, voluntary membership organization of state legislators dedicated to the principles of limited government, free markets and federalism.”103 north carolina’s founding principles act took effect with the 2014-2015 school year.104 the language of the statute may appear neutral, however, the center for media and democracy, a self-described "nationally recognized 97 mo. rev. stat. § 170.345(2) and (3) (2021). https://perma.cc/gfv6-2b45 98 s.c. code ann. § 59-29-240. https://perma.cc/t9wc-79ht 99 utah code ann. § 53e-4-205 (2021). https://perma.cc/75kw-dmjl 100 n.c. gen. stat. § 115c-81.45(d)(applicable to students entering the ninth grade in the 2021-2022 school year)(1). https://perma.cc/a3xg-ezjm 101 h.r. 588, sess. 2011 gen. assemb., n.c. sess. laws. https://perma.cc/x8mh-qyws 102ladner, d. & myslinski, d.j. (2014). report card on american education: ranking state k-12 performance, progress and reform at 113. american legislative exchange council. https://perma.cc/sq5h-3jw6 and american legislative exchange council. (2013). founding principles act. https://web.archive.org/web/20130501114024/http://www.alec.org/model-legislation/founding-principlesact/ 103 american legislative exchange council. (n.d.). about alec. https://perma.cc/nt7t-67vd 104 h.r. 588, sess. 2011 gen. assemb., n.c. sess. laws. https://perma.cc/x8mh-qyws 23 watchdog,"105 noted that the act could lead to teaching students that the president of the united states has "king-like" powers106 and that the north carolina department of public instruction recommended that the curriculum for the act come from the bill of rights institute, an organization with ties to the politically conservative koch brothers.107 these concerns that the center for media and democracy has raised may cause one to question whether students will get an unbiased view of civics if they are taught in alignment with the “founding principles act.” a recent search within alec’s website did not yield the model legislation labelled “founding principles act,”108 however, the website now contains a “civic literacy act” which has as its stated purpose “[t]o require during the high school years the teaching of the nation’s founding and related documents, which shall include the declaration of independence, the united states constitution and the 105 the center for media and democracy’s prwatch. (n.d.). what we do. https://perma.cc/6zbl-kq7n 106 "this model legislation would require the teaching of a semester-long course on the "philosophical understandings" of america's founders, as incorporated in the declaration of independence, the united states constitution, and the federalist papers. there are, in fact, many scholarly differences of opinion about what weight to accord writings of individuals involved in the drafting and ratification of the constitution. for example, a controversial bush administration attorney embraced what he called a "hamiltonian" view of virtually unlimited presidential power as a rationale for presidential violation of laws barring torture and warrantless wiretapping. however, hamilton's views of king-like presidential power were not shared by other leading founding fathers or by the citizens in the states that ratified the constitution and who insisted upon the addition of an explicit bill of rights to guard against claims of virtually unlimited governmental power to search and seize people and compel them to be witnesses against themselves." the center for media and democracy. alec exposed. (2017). founding principles act exposed. https://perma.cc/6zqd-2ptz 107 the center for media and democracy. sourcewatch. (2021). bill of rights institute. https://perma.cc/2lzw-v9ee 108 american legislative exchange council. (2013). founding principles act. https://web.archive.org/web/20130501114024/http://www.alec.org/model-legislation/founding-principlesact/ 24 federalist papers.”109 it appears that alec has replaced the “founding principles act” with the “civic literacy act.” other states mention the “founding principles” in their statutes as well. georgia,110 louisiana,111 north carolina,112 and south carolina113 have statutes which mention the “founding philosophy” or “founding principles” of the united states and address “federalism” or the “federalist papers” in the context of k-12 education. georgia’s statute mentions “limited government”114 and the utah code annotated mentions “founding principles” however, it does not include language regarding federalism and limited government. 115 texas has a founding principles act pending before its legislature.116 if passed, the bill would require “an elective course on the founding principles of the united states” in high school curricula.117 civics education programs outside the k-12 classroom civics education mandates aside, across the united states, librarians and others offer civics education programs to high school students outside the k-12 classroom, yet the 109 american legislative exchange council. (n.d.). civic literacy act. https://perma.cc/f56u-vesa 110 ga. code ann. § 20-2-142.1 (2022). (lexis advance). 111 la. rev. stat. § 265 (2021). https://perma.cc/7gct-dl24 112 n.c. gen. stat. § 115c-81.45(d)(applicable to students entering the ninth grade in the 2021-2022 school year)(1). https://perma.cc/a3xg-ezjm 113 s.c. code ann. § 59-29-155. https://perma.cc/byt9-b76s 114 ga. code ann. § 20-2-142.1(c)(1)(b) (2022). (lexis advance). 115 utah code § 53g-10-204(5)(b). https://perma.cc/h8zm-u25k 116 s.b. 1776. 87th leg., regul. sess. (tex. 2021). https://perma.cc/ls4u-rl2w 117 s.b. 1776. 87th leg., regul. sess. (tex. 2021). https://perma.cc/5a6y-72wp https://advance.lexis.com/api/document/collection/statutes-legislation/id/6348-fw31-dyb7-w0n3-00008-00?cite=o.c.g.a.%20%c2%a7%2020-2-142.1&context=1000516 https://advance.lexis.com/api/document/collection/statutes-legislation/id/6348-fw31-dyb7-w0n3-00008-00?cite=o.c.g.a.%20%c2%a7%2020-2-142.1&context=1000516 25 information shared in these programs is valuable. these programs may focus on knowing one’s rights or general information about the legal system in the united states. a know your rights workshop for teens sponsored by aclu of massachusetts and the boston public library118 and the teen workshop (ages 13-17): know your rights sponsored by the glendale human relations coalition and glendale police department of california119 are two examples of such programs. the 2018 cornell law institute for high school students at cornell law school had a civics or law-related education component through the discussion of the fourth amendment to the united states constitution. the 2018 cornell law institute for high school students was an outreach program sponsored by the cornell law library and did not provide academic credit for the attendees. the overall goal of the law institute was to introduce high school students to legal concepts and legal careers. during the law institute, i led a write-around activity120 regarding the fourth amendment. before the write-around activity, i discussed definitions of legal terms such as warrant and probable cause and then gave the students a short news article to read 118 boston public library. (2020). know your rights workshop for teens. https://perma.cc/zkr8-4n6n 119 city of glendale. (2019). teen workshop (ages 13-17): know your rights. https://perma.cc/p8m2-frfq 120 the write-around activity allows students time to think about answers to a question and make connections between concepts before engaging in a large group discussion. there are many variations of write-arounds (which are discussed in the book entitled the best-kept teaching secret: how written conversations engage kids, activate learning, and grow fluent writers, k-12. daniels, h. & daniels, e. (2013). the best-kept teaching secret: how written conversations engage kids, activate learning, and grow fluent writers, k-12. corwin. 26 regarding the circuit split121 and a summary of relevant case law. for the write-around activity, students were in small groups of between three and five. i directed them to write their answers to the prompts on the same large paper (each group had its own large piece of paper). i instructed the students not to speak to one another for the 15 minutes of writing. next, in their small groups, students discussed what they had written. after the small-group discussions, i facilitated a large group discussion based on what the students had written. the writing prompts consisted of the following questions: 1. what do you know about probable cause so far?, 2. what does the article about car searches based on marijuana smoke remind you of in things you have seen on social media or tv?, and 3. what do you think will happen next? do you think the u.s. supreme court will resolve the circuit split? why or why not?122 the writing portion of the activity gave the students time to think before sharing their ideas with the class. i ended the lesson with a reflection activity during which we discussed the question: "if you were going to explain today's write-around activity to someone who's not in our class, what would you say?"123 the main goal of the activity 121 "when two or more circuits in the united states court of appeals reach opposite interpretations of federal law. this is sometimes a reason for the supreme court to grant certiorari." wex. (n.d.). circuit split. https://perma.cc/693c-wc7q 122 ward, l. (2018, june 28). where there’s smoke…a write-around activity regarding the circuit split over marijuana-based car searches [conference session]. 2018 cornell law institute for high school students, ithaca, ny, united states. 123 id. 27 was to prompt students to think about why different courts have different rationales when making decisions about similar sets of facts. conclusion from the inception of law-related education, organizers of law-related education programs have endeavored to make the programs practical by covering topics that the students would need to know in daily life. although the federal law-related education act was repealed in 1982, states continue to address k-12 civics education in their statutes. recently, state legislatures that have used the term “law-related education” in the k-12 context have focused on law-related education for violence prevention and within the context of youth courts. law-related education is about knowing one’s rights and responsibilities as a citizen even in situations where one has not been accused of breaking the law and there needs to be a concerted effort to bring the essence of lawrelated education within the purview of state legislatures. additional programs aimed toward teenagers that are organized outside the k-12 school context such as “know your rights workshops” and other programs, for example the cornell law institute for high school students, are also valuable in educating youth regarding civics and law-related education. law-related education is more than violence prevention. it is a branch of civics that is a necessary part of k-12 education. 55 the power of teaching police through the prism of human rights1 sean molloy2 abstract as part of their training in england and wales, police recruits are required to engage with a complex mix of law, often with no prior background in legal education. in addition, they must learn, understand, and apply the content of a highly descriptive national police curriculum (npc). the combination of these tasks, amongst other things, can limit the extent to which police training can cultivate critical thinking, a central objective of efforts to professionalise the police in recent times. in this article and based on the author’s experience of teaching law to police recruits, the challenges of the current approach to police training are explored through freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed and what he terms the banking model of education. after drawing connections between this model and the current approach to police training, a human rights-based approach to police teaching is offered as an example of freire’s preferred problemsolving method. central to this model is utilising the views of recruits regarding the role of the police in balancing rights to help understand the law as it exists. keywords: police pedagogy; pedagogy of the oppressed; college of policing; police education qualification framework; stop and search; human rights introduction 1 the author wishes to think professor colin murray, professor chris ashford, dr conall mallory, and dr helene tyrell for comments on earlier drafts. any errors that remain are my sole responsibility. 2 sean molloy is a nuact fellow in law and newcastle law school, newcastle university. 56 the training and education of police recruits in england and wales was historically ‘provided through a patchwork of local provision, known as the initial police learning and development programme.’3 in 2011, the home secretary commissioned peter neyroud, then chief executive of the national policing improvement agency, to undertake a review of police leadership and training. during a subsequent home affairs committee review, neyroud stated the ‘…police service needs to move from being a service that acts professionally to becoming a professional service.’4 based on his review, he outlined the principles of policing in the 21st century as ensuring the police are democratically accountable, legitimate, evidence-based, nationally (and internationally) coherent, capable, competent, and cost-effective.5 in 2016 and in response, the uk college of policing (cop)the professional body that oversees the police in england and walespublished the police education qualification framework (peqf), which provides a framework for degree-level entry qualifications and sets out three entry routes for new probationer constables:6 3 mike hough and elizabeth a. stanko ‘designing degree-level courses for police recruits in england and wales: some issues and challenges’ [2005] policing, 14(1): 31–42. for history see m mahruf c shohel and others, ‘police education in the united kingdom: challenges and future directions.’ in: nugmanova, m., mikkola, h., rozanov, a., and komleva, v. (eds) education, human rights and peace in sustainable development. intech open, 2020. 4 peter neyroud, review of police leadership and training (2011). london: home office, at 129. 5 ibid. 6 see pauline ramshaw and sarah soppitt, ‘educating the recruited and recruiting the educated: can the new police education qualifications framework in england and wales succeed where others have faltered.’ [2018] police science & management, 20(4): 243–250; jyoti belur and others, ‘a systematic review of police recruit training programmes’ [2019] policing 14(1): 76–90. 57 1. the police constable degree apprenticeship, introduced from 2018, involving 3 years of work-based learning from operational work combined with degree level study; 2. the pre-join degree in professional policing, introduced from 2020, where prospective recruits acquire their degree in policing in advance of recruitment; 3. the degree holder entry programme (dhep), introduced from 2020, where prospective recruits ‘convert’ an existing degree level qualification into a policing degree. the policing vision 2025 defines the overall strategic purpose of the peqf as providing an improved service for the public.7 this is namely, the ‘translation and application of the knowledge, skills, capabilities and approaches covered by the new educational approach into effective professional performance will play an important part in delivering what policing vision 2025 identifies as ‘a more sophisticated response to the challenges we face now and, in the future.’8 central to the professionalisation of the police and the peqf are two aspects: collaborative teaching partnerships between the police and universities and developing critical thinking. 7 katie strudwick ‘learning through practice: collaborative policing partnerships in teaching in higher education’ [2021] the police journal: theory, practice and principles, 94(1) 58–74; colin rogers and james gravelle, ‘implementing a police foundation degree – insights from south wales’[2019] policing: a journal of policy and practice, 1–13 8 college of policing. policing education qualifications framework, initial entry routes into policing: police constable. a strategic overview [2018] at 13 cited in belur and others (n. 4) at 77. 58 when the peqf was introduced, one of the underlying drivers for the reform of the police entry routes was to increase the professionalization of the police service in england and wales.9 a central component of this professionalization drive was and remains to harness and nurture the capacity for police officers to think independently and critically. the salience attached to critical thinking is directly connected to the new approach of collaborative teaching and, in particular, the inclusion of universities in the delivery of police training. as mccanney, taylor and bates note, ‘[i]t is claimed that graduate entry will ensure that recruits possess critical thinking skills enabling them to make autonomous decisions by assessing and balancing complex risks.10 a move intended to elevate policing to a profession.’11 this reflects the view that a degree of ‘graduateness’ of the university experience empowers police constables with the critical thinking that higher-level education helps cultivate.12 in their study, mccanney, taylor and bates set out to determine whether opportunities existed for graduate officers to find the ‘discretionary space’ to employ skills associated with university study.13 surveying 234 police constables, their analysis revealed that officers faced barriers to decision-making from bureaucratic and managerial 9 cheryl simmill-binning and jude towers, education, training and learning in policing in england and wales’ [2017] n8 policing research partnership. lancaster: lancaster university. 10 john mccanney, julie taylor and elizabeth bates, elizabeth ‘is there ‘discretionary space’ in rank-based police constabularies for graduate constables to think critically and make autonomous decisions?’ [2021] the police journal: theory, practice and principles 1–18, at 2. 11 ibid. 12 almuth mcdowall and jennifer brown, ‘do good cops need a degree? introduction to the special issue on developing and evaluating graduate policing training’ [2020] policing: a journal of policy and practice 14(1): 1–8; jennifer brown, ‘do graduate police officers make a difference to policing? results of an integrative literature review. [2018] policing 14(1):9-30. it should be noted that whether university degrees do in fact harness critical thinking skills is contested. see, for example, brett a. brosseit ,‘charting the course: an empirically based theory of the development of critical thinking in law students’ [2016] albany law journal of science & technology 26(2): 143-171 13 see mccanney and others (n. 8) 59 procedures. the conclusion reached was that police organisations may need to make changes structurally and procedurally to benefit from a graduate workforce. yet, in seeking to identify this ‘discretionary space’, the authors assume that critical faculties have been developed, the central issue now becoming whether space is afforded to put these skills into practice.14 the extent to which the objectives of developing critical thinkers can be achieved through the peqf is, however, contested. lambert, for instance, has been critical of the apprentice degrees in general in that only a minimum 900 hours of learning is required compared to 3,600 hours of a full degree leading to ‘misleading’ claims for the student’s achievements.15 others assess that there is an urgent need for a proper theory of change and the design of logic models to guide the design and implementation of the three training routes under the peqf.16 some are more reserved in their assessment. turner notes that ‘education within a university setting could … provide a balanced approach to student learning and development, which would be presented by both police practitioners as educators and academics.’17 the remainder of this article draws on the author’s experience teaching police recruits across all three entry-level routes. this article focuses particularly on the challenges associated with teaching police recruits about their powers under public law in england and wales before proposing an alternative pedagogical approach, one that 14 simon holdaway, ‘the re-professionalization of the police in england and wales’ [2017] criminology & criminal justice 17(5): 1–17 15 steve lambert ‘are current accountability frameworks appropriate for degree apprenticeships?’ [2016] higher education, skills and work-based learning 6(4): 345–356. 16 turner (n. 13) 17 allison turner, ‘police education and role play: insights from the literature’ [2021] the police journal: theory, practice and principles, vol. 0(0): 1–26. 60 combines a focus on human rights with a wider objective of promoting more engaged and critical thinking on the part of police recruits. from banking models to problem solving models of education freire’s: pedagogy of the oppressed the starting point for this article is a degree of skepticism surrounding the potential for the peqf to harness critical thinking. based on experience delivering teaching to police recruits, a useful way to think about and conceptualise the challenges faced is offered through the banking approach to education as articulated by paulo freire. freire was a brazilian educator and philosopher who was a leading advocate of critical pedagogy. his approach to pedagogy emerged from his observations and experiences working as an instructor in literacy programs with peasant labourers in brazil. in his classic textthe pedagogy of the oppressedhe critiqued what he terms the banking model of education.18 this form of delivery involves an individualusually a teacher reciting facts and ideas to a group of students who are required to listen and memorize the content.19 freire identified a distinctlack of connectivity between the content and people’s real lives; the banking model is built on the fact that the teacher knows all, and there exist inferiors that must just accept what they are told: the teacher talks about reality as if it were motionless, static, compartmentalized, and predictable. or else he expounds on a topic 18 see paulo freire, pedagogy of the oppressed (30th anniversary edition) (continuum: new york, london, 2005). the original was published in 1970. 19 see, for example, ibid., chapter 2, pages 71-86 61 completely alien to the existential experience of the students. his task is to "fill" the students with the contents of his narration— contents which are detached from reality, disconnected from the totality that engendered them and could give them significance. words are emptied of their concreteness and become a hollow, alienated, and alienating verbosity.20 this approach to pedagogy, according to freire, is a form of oppression. he reasoned that it encouraged students to just accept what is thrust upon them as correct. freire concluded that if students are trained to be passive listeners, they will never be able to come to the realization that there even exists oppressors. while freire champions a problem-solving model to overcome oppression, the banking model approach to teaching is evident in police education and, it is suggested here, a significant barrier to the very objective of critical thinking that the peqf purports to achieve. while there is a range of factors that limit the scope for critical thinking in the peqf context, the complexity of the legal landscape and the magnitude of content covered in the national police curriculum (npc) provide two useful demonstrations of the creep of banking model in this context. the discussion below briefly unpacks both to elucidate the need for creativity within the confines set by the framework when attempting to deliver police training. 20 ibid., at 71. 62 the legal landscape upon entering the profession, police recruits are required to engage with a complex mix of legal and non-legal sources so that, by the end of their training, they are in a position to know and apply the law, often in circumstances, which do not permit prior reflection and contemplation.21 moreover, they must also know and apply the law in ways that are compliant with human rights, reflecting the fact that the police are a public authority pursuant to section 6 of the human rights act, 1998. the scale of this task is evident when considering the multiple sources of law in england and wales. firstly, the law can be found in primary legislation, such as the police and criminal evidence act (pace), 1984. as just one piece of legislation, pace 1984 comprises 11 parts, 7 schedules, and 122 provisions. many of the provisions are themselves highly complex, involving layers of legal jargon and statutory semantics. despite the complexity of pace, it is, however, but one statute. regarding most areas that engage the police in some form, it is rare that just one piece of legislation is applicable. in relation to stop and search, for example, powers are also included in the misuse of drugs act, 1971, the firearms act, 1968, and the psychoactive substances act, 2016, as examples. furthermore, different pieces of legislation place different requirements on the use of this power. section 60 of the criminal justice and public order act 1994, for instance, contains a power which allows officers to search without reasonable 21 peter leyland, (2021), the constitution of the united kingdom: a contextual analysis. bloomsbury. 63 grounds, sometimes known as ‘no suspicion’ or ‘section 60’ search.22 the law is also included in secondary legislation, which is law created by ministers (or other bodies) under powers given to them by an act of parliament. the parent act of parliament will specify the body or person who power has been delegated to by parliament. often, secondary legislation is used to fill in the details of primary legislation. these details provide practical measures that enable the law to be enforced and operate in daily life. police powers have also been developed by the courts. for instance, the police have powers of both entry and arrest to prevent a breach of the peace. however, an individual officer wishing to ascertain both the existence and scope of these powers will not find such authority in the statute books. rather, they will instead be required to engage with court judgements as contained in such databases as westlaw uk, lexisnexis or british and irish legal information institute. further complicating matters, case law can also be used to develop the scope and contours of primary and secondary legislation through a process of statutory interpretation. for the police recruit keen to understand the particular contours of these more specific provisions, the jurisprudence of english courts, formed as a result of judicial statutory interpretation, often ‘puts meat on the bones’ of bare legal provisions.23 in addition to these primary sources of law, recruits are also required to engage with a number of additional sourceswhat we might call soft law. as an example, the college of policing 22 see ben bowling and estelle marks, ‘the rise and fall of suspicionless searches’ [2017] king’s law journal, 28(1): 62-88; r (roberts) v mpc [2015] 23 there are, however, some excellent resources that seek to elucidate court judgements. see, for example, dominic wood and others, blackstone’s handbook for policing students (oxford university press, 2022); richard card and jack english, police law 15th edition, (oxford university press, 2015); the police national legal database (pnld document portal home) https://www.pnld.co.uk/ 64 (cop) assumes the responsibility for issuing ‘codes of practice’ to chief constables. these codes of practice are issued under section 39a of the police act 1996 (as amended) and therefore have a statutory footing.24 a prominent example of such a code is the code of ethics, which compliments the policing standards of professional behaviour.25 the code of ethics sets out the policing principles that members of the police service are expected to uphold and the standards of behaviour they are expected to meet. many forces have their own values statements, which are complementary to the code of ethics. sometimes specific legislation requires the government to publish guidance on a specific set of powers. for example, part iv of the police and criminal evidence act 1984 requires the government to publish and maintain codes of practice on the powers in the act (what are known as the pace codes). regarding stop and search powers, for instance, the relevant code of practice is code a (home office, 2015). the college of policing also publishes authorised professional practice (app) documents.26 these documents are themed around different aspects of policing, advise police staff on how to use their powers lawfully and effectively, and are designed to support the training and development of police personnel. the police are expected to ‘have regard’ to app guidance whilst on duty. in 2020, the college of policing updated its authorised professional practice for stop 24 see jessica brown, ‘police powers: an introduction’ [17 june 2020], house of commons library briefing paper, number 8637. 25 college of policing. code of ethics a code of practice for the principles and standards of professional behaviour for the policing profession of england and wales (2014), code_of_ethics.pdf (paas-s3-broker-prodlon-6453d964-1d1a-432a-9260-5e0ba7d2fc51.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com) 26 college of policing, app content, college of policing app https://paas-s3-broker-prod-lon-6453d964-1d1a-432a-9260-5e0ba7d2fc51.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2021-02/code_of_ethics.pdf https://paas-s3-broker-prod-lon-6453d964-1d1a-432a-9260-5e0ba7d2fc51.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2021-02/code_of_ethics.pdf https://www.app.college.police.uk/ 65 and search in respect of public engagement.27 there is, furthermore, scope for voluntary guidelines and best practice. for instance, the home office has published guidance on the best use of stop and search powers. this is a voluntary scheme, which all forces have signed up to, the legislation has not been amended. the police national curriculum another significant challenge facing the goal of creating critically thinking recruits is one that derives from the excessive and unrealistic scope of the national police curriculum (npc). the npc comprises learning standards which have been designed to meet policing needs. each of the learning standards is fully mapped to the aforementioned authorised professional practice, as well as to relevant national occupational standards contained within the policing professional framework. the curriculum consists of approximately 23 thematic headings (see box 1). box 1: themes addressed in the national police curriculum understanding the police constable role valuing difference and inclusion maintaining professional standards evidence-based policing problem solving 27 college of policing, stop and search, stop and search (college.police.uk) https://www.app.college.police.uk/app-content/stop-and-search/?s= 66 research methods and skills decision-making and discretion communication skills wellbeing and resilience leadership and team-working managing conflict criminology and crime prevention vulnerability and risk public protection victims and witnesses criminal justice digital policing counter terrorism response policing policing communities policing the roads information and intelligence conducting investigations 67 each of these specific themes has several learning outcomes. for instance, the learning outcomes for managing conflict are as follows: box 2: examples of pnc learning outcomes 1. examine the theories and models underpinning the causes of conflict within policing interventions 2. explain the types of situations where conflict may occur and the appropriate response 3. analyse the ethical and moral implications of the police using force 4. identify levels of tension within a conflict situation 5. describe the process for determining whether the use of force is necessary in a conflict situation 6. examine alternatives to using force when involved in a conflict situation 7. employ personal protection skills within a conflict situation 8. effectively use personal protection equipment, physical and mechanical restraints 9. effectively use personal safety skills as determined by the specific role of the officer or designated operating environment 10. account for, and justify the use of force in a conflict situation 68 each learning outcome then disaggregates further to encompass a range of what is known as minimum core contentthe bare minimum that each learning outcome must achieve. these are specific aspects that must be addressed. if weeffectively use personal protection equipment, physical and mechanical restraintsthe mcc are as follows: box 3: example of pnc minimum core content 1. use of an authorised issue baton 2. use of an authorised incapacitant spray, including the effects of such usage and aftercare requirements 3. application of physical and mechanical restraints 4. multi-officer techniques 5. possible medical implications following use of restraints and personal safety equipment 6. how to evaluate the use of personal protection equipment thus, notwithstanding the aspirations of the peqf to develop and harness critical thinking police officers, the npc is, to put it mildly, ‘very prescriptive about what should be taught and as a result of this prescriptive nature [and] this could prevent all the benefits of higher education being accessed by the students who undertake these 69 programmes.’28 the reality that emerges is that police recruits enter the peqf process often with little experience in dealing with the law. the law in england and wales is itself highly complex and multi-tiered, deriving from the constitutional set-up of the uk and includes primary and secondary law, common law and judge developed law, in addition to a range of additional standards, codes and guidelines. given the scope of police powers and responsibilities, this complex web or information is replicated and repeated across different law-related topics, which include but are not limited to powers of arrest; entry, search, and seizure; detention and questioning; counterterrorism; public protection; and public order, as examples. added to this, police recruits must also engage in a range of non-law topics as defined in the college of policing curriculum. it is the sheer scale and complexity of the task that necessitates a banking approach to education. yet, paradoxically, it is this approach which severely limits the extent to which the critical faculties of the recipients are developed. the question that emerges, therefore, is how those responsible for delivering police training can cover the necessary content while doing so in a manner that cultivates the overarching goal of harnessing critical thinking? against this backdrop, the remainder of this article articulates a human rights-based approach to teaching police about their powers. it utilizes insights from paulo freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed as the theoretical framework. 28 see shohel and others (n.2). 70 towards a problem-solving approach and human rights in response to the limitations of the banking model, freire urges the adoption of the problem-posing model.29 this approach to education encourages a discussion between teacher and student. it is, in essence, a method of teaching that promotes critical thinking for the purpose of liberation and depends on students as co-creators in the delivery of teaching. the distinction between the two was summarised by freire in the following way: [banking education] attempts, by mythicizing reality, to conceal certain facts which explain the way men exist in the world…. banking education resists dialogue; problem-posing education regards dialogue as indispensable to the act of cognition which unveils reality. banking education treats students as objects of assistance; problem-posing education makes them critical thinkers…. problem-posing education bases itself on creativity and stimulates true reflection and action upon reality, thereby responding to the vocation of men as beings who are authentic only when engaged in inquiry and creative transformation.30 the problem-solving model seeks to blur the distinction between teacher and students as everyone learns alongside each other, creating equality. a problem-solving approach relies on the constructivist theory, which holds that knowledge is 29 see freire (n. 16), chapter 2. 30 ibid., at 83. 71 constructed by individuals by using their experiences, which is what freire drew upon in developing his pedagogy. in pedagogy of the oppressed freire wrote: education as the practice of freedom—as opposed to education as the practice of domination—denies that man is abstract, isolated, independent, and unattached to the world; it also denies that the world exists as a reality apart from people. authentic reflection considers neither abstract man nor the world without people, but people in their relations with the world.31 the starting point for a human rights-based approach to teaching is not to view human rights as yet another layer to heap onto an already overwhelming pile of existing hard and soft law. instead, it seeks to channel and harness the nature of rights contestation and the competing obligations that police officers must attempt to balance. this is achieved by asking police recruits, in line with a discursive approach, to think about the types of rights issues that a particular police power affects. in pedagogy of the oppressed, freire insisted that dialogical encounters help students to develop a critical consciousness of social, political, and economic contradictions so that they can take action against them.32 in the context of police powers, however, this dialogical exercise can help provide a lens through which to examine legislation. in conformity with freire’s problem-solving approach, the central objective is to develop critical thinking. this is done primarily by exploring the nature of competing rights 31 ibid., 81. 32 ibid., chapter 3. 72 obligations that police officers, as public servants possess by drawing on the perspectives and views of police recruits. understanding these competing claims to rights requires officers to draw on their own experience and knowledge in order to question how police powers might relate to the safeguarding of human rights. let us take a number of rights in turn by examining the stop and search powers under the pace, 1984. section 1 of pace 1984 allows an officer to search a person or vehicle, or anything in or on a vehicle if they have reasonable grounds to suspect that stolen or prohibited articles, bladed or sharply pointed articles, or prohibited fireworks will be found.33 not only is the use of stop and search one of the most controversial of police powers, it is also an area that illuminates gaps in police knowledge of the law. for instance, a 2013 her majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary (hmic) report examined police compliance with the law in respect of stop and search.34 the findings raised ‘concerns about the differing views among officers of what constitutes reasonable grounds for suspicion, [and raised] questions about the levels of training provided to officers and supervisors, and about how they develop a practical understanding of reasonable grounds for suspicion.35 the report also concluded that ‘[t]raining should be improved so that officers better understand, amongst other things, what constitutes reasonable grounds.’36 in 2016, as part of the hmic’s report 33 the items referred to reflect the scope of material which is covered under part 1 pace, 1984. other pieces of legislation are concerned with different items. as examples, section 23 misuse of drugs act, 1971search for controlled drugs; section 47 firearms act, 1968possession of a firearm; and section 36 psychoactive substances act, 2016legal highs. 34 hmic (n. 37) 35 ibid., at 29. 36 ibid. 73 on stop and search powers, questions, which tested officers’ knowledge of code a and formed part of the hmic’s investigation, were put to serving officers. the report found that the officers asked answered 82 percent of the questions correctly.37 while a relatively high return, the realities of this statistic are that in 18% of cases, officers were uncertain as to their legal powers. six years later, the scope for improvement remains evident. the 2021 her majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire & rescue services (hmicfrs) report on stop and search powers found that while training on stop and search has improved, with some examples of good practice, there are still gaps in too many officers’ skills and knowledge.38 it also found that ‘[o]ver 35 years on from the introduction of stop and search legislation, no force fully understands the impact of the use of these powers.39 these reports echo earlier research by quinton and others, who identified that officers’ knowledge and practices often vary in respect of the law,40 and innumerable studies that identify the lack of reasonable suspicion.41 an initial question to ask recruits is why police are afforded the power of stop and search. police recruits typically respond to the initial questions with a range of scenarios and potential rights. one response, for instance, is that where officers stop and search an individual and find a knife and where that person intends to use the knife to attack a particular individual, the use of the power can protect the right to life. 37 hmic, stop and search powers 2: are the police using them effectively and fairly? [2016] 38 hmicfrs. disproportionate use of police powers a spotlight on stop and search and the use of force, [2021]). 39 ibid. 40 tiratelli and others (n. 33). 41mike rowe, policing, race and racism (cullompton: willan, 2004), at 95-96. 74 another is that where police officers stop and search an individual who is in possession of stolen goods and where these goods belong to an individual whose home has just been robbed, the use of the power can be justified from the perspective of protecting the right to property. from an operational perspective, the use of stop and search can, in theory, be a significant tool in the armour of the police, one which, depending on the circumstances can protect individual rights and the interests of society more generally. according to code a of pace act 1984, the power enables officers to allay or confirm suspicions about individuals without exercising their power of arrest.42 more concretely, the power can be used, amongst other things, to prevent crime, investigate crime, and detect crime.43 this initial discussion opens recruits’ minds to interrogating why certain powers are there, what purpose they serve and how these powers might relate to human rights issues. at the same time, the use of stop and search can undermine rights in various ways. the most consequential impact of the use of stop and search has been the disproportionate use of the power against the black community and ethnic minorities.44 in 1999, for instance, the macpherson report into the death of stephen lawrence, while not focusing on stop and search specifically, found that institutional racism was apparent in the disproportionate use of stop and search against black 42 see home office. police and criminal evidence act 1984 (pace) codes of practice, police and criminal evidence act 1984 (pace) codes of practice gov.uk (www.gov.uk), pace code a, 2015: para. 1.4 43 although research suggests that the impact on deterrence is weak (see matteo tiratelli, paul quinton, ben bradford. does stop and search deter crime? evidence from ten years of londonwide data’ [2018] british journal of criminology, 58(5): 1212–1231 44 ibid., tiratelli and others https://www.gov.uk/guidance/police-and-criminal-evidence-act-1984-pace-codes-of-practice https://www.gov.uk/guidance/police-and-criminal-evidence-act-1984-pace-codes-of-practice 75 people.45 in 2010, the equality and human rights commission concluded that if you are a black person, you are at least six times as likely to be stopped and searched by the police in england and wales as a white person.46 in 2013, her majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary found that of the 8,783 stop and search records examined, 27% did not include sufficient grounds to justify the lawful use of the power.47 these findings mirror those by academics. for instance, bowling and phillips, writing in 2007, found that the use of the powers against black people is disproportionate and that this is an indication of unlawful racial discrimination.48 the second aspect of a rights-based approach to teaching police about their powers is to think about the potential adverse impacts on the enjoyment of human rights. most cases, presumably given the high-profile nature of stop and search powers, involve some discussion around equality and non-discrimination. the act of stopping and searching can also undermine such rights as privacy and the right to be free from detention, which is less frequent but nevertheless consistent responses from police recruits. the purpose of integrating competing rights considerations into the discussions that through stop and search, police can both protect and undermine rightsis to provide a lens through which to better understand the legislation. that is, 45 william macpherson, the stephen lawrence inquiry [1999]. london: the stationary office, cm 4262. 46 equality and human rights commission, stop and think: a critical review of the use of stop and search powers in england and wales [2010]. 47 hmic, stop and search powers: are the police using them effectively and fairly? [2013], https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/522804/hmicreport-stop-and-search-powers-jan16.pdf; hmic (2016), stop and search powers 2: are the police using them effectively and fairly?, stop-and-search-powers-2.pdf (justiceinspectorates.gov.uk) 48 ben bowling and coretta phillips ‘disproportionate and discriminatory: reviewing the evidence on police stop and search’ [2007] modern law review, 70(6): 936–961. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/522804/hmic-report-stop-and-search-powers-jan16.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/522804/hmic-report-stop-and-search-powers-jan16.pdf 76 in recognising both scenarios, it becomes clearer why the legislation exists as it does. for instance, returning to section 1 of pace, there is an express requirement of reasonable suspicion found in section 1(3). the test must be applied to the circumstances in each case and is in two parts: (i) firstly, the officer must have formed a genuine suspicion in their own mind that they will find the object for which the search power being exercised allows them to search and (ii) secondly, the suspicion that the object will be found must be reasonable.49 reasonable grounds must be based on objective facts. at this point, the question is posed as to why reasonable suspicion must be held and what it might mean. generally, reasonable suspicion must be grounded upon objective facts and fall into two categories: current intelligence or information, for example, the fact that a person matches the description of a suspect in a nearby burglary and/or suspicious behaviour, for example, attempting to hide or discard something, behaving nervously, or being seen with something that looks like a controlled drug. crucially, ‘reasonable suspicion cannot be based on generalisations or stereotypical images that certain groups or categories of people as more likely to be involved in criminal activity.’50 the requirement of reasonable suspicion informed by objective facts can be thus understood against an initial framing of competing rights interests; it preserves the power while limiting its application in ways that can be discriminatory. 49 home officer, pace code a, 2015 50 home officer, pace code a, 2015, para. 2.2b(b) 77 another example exists in the respect of section 2 pace 1984. under this provision officers conducting a stop and search must also provide an individual with certain information. for instance, an officer must first explain the grounds for the search. in other words, why is the search being conducted? this requirement necessarily ties in with the requirements of reasonable suspicion in that to explain why someone has been stopped, there first must be a reasonable suspicion to explain. secondly, an officer must explain the object and purpose of the search. to this end, an officer must also explain a third elementthe legal power being used. these two elements must be read together in the sense that the particular legal power being used impacts that which can be searched for. in addition, an officer must tell an individual that they are being searched alongside providing the identity of the officer, and the station to which the officer is attached. if the officer is in plain clothes, they must produce a warrant card and a person must be told that they are entitled to a copy of the search. these requirements can again be understood against the initial framework of rights contestation. the respective legislative provisions exist to balance the potential misuse of these with the need to ensure that the police continue to possess the legal capacity to conduct stop and searches. the above examples demonstrate elements that must be present before, during and after conducting a stop and search. the utility of this approach is limited to one aspect of the police curriculum, namely police powers. however, the ways in which police hold and use these powers are important and rights contestation can be used to 78 interrogate a whole host of powers from powers of arrest to questioning, detention to entry, search and seizure. against the backdrop of the initial rights-based framing, facilitated through open discussion about competing rights interests that can emerge, recruits and officers are informed as to why legislation has been constructed in the ways that it is. as a result, recruits are positioned to think critically about why specific provisions are contained in the law; the objectives they seek to achieve; and what they are attempting to prevent. additional benefits of a rights-based approach there are several benefits to a rights-based approach to teaching police powers. firstly, a human rights-based approach places human rights at the centre of police education. as noted, not only are the police, as public bodies, legally obligated to comply with human rights but this is also a stated aim of the college of policing which, to their credit, has afforded human rights a central place in the peqf. however, the complexity of the law can mean that precisely where human rights fit into these obligations can be uncertain. rather than viewing human rights as yet another layer of informationone that sits alongside case law, primary and secondary legislation and a suite of guidelines, codes, best practices and recommendationsunder a human rights-based approach to teaching they form the central element of police education. this, inadvertently, helps police officers not only to know what their human rights obligations are but to critically engage with competing rights. while looking at stop and search, this could be applied in respect of a range of police powers (bonner and 79 dammert, 2021).51 similarly, case law, when utilised correctly, can be used as an additional teaching tool one that helps to elaborate on the real-life examples of legislative provisions in action. as an example, section 2 of pace is a provision that tends to invoke much discussion amongst police recruits. for instance, while under s. 2the requirements to follow gowiselyappear in the pace, 1984, case law has also determined that the same information should be given when effecting a stop and search under other pieces of legislation, such as the misuse of drugs act.52 thus, the decisions of the courts help to identify that s.2 pace must be followed when conducting a stop and search under other pieces of legislation. case law has also helped to illuminate that when the police are confronted by a gang, it is not necessary to reasonably suspect every member of the gang.53 court rulings have also reaffirmed that failing to follow the requirements laid down in s. 2 of pace renders a stop and search unlawful.54 secondly, identifying the tensions inherent in rights not only assists in understanding the law. it also acts as an organising concept for other sources. for instance, there will always be additional questions on the technical aspects of law; what do we mean by personal characteristics when it comes to the idea of reasonable suspicion? how do abstract provisions relate to the many different scenarios that police officers are likely 51 michelle d. bonner and lucía dammert ‘constructing police legitimacy during protests: frames and consequences for human rights’ [2021], policing and society 52 r v fennelley [1989] crimlr 142 53 howarth v metropolitan police commissioner [2011] ewhc 2818 (qb) 54 b v dpp [2008] ewhc 1655 (admin); osman v dpp (1999) times 28/09/99 80 to face? on this latter point, experience drawn from teaching police recruits illuminates that such questions are not only inevitable but also highly desirable and useful. in contemplating potential scenarios and searching for answers to these hypotheticals, recruits are fully engaging in the process of learning and seeking to better interrogate how, faced with a particular set of circumstances, they might react. it is here, then, that additional sources of information, such as case law, and in the context of pace stop and search powers, pace code a, can exist not to add additional layers of seemingly unconnected information but rather to elaborate on the nature and scope of police powers. for instance, pace code a usefully elaborates on the characteristics which cannot amount to reasonable suspicion. they include someone’s physical appearance (accept where is matches the description of a relevant suspect), an individual’s known past convictions, any protected characteristic (age, disability, gender reassignment, pregnancy race, religion, sex and sexual orientation), generalisations or stereotypes about groups of people. an officer’s hunch or instinct is not an objective factor on which to base a reasonable grounds search.55 thirdly, a human rights-based approach to teaching pushes against the tendencies to embrace the banking model of education. for instance, to assist with learning police trainers often use a series of pnemonics to help officers remember the law. an example is go wiselyused to help officers remember the information to be given upon stopping and searching someone under certain pieces of legislation. copplan-id is 55 home officer, pace code a, 2015, para. 2.6b 81 another, utilised to assist officers in remembering the various grounds for necessity under s. 24(5) of pace when making an arrest. the mnemonic ciapoar helps users to remember the six key elements of the ndm. it also acts as an aide-memoire in aspects of decision-making. as a final example, die is used to remember the level of search upon arrest. while these mnemonics serve as a useful device in helping officers remember legislation, they can also serve to limit any level of critical thinking. for example, while the g in go wisely is useful in helping to identify the grounds for forming reasonable suspicion, they are limited in informing an officer what the basis of that suspicion can be. however, understood against the backdrop of competing rights, an officer is better equipped to form the basis of suspicion. thus, a rights-based approach can underpin these mnemonics and help ensure that officers are not simply regurgitating acronyms in the absence of critical thinking. conclusion the inspiration for this article came from delivering a number of courses as part of changes to police recruitment and education. underpinning these reforms is undoubtedly a strong commitment to harnessing a police service that acts fairly, lawfully and without discrimination. indeed, professionalization and developing analytical and informed officers is both necessary and desirable. however, achieving these objectives is stifled by the complexity of the law, an overly ambitious curriculum, and insufficient time afforded to cover the syllabus in sufficient detail. the result is that both teaching and learning are rooted in the banking model of 82 education where the aspirations of critical development are subverted to getting the course done. it is thus necessary to think laterally regarding how best to work within this system. as an alternative to the banking model of education, freire articulated what he termed the problem-solving method. amongst other things, this method of teaching emphasizes critical thinking for the purpose of liberation of the individual in question. by shifting the delivery of information to a form of collaboration and discussion, one where lived experiences and viewpoints of police recruits serve as context for learning. a human rights approach to teaching seeks to harness the inherent tensions and trade-offs associated with human rights to provide a lens through which to look at specific legislative provisions. the intention of doing so is to encourage recruits not simply to memorize the law, but to think analytically about why the law is the way it is and what objective it seeks to achieve. moreover, through engaging recruits in discussion and debate about the rights that are employed, it is recruits who are helping to construct the framework through which to examine and understand the law as it will ultimately apply to them. 4 reimagining the relationship between legal capability and the capabilities approach professor dawn watkins1 abstract within the literature on public legal education and legal capability, it is commonly stated that the concept of legal capability is closely related to the capabilities approach pioneered by economist and political philosopher amartya sen. this paper critically examines this assertion. part i seeks to demonstrate that whilst they share some broad affinity, the relationship between legal capability and the capabilities approach is currently disparate in both conceptual and practical terms. in part ii, the paper goes on to consider what might happen if this relationship is reimagined and the two fields brought closer together. aspects of this reimagining are then considered in turn. the paper concludes by summarising the potential advantages and disadvantages of this proposed reimagining, and by raising questions as to whether the implications of establishing a closer relationship between legal capability and the capabilities 1 professor of law, university of leicester. this work has been carried out at the foundational stages of a research project (fortitude) which has received funding from the european research council under the european union’s horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 818457). the author acknowledges the contributions of dr sophia gowers and dr naomi lott to recategorising the dimensions of legal capability in line with the capabilities approach in the early stages of the project. the author also thanks ann-katrin habbig, professor ingrid robeyns, professor pascoe pleasence and professor nigel balmer for their comments on earlier drafts of this article; whilst acknowledging it has not been possible to address them all, nor to reconcile them entirely in this final version. 5 approach warrant further exploration, or whether it is preferable for the distance to be maintained. introduction legal capability has been described variously as ‘the personal characteristics or competencies necessary for an individual to resolve legal problems effectively;’2 ‘the ability of individuals to recognise and deal with law-related issues that they might face’3 and ‘the abilities that a person needs to deal effectively with law-related issues.’4 the latter description was provided by jones in a 2010 publication for the public legal education network (plenet); one of the first organisations to develop a conceptual framework for legal capability. this framework focused on knowledge, skills and attitudes, and provided a model for informing its work in public legal education (ple) in the uk.5 since then, further frameworks and matrices of legal capability have been advanced in the uk and elsewhere. these vary in terms of content, but overall tend to adhere to the idea of knowledge, skills and attitudes as constitutive elements. 6 2 c coumarelos, d macourt, j people, hm mcdonald, z wei, i iriana and s ramsey, 2012, legal australia-wide survey: legal need in australia, law and justice foundation of new south wales, sydney, 29. 3 s. collard, c. deeming, l. wintersteiger, m. jones, j .seargeant, public legal education evaluation framework, public legal education network, 2011, 3. 4 martin jones, legal capability. london: plenet, 2010, http://lawforlife.org.uk/wpcontent/uploads/2013/05/legal-capability-plenet-2009-147-1-147.pdf p.1 (accessed 05.10.21) plenet was established in 2007 with funding from the ministry of justice to take forward recommendations of a public legal education and support (pleas) task force. 5 community legal education ontario (cleo), building an understanding of legal capability: an online scan of legal capability research, (cleo, 2016) 6 see for example, collard et al. (n 3); l mackie, law for life legal capability for everyday life evaluation report, (london: the gilfillan partnership, 2013); cleo, ibid. http://lawforlife.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/legal-capability-plenet-2009-147-1-147.pdf http://lawforlife.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/legal-capability-plenet-2009-147-1-147.pdf 6 the capabilities approach (also commonly referred to as the capability approach) was pioneered by economist and political philosopher amartya sen, an economics nobel prize winner who has been described as ‘one of the key thinkers and commentators of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.’7 sen’s ideas were presented initially in his 1979 tanner lectures, and developed in subsequent publications by sen and by others, most notably martha nussbaum. as now developed, the approach has been described as ‘open-ended and underspecified’8 in nature. hence it is impossible to provide a precise definition, but a central feature of sen’s capabilities approach is its concern to measure or evaluate human wellbeing according to the freedom or real opportunity each person has to live a life that she or he values, and has reason to value.9 because of this focus on individual freedoms, the capabilities approach necessarily represents a challenge to established ways of thinking about or evaluating human wellbeing where the traditional focus has been on purchasing power or the material standard of living.10 it has been applied to varying degrees in a range of fields; notably it has contributed directly to the united nations human development approach and the establishing of the human development index ‘to emphasize that 7 m walker and e unterhalter, ‘the capability approach: its potential for work in education’ in m walker and e (eds), amartya sen’s capability approach and social justice in education (palgrave macmillan, 2007), 1-18, at 1. 8 i robeyns, wellbeing, freedom and social justice the capability approach re-examined (open book publishers, 2017) 24. 9 s alkire and s deneulin, ‘the human development and capability approach’ in s deneulin and l shahani (eds), an introduction to the human development and capability approach: freedom and agency (earthscan, 2009), 22-48, at 32. 10 walker and unterhalter (n 7) 1 7 people and their capabilities should be the ultimate criteria for assessing the development of a country, not economic growth alone.’11 within the literature on ple and legal capability, it is commonly stated that the concept of legal capability is closely related to the capabilities approach. this paper critically examines the nature of this relationship. part i seeks to demonstrate that whilst they share some broad affinity, the relationship between legal capability and the capabilities approach is currently disparate in both conceptual and practical terms. in part ii, the paper goes on to consider what might happen if this relationship is reimagined and the two fields brought closer together. aspects of this reimagining are considered in turn under three headings: emphasising choice and opportunity, broadening perspective, and promoting participatory approaches. the paper concludes by summarising the potential advantages and disadvantages of this proposed reimagining, and by raising questions as to whether the implications of establishing a closer relationship between legal capability and the capabilities approach warrant further exploration, or whether it is preferable for the distance to be maintained. 11 un development programme, human development index, available at http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-index-hdi (accessed 05.10.21). http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-index-hdi 8 part i – the current nature of the relationship in his 2010 publication for plenet, jones explicitly attributes the origins of legal capability to sen’s work.12 subsequently, in their 2011 evaluation framework for ple, collard et al. describe legal capability as ‘drawing from wider capabilities theory’13 and in their 2016 overview of legal capability research, cleo describe the concept of legal capability as being ‘rooted in the “capabilities” approach developed by economist amartya sen’.14 more recently, writing in 2019, pleasence and balmer maintain legal capability ‘can best be understood as an aspect of economist amartya sen’s idea of capability as “the substantive freedom to achieve alternative functioning combinations (or, less formally put, the freedom to achieve various lifestyles).”’15 so from the perspective of legal capability, it is possible to state with some certainty that a relationship exists between legal capability and the capabilities approach. the focus of legal capability is on measuring/improving an individual’s ability to deal with lawrelated problems; so contributing to his or her wider wellbeing. the nature of this relationship from the perspective of the capabilities approach is more challenging to describe, but can be made more simple through analogy. if we imagine legal capability and the capabilities approach as two human families; we can say that most members of the legal capability family consider themselves to be related 12 jones (n 4) 1, citing a sen, the idea of justice (allen lane, 2009) 13 collard et al. (n 3) 3, citing a sen, the idea of justice (penguin, 2010) 14 cleo (n 5) 2, citing a sen, the idea of justice (harvard university press, 2009) 15 p pleasence and n balmer, ‘justice & the capability to function in society’ dædalus, the journal of the american academy of arts & sciences, 140-149, at 141; citing a sen, development as freedom (oxford university press, 1999), 75. 9 to the capabilities approach family; and that they share a common ancestor in amartya sen. however, as will be discussed further below, members of the (relatively small) legal capability family have not developed relationships with members of sen’s larger and ever-increasing extended family. conversely, and perhaps more controversially, sen’s extended family members have never made contact with any of their legal capability relatives and – if asked – may question that any relationship exists between them. the lack of relationship is evidenced by its absence in the capabilities approach literature. in her 2017 review and consolidation of the capabilities approach, ingrid robeyns provides an overview of the diverse range of fields in which the capabilities approach has been applied.16 whereas robeyns recognises that the extent to which the approach has been applied and/or developed in different fields varies widely, she makes no reference to work on legal capability in this influential text. to cite a more specific example, apart from the author, the only participant presenting on the subject of legal capability at the human development and capability association conference in 2019 argued: ‘the current attempts at defining legal capabilities… have one major disadvantage. even though they refer to the capability approach of sen, none of them offers a strong theoretical reference to it… the idea of capabilities is taken 16 robeyns (n 8) 9, 16-18. 10 as a starting point without paying much attention to further implications of this approach.’17 the disparity is evidenced further by the different customs and terminology that the legal capability and capabilities approach families have adopted. put simply – they do not speak the same language. for example, ‘functionings’ and ‘capabilities’ are key concepts within the capabilities approach and ‘the most important distinctive features of all capabilitarian theories.’18 this distinctive language of functionings and capabilities, and the emphasis on agency and freedom to choose, is discernible in discrete elements of legal capability scholarship.19 however, predominantly the terminology of legal capability relates to the three elements of knowledge, skills and attitudes identified by jones in 2010; with knowledge and skills continuing to be presented as two underlying dimensions, and the third category of ‘attitudes’20 being either retained or modified to refer to alternative terms such as ‘psychological readiness to act’21 or ‘confidence’.22 pleasence et al. extended this underlying structure 17 ann-katrin habbig, hdca conference presentation, unpublished, september 2019. the hdca was established in 2004 ‘to promote high quality research in the interconnected areas of human development and capability’ and its first president was amartya sen. see https://hd-ca.org/about/hdca-history-and-mission (accessed 05.10.21) 18 robeyns (n 8) 38. 19 see for example, pleasence and balmer (n 15) 140-149 and p pleasence, c coumarelos, s forell and h mcdonald, reshaping legal assistance services: building on the evidence base (law and justice foundation of new south wales, 2014) 130-137 20 pleasence et al. ibid. 122 21 h.m. mcdonald and j. people, ‘legal capability and inaction for legal problems: knowledge, stress and cost’ updating justice no.41, june 2014, 2. 22 mackie (n 6) 28. https://hd-ca.org/about/hdca-history-and-mission 11 to include resources,23 but other key capabilities approach terms, such as conversion factors (each person’s ability to convert resources into functionings)24 and structural constraints (factors external to each person, such as institutions, social norms and environmental factors)25 do not feature in the literature. tracing the disparity in relationship the disparity in the relationship between legal capability and the capabilities approach can be attributed to the fact that the development of the concept of legal capability has been influenced by two major factors outside of the capabilities approach. to revert to the earlier analogy; the legal capability family considers itself related to sen, but it has other significant relationships. it has strong connections with the access to justice agenda and associated legal needs-based research. in terms of its conceptual development, it also has a less obvious but important association with work in the field of financial capability. dealing first with financial capability. the significance of jones’ 2010 publication for plenet and its influence on subsequent work has already been stated in this paper and we already know that jones attributes the origins of legal capability to the capabilities approach; emphasising ‘functional capabilities or 'substantive freedoms', looking at what human beings need to be able to do or be to effectively assert choices over their 23 pleasence et al. (n 19) 126-7, drawing on r mclachlan, g gilfillan and j gordon, deep and persistent disadvantage in australia (australian government productivity commission, 2013). 24 robeyns (n 8) 45. 25 robeyns (n 8) 45-47 and 83. 12 own well-being’.26 however, a notable feature of jones’ publication is its discussion of steps taken by the financial services authority (fsa) to establish a model for financial capability. the result of the work undertaken by the fsa was ‘a conceptual model based on knowledge, skills and attitudes.’27 jones explains how this model informed foundational work by plenet, based on the view that ‘the capabilities approach of knowledge, skills and attitudes clearly has relevance in a civil law context.’28 he reports that in 2008 and 2009, plenet ran a number of exercises to explore what capabilities people need to be able to deal with law-related issues; ‘what knowledge do they need? what skills do they require? what attitudes should they have?’ their conclusion was that ‘the troika of knowledge, skills and attitudes does work [emphasis added] for legal issues and provides a useful conceptual framework to guide our ple work.’29 it is argued that jones’ reference to ‘the capabilities approach of knowledge, skills and attitudes’ evidences a fundamental disparity in the relationship between legal capability and the capabilities approach. at a broad, aspirational level, a concern to measure and improve people’s ability to deal effectively with law-related problems certainly aligns with sen’s focus on personal capabilities. but the more detailed and sustained focus on knowledge, skills and confidence comes from somewhere else; from financial capability and its own antecedents.30 the disparity is demonstrated 26 jones (n 4) 1. 27 jones (n 4) 2. 28 jones (n 4) 3. 29 jones (n 4) 4. 30 exploring the background of the fsa’s work on financial capability is beyond the scope of this paper. 13 further in the work of collard et al. again at an aspirational level, collard et al. refer to sen and the role of ple as enabling people to ‘become more legally capable… to take more control of their lives and so improve them…to incorporate functional capabilities or ‘substantive freedoms’ that individuals need to assert effective choices over their own well-being.’31 but when taking steps to conceptualise legal capability in more detail, the authors rely on four domains of financial capability modelled by the fsa in 2006.32 through engagement with ple literature and with feedback from ple experts, collard et al. identify four analogous domains of legal capability; ‘recognising and framing the legal dimensions of issues and situations; finding out more about the legal dimensions of issues and situations; dealing with law-related issues and situations; engaging and influencing.’33 the value of this work is not disputed. however, it does demonstrate that developments in the concept of legal capability have been significantly influenced by analogous work in financial services and not just by a broad allegiance to sen’s capabilities approach. the second key relationship for legal capability is its historical and ongoing connection with legal needs research and the global access to justice agenda. coumarelos et al. explain that surveys of the general public to assess their legal needs date back to the 1930s. initially these surveys focussed on a narrow interpretation of legal need; assessing how far people were able to access legal professionals and the 31 collard et al. (n 3) 3. 32 these are: managing money, planning ahead, choosing financial products and staying informed. see collard et al. (n 3) 4. 33 collard et al. (n 3) 4. 14 justice system.34 but they demonstrate that within some legal systems and systems of government, there has been a long-standing concern to explore the experiences of nonlawyers as they engage in the legal world. more specifically to the concept of legal capability, marc galanter argued as far back as the 1970s that ‘…lack of capability of parties poses the most fundamental barrier’ to their access to ‘legality’ and citing contemporary scholarship he proposes that as well as modifying systems and institutions, research should be conducted into how the ‘personal competence’ of parties might be enhanced.35 he states: ‘we need research on party capability. let's begin from the question of personal competence. what makes parties competent and effective at securing remedies or participation or whatever? does it depend on personal characteristics like poise, confidence, education, information, proclivity and ability to bargain?’36 the narrow focus on formal legal proceedings (and so ‘parties’ for galanter) was expanded in subsequent years, and legal needs surveys conducted by the american bar association in 1994, and in england and wales by hazel genn in 1999 are described by coumarelos et al. as ‘ground-breaking’ in their shifting away from narrow focus on formal justice, looking instead at a broader notion of ‘justiciable problems’ – a wide range of problems for which a legal remedy exists.37 since then, 34 coumarelos et al. (n 2) 3. see for example charles e clark and emma corsvet (1938) the lawyer and the public: an a.a.l.s. survey, 47 yale l.j. 1272 35 m galanter, 'delivering legality: some proposals for the direction of research' (1976) 11 law and society review 225, 242. galanter cites j carlin and j howard legal representation and class justice (1965) 12 university of california los angeles law review, 381; philippe nonet, administrative justice: advocacy and change in a government agency (russell sage foundation, 1969) and douglas rosenthal, lawyer and client: who's in charge (russell sage foundation, 1974) in relation to the notion of ‘personal competence’. 36 galanter, ibid. 242. 37 h genn, paths to justice: what people do and think about going to law (bloomsbury, 1999) 5. 15 multiple legal needs surveys have been conducted across different jurisdictions; providing vast amounts of valuable information on the nature of legal problems people encounter and how people’s needs are met or not met when they encounter these problems.38 concerns expressed by coumarelos at al. that this research ‘has often proceeded without explicit, detailed definitions of the concepts of legal need and access to justice’39 have been addressed to some extent in a guide published by the organisation for economic co-operation and development (oecd).40 whilst recognising the term is contested, the oecd guide defines access to justice as ‘broadly concerned with the ability of people to obtain just resolution of justiciable problems and enforce their rights, in compliance with human rights standards…if necessary, through impartial formal or informal institutions of justice and with appropriate legal support.’41 the guide goes on to explain that whilst it is an elusive concept, legal need is closely linked to (and a constitutive element of) access to justice. broadly: ‘legal need arises whenever a deficit of legal capability necessitates legal support to enable a justiciable issue to be appropriately dealt with. a legal need is unmet 38 detailed information on the range and extent of these surveys is available in the oecd guide authored by p pleasence, p chapman and n balmer, legal needs surveys and access to justice, (oecd/osji, 2019), 25-28 39 coumarelos et al. (n 2) 3. 40 oecd guide (n 38). this guide has directly informed the most recent legal needs survey in england and wales: legal needs of individuals in england and wales technical report 2019/20 (yougov, 2019). 41 oecd guide (n 38) 24. 16 if a justiciable issue is inappropriately dealt with as a consequence of effective legal support not having been available when necessary to make good a deficit of legal capability. if a legal need is unmet, there is no access to justice.’42 the oecd guide notes there is no precise definition of legal capability, but identifies ‘much agreement among recent accounts of the concept.'43 citing some of the frameworks already referenced in this paper (e.g. parle, collard et al., coumarelos et al.) the guide identifies as agreed constituents of legal capability: ‘the ability to recognise legal issues; awareness of law, services and processes; the ability to research law, services and processes; and the ability to deal with law related problems (involving, for example, confidence, communication skills and resilience).’44 in keeping with the wider literature, brief reference is also made to the links between the concept of legal capability and ‘sen’s (1980, 1999) capability approach to disadvantage.’45 summary to part i whilst acknowledging it as a consistent feature in the legal capability literature, part i of this paper has sought to contest the idea that legal capability has its origins in the capabilities approach and/or that it continues to be linked to the capabilities approach 42 oecd guide (n 38) 24. 43 oecd guide (n 38) 86. 44 oecd guide (n 38) 86. 45 oecd guide (n 38) 41. 17 in any meaningful way. rather, it is argued that as the legal capability and capabilities approach families have developed, the legal capability family has adopted sen as a kind of ‘honorary uncle’ – someone originally unrelated to the family, but now embraced and respected by it. sen’s ideas may be said to have influenced the development of the concept of legal capability in very broad terms, but in terms of the detail, particularly in the development of legal capability frameworks, the influence of the capabilities approach as espoused by sen and developed by others is much harder to discern (hence habbig’s criticism cited earlier). but does this matter? from the perspective of legal capability scholars, it may be argued that there is no need for the capabilities approach to assert more than a broad influence over their work. the three categories of knowledge, skills and attitudes may not have descended directly from sen, but they have provided an effective basis for further developing the concept of legal capability. legal capability scholars may also point out that sen has never formulated any specific list of capabilities, and so the broad but unspecified nature of his influence is entirely appropriate. equally, from the perspective of the capabilities approach, it might be argued that there is no major problem. as already stated, the capabilities approach is described as ‘open and underspecified’ in nature, and it is ‘generally conceived as a flexible and multipurpose framework, rather than a precise theory.’46 this creates potential for broad 46 robeyns (n 8) 24. 18 influence, and the risk of inflation expressed by robeyns (that any theory can claim to be a ‘capability theory’ because of an affinity with the broader approach)47 can be dealt with simply by preserving the status quo; i.e. a lack of acknowledgment from capabilities scholars that the two families are related. it is tempting to leave it at that. but because there is at least a potential benefit, the second part of this paper seeks to explore whether it might matter. and here the author’s intention is to raise questions and promote discussion, rather than to provide definitive answers. what might be the implications of establishing a closer relationship between legal capability and the capabilities approach? might they warrant further exploration? or is it preferable for the two families to maintain a distant relationship? drawing particularly on robeyns’ text, part ii of this paper sets out a tentative reimagining of the relationship between legal capability and the capabilities approach, focusing on three main areas; emphasising choice and opportunity; broadening perspectives and promoting participatory approaches. 47 it is partly to counter this risk that robeyns sets out a very clear, modular interpretation of the capabilities approach in her 2017 text. 19 part ii – reimagining the relationship emphasising choice and opportunity as explained in part i, ‘functionings’ and ‘capabilities’ are key concepts within the capabilities approach. sen describes functionings as ‘the various things a person may value being or doing’48 and capabilities are the freedoms or opportunities a person has to enjoy or exercise these functionings. robeyns explains the distinction as follows: ‘…while travelling is a functioning, the real opportunity to travel is the corresponding capability. a person who does not travel may or may not be free and able to travel; the notion of capability seeks to capture precisely the fact of whether the person could travel if she wanted to. the distinction between functionings and capabilities is between the realized and the effectively possible, in other words, between achievements, on one hand, and freedoms or opportunities from which one can choose, on the other.’49 so when referring to someone’s ‘capability’ within the capabilities approach, this refers to a combination or set of functionings that a person is free to achieve, or choose to achieve. what is valued, is the real freedom for the person to choose to exercise them. this is a subtle but important point when applied in the context of legal capability. arguably, as currently presented, frameworks of legal capability and descriptions of 48 a sen, development as freedom (oxford university press, 1999) 75. 49 robeyns (n 8) 39. 20 legal capability as ‘the personal characteristics or competencies necessary for an individual to resolve legal problems effectively;’50 ‘the ability of individuals to recognise and deal with law-related issues that they might face’51 and ‘the abilities that a person needs to deal effectively with law-related issues’52 implicitly place value on specific abilities, rather than valuing a person’s freedom to choose whether or not to exercise them. related to this, a closer engagement with the capabilities approach reminds us that persons and the real opportunities each person has to live a life that she or he values are the central concern. as robeyns summarises; ‘we should always be clear, when valuing something, whether we value it as an end in itself or as a means to a valuable end. for the capability approach…the ultimate ends are people’s valuable capabilities.’53 so to articulate legal capability in capabilities terms, these are the ‘beings and doings’ that contribute to a person’s well-being when they encounter lawrelated problems. these should not be considered as any kind of benchmark qualification for all people to achieve.54 rather, they represent a sort of baseline of opportunity, or a means to the end of facilitating a person’s freedom to choose. as stated earlier, sen has never formulated any specific list of capabilities. however, nussbaum has published a list of capabilities, referred to extensively in the wider 50 coumarelos et al. (n 2) 29. 51 collard et al. (n 3) 3. 52 jones (n 4) 1. 53 robeyns (n 8) 47. 54 see further walker and unterhalter (n 7) 1-18. 21 literature, which she argues are the capabilities ‘that can be convincingly argued to be of central importance in any life.’55 for the sake of space, a shortened, paraphrased version of the list is presented below: • life: being able to live a life of normal length, and a life worth living. • bodily health: being able to enjoy good health, and have adequate food and shelter. • bodily integrity: being free to move freely, and being free from assault and violence. • senses, imagination and thought: being able to imagine, think and reason. • emotions: being able to have attachments to people and things outside ourselves. • practical reason: being able to form a conception of the good and engage in critical reflection about the planning of one’s life. • affiliation: being able to live with others and engage in social interaction; being able to be treated as a dignified being with equal worth to others. • other species: being able to live with concern for and in relation to animals, plants and nature. • play: being able to laugh, play and enjoy recreational activity. 55 m nussbaum, women and human development (cambridge university press, 2000) 74. 22 • control over one’s environment: being able to participate in political choices and being able to own property.56 taking this list as a kind of template, what happens if we reimagine legal capability in similar terms? what can we agree on as being central capabilities, or what a person is actually able to do and to be when encountering a law-related problem? so where to begin? the capabilities literature supports the drawing on existing expertise as an appropriate starting point.57 a legal capability framework published in 2019 by balmer et al. is arguably most appropriate.58 as well as being the most recently published framework, it is also the most comprehensive; taking into account and further developing the frameworks and matrices published internationally since jones’ initial work in 2010. 59 the vertical elements reflect the familiar dimensions of knowledge, skills and attitudes, but are expanded to included resources/environment, as identified by pleasence at al. in 2014.60 the horizontal dimensions draw on collard et al.’s 2011 framework, discussed above, but are amended to take into account aspects of the 2019 oecd guide. the result is the identification of the following four broadly defined stages of dealing with a legal problem: 56 the list can be read in full in nussbaum, ibid. 78-80. 57see further i robeyns (2003) sen's capability approach and gender inequality: selecting relevant capabilities, feminist economics, 9:2-3, 61-92; m biggeri and s mehrotra, child poverty as capability deprivation: how to choose domains of child well-being and poverty, in m biggeri, j ballet and f comim (eds.) children and the capability approach (palgrave macmillan, 2011), 46-75 58 the framework is published in appendix a of n balmer, p pleasence, t hagland and c mcrae, (2019). law…what is it good for? how people see the law, lawyers and courts in australia. melbourne: victoria law foundation, at 60-61. available at https://victorialawfoundation.org.au/research/research-reports/law-whatis-it-good-for-how-people-see-the-law-lawyers-and-courts-in-australia/ (accessed 05.10.21) 59 see for example, collard et al. (n 3); mackie (n 6); cleo (n 5). 60 pleasence et al. (n 19) https://victorialawfoundation.org.au/research/research-reports/law-what-is-it-good-for-how-people-see-the-law-lawyers-and-courts-in-australia/ https://victorialawfoundation.org.au/research/research-reports/law-what-is-it-good-for-how-people-see-the-law-lawyers-and-courts-in-australia/ 23 • recognition of issues • information/assistance • resolution • wider influence/law reform the table is then populated to produce multiple discrete dimensions; identifying specific knowledge, skills, attributes and resources relevant to each stage. notably, nussbaum emphasises her list ‘represents years of cross-cultural discussion’61 and is open to further amendment in the future. with this in mind, the list below should be considered merely a starting point for discussion, and certainly not an attempt to produce a definitive list. and as will be discussed further in the following section, some elements included in balmer et al.’s list as dimensions of legal capability have been recategorised and removed altogether. with these caveats, some suggestions as to what is a legally capable person might actually be able to do and be are set out below: • knowledge/education: be able to acquire knowledge about the nature and existence of law and rights (both general and specific to a situation). • recognition: be able to recognise the relevance of law to an issue or situation, and frame in legal terms. 61 nussbaum (n 55) 76. 24 • research: be able to find out more about the relevance of law to a situation; able to understand what information is required and locate it; able to assess reliability/credibility. • assistance: be able to seek and secure assistance from others. • reasoning: be able to think and imagine how law might apply to a situation and recognising the importance of the whole story. • assessing: be able to imagine and weigh up possible courses of action and possible outcomes; aware of own limitations and able to assess sources of help. • planning: be able to plan a course of action and anticipate potential barriers. • fortitude: be able to push for a desired outcome with firmness of purpose; legal confidence. • influence/communication: be able to engage and influence others. this list represents a dramatic simplification of the balmer et al.’s comprehensive framework and scholars working in the field of practical empirical measurement will justifiably call for the identification of more specific, discrete elements. nevertheless, it is possible to argue that in this simplified form, the list represents a workable model for communicating the concept of legal capability to a wide variety of stakeholders; and particularly those people whose legal capability we are seeking to either measure or improve. as will be discussed further below, this increased accessibility is of importance if or when we seek to promote participatory approaches. 25 broadening perspective in this section it is proposed that a reimagining of the relationship between legal capability and the capabilities approach leads to a broadening of perspective and a separating out of factors. in particular, this shift in perspective causes factors currently included as elements or aspects of a person’s legal capability to be reimagined as factors highly relevant to but separate from them. again, this is a subtle but potentially important shift which may be best demonstrated by focusing on specific elements. beginning with resources: as stated elsewhere in this paper, pleasence et al. have added resources to the troika of knowledge, skills and attributes that inform frameworks of legal capability and in balmer et al.’s comprehensive framework, these resources are stated to include time, money, social capital, availability of services and availability of processes. as aspects of legal capability, the extent to which these resources are available to a person in any given situation – together with a range of other factors included in the framework will determine the extent to which a person is or is not able to deal with a law-related problem they encounter. if we refer back to the origins of the capabilities approach, then we recall that sen’s ideas were presented in opposition to the traditional methods of evaluating human wellbeing by reference to purchasing power or the material standard of living. hence robeyns describes capabilities as ‘real freedoms or real opportunities, which do not 26 refer to access to resources or opportunities for certain levels of satisfaction.’62 at first sight, this may indicate that resources are not relevant to the capabilities approach. however, as robeyns later makes clear, it is in the framing and conceptualising of capabilities that this separation from resources must take place. the importance of resources is recognised but they are situated ‘behind’ a person’s capability set; in recognition that a person’s capabilities are often determined by the resources available to them, combined with their ability to convert these resources into functionings (socalled conversion factors).63 this is modelled below in figure 1, in a much simplified version of robeyns’ own visualisation of the core concepts of capability theories.64 figure 1 modelling core concepts modelled in this way, the significance of resources as determinative of capabilities is emphasised but separated from a person’s capabilities, or their ‘beings and doings’. arguably, this shifts the responsibility for the provision of resources away from the individual, and emphasises the potential for a person’s opportunities to be realised 62 robeyns (n 8) 39. 63 robeyns (n 8) 45 and 145-6. 64 robeyns (n 8) 83. structural constraints resources conversion factors capabilities functionings 27 via third-party interventions at the resources stage. related to this, resources are viewed very broadly under the capabilities approach and so the resources specified by balmer et al. could be augmented to include, for example, provision of and/or access to public legal education. the issue of accessibility is highlighted through the recognition that capabilities are not only often determined by the resources available to a person, but also by their ability to convert these resources into functionings; so-called conversion factors. this means different types of resources and support are required to enable diverse populations to reach similar thresholds of functioning. in the context of the capabilities approach, robeyns provides the following examples: • personal conversion factors: internal to the person; such as metabolism, physical condition, sex, reading skills, intelligence. • social conversion factors: stemming from society, such as public policies, social norms, practices that unfairly discriminate, societal hierarchies, or power relations related to class, gender, race, or caste. • environmental conversion factors; emerging from the physical or built environment in which a person lives, such as geographical location, climate, 28 pollution, the built environment, means of transportation and communication.65 whilst they are not described as ‘conversion factors’ many of these factors feature in analyses of legal needs surveys; which present evidence not only of the range and prevalence of law-related problems populations face, but also how particular problems are experienced by people or groups of people with different characteristics and from different environments. for example, from these we know that ‘disadvantaged people draw on fewer resources and are less able to avoid or mitigate problems.’66 however, as with resources, many of these conversion factors feature within balmer at al.’s comprehensive legal capability framework. for example, literacy (in its various forms, including digital and information literacy) is identified as a dimension within the framework. and literacy is recognised in the capability approach literature as ‘a key determinant of wellbeing’ and ‘an important social entitlement.’67 as maddox identifies, in his writings sen recognises ‘the intrinsic value of literacy’ at the same time as highlighting ‘its instrumental value in enhancing people’s wider agency, freedoms and capabilities’68 and it is this instrumental value that robeyns recognises in citing reading skills as a personal conversion factor. applying this to the context of legal capability, it can be argued that literacy could be 65 robeyns (n 8) 46. 66 oecd guide (n 38) 31-33. 67 b maddox, (2008) ‘what good is literacy? insights and implications of the capabilities approach’ journal of human development, vol. 9, no. 2, 185 68 maddox ibid. 189 29 viewed as a conversion factor, rather than as an aspect of legal capability.69 this would then require legal services and processes to be designed in ways accessible to people with varying degrees of literacy, as seen in the emerging field of legal design;70so increasing the opportunities for people with limited literacy to convert these resources into functionings if they choose to do so. more generally, as robeyns states, an advantage of clarifying resources and conversion factors (and in the case of legal capability, separating these out from capabilities) is that this provides valuable information as to where interventions can be made or targeted, to increase or expand capabilities.71 adding a further and final dimension to this reimagining of the relationship between legal capability and the capabilities approach, the modelling of core concepts set out in figure 1 requires us also to recognise that ‘the structural constraints that people face can have a great influence on their conversion factors, and hence on their capability sets’.72 as stated earlier, much of this information is already known via the results of legal needs surveys, and their findings can and do prompt governments or organisations to adapt or implement policies and improve services.73 this raises the question of whether this 69 although the dichotomy between a conversion factor and a capability is emphasised here, it is important to note that because of the flexibility and open nature of the capabilities approach, it is possible for something to be categorised as both a personal conversion factor, as well as a very narrow and specific capability. robeyns explains that ‘while reading skills can be modelled as a conversion factor (and for some contexts this is the most fruitful way), one can conceptualise the very same situation as ‘people being able to read’ and then it becomes a (very specific) capability.’ i. robeyns, correspondence with author, 6 may 2021. 70 see further https://www.legalgeek.co/learn/legal-design-wtf/ (accessed 05.10.21) 71 robeyns (n 8) 47. 72 robeyns (n 8) 65. 73 oecd guide (n 38) 11. https://www.legalgeek.co/learn/legal-design-wtf/ 30 broadening of perspective, proposed here as one result of strengthening the relationship between legal capability and the capabilities approach, is worthwhile. and this paper does not claim to have the answer. but certainly there seems to be something more hopeful in taking personal factors such as literacy out of the realm of legal capability, where lack of literacy has an inevitable limiting effect, and seeing the legal capability of any person as capable of improvement via the provision of accessible resources and by the adaption of external constraints. promoting participatory approaches as robeyns observes, a wide range of approaches have been adopted to selecting capabilities. nussbaum’s list of central capabilities can be considered to be at one end of the spectrum of possible approaches because it was determined at an entirely abstract level.74 but for many other scholars in the field, participation is a central concern and the capabilities approach ‘relies on the agency and involvement of people…to specify which capabilities to focus on.’75 indeed, nussbaum’s list has been criticised for its failure to do this.76 however, the capabilities approach literature also recognises that people’s own views as to opportunities they value cannot be relied upon as the only evidence for 74 i robeyns, ‘the capability approach in practice’ (2006) the journal of political philosophy, 14, 3, 351–376, at 355 75 alkire and deneulin (n 8) 43. for an in-depth consideration of this topic see da clark, m biggeri and a frediani (eds) the capability approach, empowerment and participation : concepts, methods and applications (palgrave, 2019). 76 see further walker and unterhalter (n 7) 13. 31 formulating a list of capabilities. indeed, within the capabilities approach, any theory which relies solely on people’s subjective views of what contributes to their well-being is problematic. this is partly because it is recognised that all people’s views are inevitably shaped by societal constructs and norms, so cannot be relied on strictly as their own views.77 more particularly, it is due to concerns about adaptive preference. as robeyns points out, a large body of literature exists in relation to adaptive preference, but within the context of the capabilities approach, the concern is that people whose freedoms and opportunities are limited can (and do) adapt to their circumstances over time, and so when asked to comment on their own well-being, their report ‘is out of line with the objective situation.’78 to put this another way, walker and unterhalter explain ‘our choices are deeply shaped by the structure of opportunities available to us so that a disadvantaged group comes to accept its status within the hierarchy as correct even when it involves a denial of opportunities.’79 the resulting ‘middle ground’ is that so long as the method by which a list of capabilities has been generated can be explained and justified as appropriate; then once an explicit list is created – and the dimensions to be measured identified – then this should be openly discussed and defended, and adapted in light of new understandings.80 applying this to the context of legal capability, the process through which frameworks of legal capability have been developed was discussed in part i of 77 robeyns (n 8) 123. 78 robeyns (n 8) 137. 79 walker and unterhalter (n 7) 6. 80 see further i robeyns, ‘sen's capability approach and gender inequality: selecting relevant capabilities’ (2003) feminist economics, 9:2-3, 61-92 32 this paper. whereas the potential limitations of exploring only knowledge, skills and attributes were highlighted as incongruous with the capabilities approach, the empirical approach adopted by plenet in its 2008 and 2009 foundational work is noteworthy and in keeping with the capabilities approach insofar as it opens up the discussion as to what constitutes legal capability, and takes into account the views of non-experts in determining this.81 since then, legal capability frameworks appear to have been developed primarily by experts in the field. so whilst people’s own views as to opportunities they value cannot be relied upon as the only evidence for formulating a list of capabilities, a closer engagement with the capabilities approach could prompt scholars in the field of legal capability to engage with the non-legal public as a means to testing out and potentially reviewing assumptions. as stated earlier, a reformulated, accessible list of attributes of legal capability lends itself to this participatory approach. conclusion in the summary to part i of this paper, the following rhetorical questions were posed: what might be the implications of establishing a closer relationship between legal capability and the capabilities approach? might they warrant further exploration? or is it preferable for the two families to maintain a distant relationship? taking the first question first, some of the possible implications have been considered in part ii, and 81 jones (n 4) 4. 33 some possible advantages and disadvantages of these implications are considered below. this leaves the latter two questions, on which the paper concludes. taken together the most apparent advantages arising from a closer relationship between legal capability and the capabilities approach relate to the person or persons whose legal capability we are seeking to measure and/or improve. an unavoidable consequence of a closer engagement with the capabilities approach is a focus on the freedom or real opportunity each person has to live a life that she or he values, and has reason to value. this language of choice and opportunity features in jones’ 2010 publication for plenet82 but the implications of placing such value on opportunity and choice in the context of legal capability have never been fully worked through. rather, value has been placed on those dimensions of legal capability seen as ‘necessary for’83 or needed by a person ‘to deal effectively with law-related issues.’84 a reformulation of legal capability as ‘beings and doings’ results in a simplified, accessible list; which potentially provides a basis for meaningful participation. and this meaningful participation is suggested as necessary to informing and potentially revising expert opinion on what constitutes legal capability. arguably, this elevates the position of the person whose legal capability we are seeking to measure and/or improve; either generally or in discrete contexts. more generally, it was argued in part ii that one consequence of taking a broader perspective and separating out resources 82 jones (n 4) 1. 83 coumarelos et al. (n 2) 29. 84 jones (n 4) 1. 34 and conversion factors from capabilities, was to reimagine the idea that a person’s characteristics (e.g. literacy) will inevitably influence their legal capability. in the proposed remodelled approach, the legal capability of a person with limited literacy can be improved by the provision of accessible resources. the disadvantages relate firstly to those working in the field of practical empirical measurement of legal capability, for whom this suggested approach will be overly vague, idealistic and impractical. the second disadvantage relates to scholars working in the fields of ple and legal capability more generally. this paper has relied heavily on robeyns’ 2017 text as providing a respected and convenient summary of the capabilities approach. this has been sufficient for and appropriate to its purpose. but a deeper exploration of the capabilities approach, and any further steps taken towards strengthening the relationship between the approach and legal capability, will require engagement with unfamiliar literature, spanning multiple disciplines. and so this takes us to the final two questions: might the implications of establishing a closer relationship between legal capability and the capabilities approach warrant further exploration? or is it preferable for the distance between the two families to be maintained? given the tentative tone of this paper, readers will not be surprised to find no definitive answers here. the potential for renewed emphases on choice and participation certainly seem attractive in principle and worthy of further attention; but the practical implications seem over-whelming. perhaps it is possible for the capabilities approach to be allowed some greater influence on aspects of work and 35 research in the fields of ple and legal capability in the future, but the extent of this influence will depend on the willingness of scholars and practitioners to accommodate this. author postscript during the time when this paper was undergoing peer review, ann-katrin habbig and ingrid robeyns sent me their draft paper entitled ‘legal capabilities’, which is currently under peer review. it is notable that writing independently from me, and from a different perspective, habbig and robeyns draw very similar conclusions to those presented in part i of this paper. they then go on to offer their own proposals for a new underlying theory of legal capability. these proposals affirm some of my thinking set out in part ii – particularly with regard to broadening perspectives – but do so in a way that is further rooted in the capabilities approach; drawing especially on the work of martha nussbaum. in light of the fact that there is a forthcoming publication on the subject of legal capability in the capabilities field, the practical implications of advancing discussions concerning the relationship between legal capability and the capabilities approach now seem less over-whelming. habbig and robeyns’ expertise in the capabilities approach85 is accompanied by a concern to engage with ple scholarship. returning 85 robeyns is recognised as a leading scholar in the field. robeyns’ phd was supervised by amartya sen, and she is supervising ann-katrin habbig’s phd studies. 36 to the overall theme of this paper, this represents an opportunity for cultivating a new relationship between the two ‘families’. this in turn creates potential for fruitful and open discourse, which i anticipate will be of interest and concern to this journal’s readership. 94 the open university law school’s public legal education in prisons: contributing to rehabilitative prison culture keren lloyd bright1 with maria mcnicholl2 abstract there is a massive unmet need for legal knowledge in prisons. the open university law school, through its open justice centre, has trialled various ways in which to meet this unmet need. most prison-university partnerships in england and wales follow a model of prisoners and university students being taught together as one group in a traditional higher education learning format. the open university law school’s public legal education in prisons follows instead the street law model to disseminate knowledge of the law throughout a prison, either through prison radio or through the work of the charity st giles trust. while this article confirms other research findings which evidence the personal benefit law students derive in researching and delivering audience-appropriate public legal education, it also considers the benefit for those imprisoned in the context of rehabilitative prison culture. 1 keren lloyd bright is an honorary associate and formerly a senior lecturer in law at the open university law school, the open university, milton keynes, england. 2 maria mcnicholl is the training & development manager at st giles trust, camberwell, london. 95 introduction since 2017, the open university law school through its open justice centre has undertaken fifteen projects in eleven prisons across england and wales.3 most of these projects are in partnership with the charity st giles trust and one is in collaboration with prison radio at hmp altcourse. this article considers the piloting and evolution of the open justice centre’s prison projects over four years. the prison projects are placed in the context of both other models of prison-university partnerships and the development of rehabilitative prison culture. in mid-march 2020, some of the open university law school’s prison projects had completed and more were due to conclude in the following week. then a national lockdown was declared. the education departments of prisons were closed and prisoners could not be visited owing to the risk of covid 19 transmission in crowded prison environments.4 our law students were fully prepared for their final session with the men and women in prison: presentations, learning materials, handouts and leaflets were all complete. the projects were then peremptorily cut short. as the months passed, it became clear that the open justice centre would not be able to run these prison projects in the spring of 2021 either. however, this interlude does allow a period of reflection. why we offer this opportunity to law students; why we have 3 these prisons are: hmp altcourse, hmp cardiff, hmp dovegate, hmp oakwood, hmp sudbury, hmp leicester, hmp foston hall, hmp send, hmp high down, hmp wandsworth and hmp wormwood scrubs. 4 see, for instance, gaetan portal, ‘prisoners like ‘caged animals in lockdown jails’ bbc news (11 february 2021) <www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55957048> 96 shaped the prison projects in the way that we have; what we have achieved so far; and how we can make the projects better in the future. meanwhile, the impact of the pandemic on the four nations’ prisons continued. much face-to-face tuition in prisons was curtailed, but distance learning courses delivered by the open university and other institutions continued. rehabilitative prison culture an initial point which needs to be considered is the reason why prisons should allow law students and their tutors into prisons in the first place. such initiatives involve extra work for hard-pressed prison staff in organising permissions and security clearances, booking rooms and equipment, and ensuring the prisoners can move from their cells to the places set aside for the prison projects. an important motivation for prison governors and their staff is the promotion of a rehabilitative culture – an idea which has particularly gained traction over the last decade in the uk. it is commonly understood that prisons and those who administer them may exercise to varying degrees both punitive and rehabilitative aims – which at best seem competing or at worst even diametrically opposed.5 custodial punishment for those convicted of breaking the criminal law entails suffering of various sorts, including the stigma of imprisonment, privation and the removal or reduction of autonomy in every 5 see karen bullock and annie bunce, ‘the prison don’t talk to you about getting out of prison’ (2018) criminology & criminal justice < ‘the prison don’t talk to you about getting out of prison’: on why prisons in england and wales fail to rehabilitate prisoners karen bullock, annie bunce, 2020 (sagepub.com)> https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1748895818800743 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1748895818800743 97 part of their lives. rehabilitation, on the other hand, aims to transform the thinking, behaviour, skills, employment prospects, and life chances of those imprisoned. the regimes in different prisons even within the same security category strike their own singular balance between punitive and rehabilitative aims. it is also well known that prisons generally do not reduce criminality and that the rate of reoffending amongst those released from prison is high, particularly for those adults serving prison sentences of less than twelve months.6 many spend their lives passing in and out of prison; an iterative process often described as the revolving prison door. in recognition of this, in recent years there has been a shift in focus towards the creation of a rehabilitative culture in prisons by the ministry of justice and hm prison and probation service (which was previously known as the national offender management service). the rhetoric at least is moving in a promising direction. recently released prison service instructions have been designed to foster rehabilitative culture and include references to academic research on the subject.7 6 see ministry of justice, ‘proven reoffending statistics quarterly bulletin, england and wales, january 2018 to march 2018’ (30 january 2020) <https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/proven-reoffending-statisticsjanuary-to-march-2018> 7 national offender management service, ‘rehabilitation services specification – custody’ ps1 04/2015, pi 01/2015 para 4.4 <https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/913326 /pi-01-2015-psi-04-2015-rehabilitation-services-custody.pdf> 98 this research has shown that for rehabilitative prison culture to be effectively created, it needs to take a holistic, whole prison approach. everyone in the prison environment, whether they live, work or volunteer within it, is viewed as having a positive role to play. rehabilitative prison culture should aim to be thoroughly pervasive and permeate all aspects of prison life.8 it includes treating people with respect and courtesy;9 applying rules fairly and consistently; engendering trust in authority; and fostering a sense of hope for a positive future.10 rehabilitative cultures are respectful and hopeful environments, places where staff can experience greater job satisfaction and prisoners can experience support and encouragement to make personal and lifestyle changes.11 those writing on rehabilitative prison culture ascribe greater or lesser importance to the role which education plays in prisoner rehabilitation. for some, education holds a critically pivotal role: ‘if education is the engine of social mobility, it is also the engine 8 see benjamin crewe, alison liebling and susannah hulley, ‘heavy-light, absent-present: re-thinking the “weight” of imprisonment’ (2014) british journal of sociology 65, 3; alison liebling with helen arnold, prisons and their moral performance (2004) oxford university press; benjamin crewe, alison liebling and susannah hulley, ‘staff culture, use of authority and prisoner quality of life in public and private sector prisons’ (2011) australian and new zealand journal of criminology 44, 94-115. 9 susannah hulley, alison liebling and benjamin crewe, ‘respect in prisons: prisoners’ experiences of respect in public and private sector prisons’ (2011) criminology and criminal justice 12, 3-23. 10 the development of a rehabilitative culture in prisons can be seen in initiatives such as prisoners’ active citizenship. see: prisoners’ education trust, ‘active citizenship in prisons’ <active citizenship in prisons prisoners' education trust> 11 ruth mann, flora fitzalan howard and jenny tew, ‘what is a rehabilitative prison culture?’ (2018) prison service journal 235, 3. https://www.prisonerseducation.org.uk/what-we-do/policy/active-citizenship-in-prisons/ https://www.prisonerseducation.org.uk/what-we-do/policy/active-citizenship-in-prisons/ 99 of prisoner rehabilitation’.12 for others, interventions such as education, training and therapeutic treatment for substance abuse or behavioural issues are seen more as isolated pockets of transformational practice. valuable though these interventions may individually be, they are perceived as being more effective when the culture of a prison is rehabilitative in entirety.13 prisoners in many prisons in england and wales are supported by a patchwork of charities which play an important role in ameliorating the funding shortfall. they too contribute to the development and embedding of rehabilitative prison culture, as do prison-university partnerships, to which we now turn. prison-university partnerships in the uk prison-university partnerships of various sorts contribute to the development of rehabilitative culture in prisons. the partnership between the open university and prison services in the uk has been particularly significant in this regard.14 since the 12 sally coates, unlocking potential: a review of education in prison (may 2016) ministry of justice, foreword <) < unlocking potential a review of education in prison (publishing.service.gov.uk)> ; see also: prisoner learning alliance, ‘what is prison education for? a theory of change exploring the value of learning in prison’ (june 2016) < theory-of-change-report-final.pdf (prisonerlearningalliance.org.uk)> 13 see ‘special edition: the transformational potential of prison education’ (may 2016) prison service journal 225, 2 < prison service journal (crimeandjustice.org.uk)> 14 see the open university, ‘supporting students in secure environments’ <htpps://www.open.ac.uk/secureenvironments/> for a full account see: rod earle and james mehigan (eds) degrees of freedom: prison education at the open university (2019) policy press, imprint of bristol university press. for a conversational treatment of the subject see: the open university, ‘transforming lives: stories from prison’ (13 may 2019) <transforming lives_ stories from prison 13th may, 2019.pdf (open.ac.uk)> for an explanation of the open university tuition model in prisons see: the open university, ‘students in secure environments’ (9 may 2019) <sise may 9th, 2019 youtube> for a particularly striking example of prisoner rehabilitation, see the story of stephen akpabio-klementowski, who studied for an ou degree while in prison and is now an ou member of staff: bbc ideas, ‘i went from prisoner to phd’ (4 august 2020) < 'i went from prisoner to phd' bbc ideas> https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/524013/education-review-report.pdf https://prisonerlearningalliance.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/theory-of-change-report-final.pdf https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/sites/crimeandjustice.org.uk/files/psj%20225%20may%202016.pdf http://studenthublive.open.ac.uk/sites/studenthublive.open.ac.uk/files/transforming%20lives_%20stories%20from%20prison%20-%2013th%20may,%202019.pdf https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=rzkdevykfbk&feature=youtu.be https://www.bbc.co.uk/ideas/videos/i-went-from-prisoner-to-phd/p08mpxtt 100 1970s, the university has provided courses to students in prison ranging from short access modules to full undergraduate and postgraduate degree programmes. before the pandemic, the open university had around 1800 students across much of the custodial estate in the uk and the republic of ireland. each student in prison is supported by an open university tutor and tutorials are delivered either in person or by telephone. each student is often supported by their prison education department and by their more experienced peers who are also studying with the open university.15 module learning materials are provided in hard copy as well as being available digitally via a secure intranet called the virtual campus. the virtual campus was developed by hm prison and probation service, the open university and other partner institutions.16 the open university (ou) has another partnership with the prisoners’ education trust (pet). through this partnership, pet provides grants to prisoners to study for ou access modules (as well as grants for other academic and vocational courses provided by other institutions).17 a statistical analysis undertaken by the ministry of justice published in 2021, evidenced the positive and rehabilitative impact of pet 15 in a recent initiative, the ou library in collaboration with the ou students association, set up a student volunteer scheme. this allows a student in prison to send an anonymised request outlining the library resources they need, and a volunteer student carries out the research on their behalf. 16 the open university, ‘the virtual campus (england and wales only)’ <htpps://www.open.ac.uk/secureenvironments/students-prison/virtual-campus-virtual-learning-experience> 17 ruth mcfarlane, ‘the open university at 50: we recognise the need to play to our strengths’ (22 may 2019) prisoners’ education trust < https://www.prisonerseducation.org.uk/2019/05/the-open-university-at-50/> 101 grants.18 this analysis compared the employment and reoffending rates of around 9000 ex-prisoners who had received pet grants between 2001 and 2017 with those of a group of similar offenders not in receipt of the grants. the results of the analysis are statistically significant. those former prisoners who received a grant for an open university course were more likely to be employed during the first year after release from prison than those who did not (46% as compared with 36% in the control group). whether they were in employment or not, they were also less likely to reoffend (reoffending while in employment: 13% as against 17%; reoffending while not in employment 19% as against 24%).19 turning now to other universities in the uk, the number of them which have chosen to form educative partnerships with prisons has increased markedly over the last ten years – although these are typically small-scale and non-credit bearing short courses. the increase in the number of prison-university partnerships has occurred in parallel with the increased focus the ministry of justice and hm prison and probation service have brought to bear on developing rehabilitative culture within prisons. pet has recorded the details of those prison-university collaborations made known to them in their partnerships directory.20 while it is probable that there are other prison 18 ministry of justice, ‘justice data lab experimental statistics; employment and reoffending behaviour after support from prisoners’ education trust (pet) – 4th analysis’ (january 2021) <https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/954465 /prisoners_education_trust__pet__4th_analysis_report.pdf> 19 ibid 19, 21 and 24. 20 see: prisoners education trust, ‘partnerships directory’ <https://www.prisonerseducation.org.uk/what-wedo/work-with-universities/prison-university-partnerships-in-learning/partnerships-directory/> https://www.prisonerseducation.org.uk/what-we-do/work-with-universities/prison-university-partnerships-in-learning/partnerships-directory/ https://www.prisonerseducation.org.uk/what-we-do/work-with-universities/prison-university-partnerships-in-learning/partnerships-directory/ 102 university partnerships which exist that are so far unrecorded by it, an interesting picture nonetheless emerges from the partnerships directory. there are 133 prisons21 in the uk and 165 higher education institutions22. the pet’s partnerships directory in january 2021 recorded that in the years before the pandemic, universities had formed 33 prison-university partnerships, comprising some 20% of the total number of higher education institutions, which is a significant figure. moreover, some of these universities had multiple partnerships, either within or between prisons, such as the universities of edinburgh, durham, westminster, cambridge and the open university. clearly the pandemic has significantly curtailed the number of operative prison-university partnerships, but it is to be hoped that this will be only in the short-term. of the prison-university partnership models described in the partnerships directory, the ‘learning together’ model is the most numerous by far (over half of all partnerships) and dominates a similar model called ‘inside-out’ which was first developed in the united states in the 1990s. both partnership models are discussed in the following section. the street law model does not feature in any of the recorded 21 117 prisons in england and wales: institute for government <www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/performance-tracker-2019/prisons> 13 prisons in scotland: scottish prison service <www.sps.gov.uk/corporate/prisons/prisons.aspx> 3 prisons in northern ireland: northern ireland prison service <www.justice-ni.gov.uk/articles/about-northernireland-prison-service> 22 in the academic year of 2018-19, there were 165 higher education institutions in the uk: universities uk, ‘higher education in numbers’ < www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/facts-and-stats/pages/higher-education-data.aspx> http://www.sps.gov.uk/corporate/prisons/prisons.aspx http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/facts-and-stats/pages/higher-education-data.aspx 103 partnerships (although bpp university, as noted below, has provided street law programmes in custodial environments since 2004). of the subjects listed by the partner institutions as taught in their respective prisons, criminology is particularly prominent and outweighs the other subjects by some distance (around a half of all partnerships). other partnerships offer diverse subjects such as philosophy, psychology, drama, the creative arts, sociology, education, science and law. those universities which have had partnerships involving law students are the university of central lancashire,23 the university of cambridge24 and the open university. the inside-out and learning together models the inside-out model this model, which is more formally known as the ‘inside-out prison exchange program’, originated in the united states in 1997 and has as its tag line ‘social change through transformative education’.25 the idea for inside-out originally came from an 23 this is a learning together programme at hmp kirkham open to uclan’s criminology and law students. see also: helen codd et al ‘”the best of times and the worst of times”: reflections on developing a prison-based business law and tax clinic in the midst of a global pandemic’ (2020) international journal of public legal education 4, 2 <'the best of times and the worst of times': reflections on developing a prison-based business law and tax clinic in the midst of a global pandemic | international journal of public legal education (northumbriajournals.co.uk)> 24 this was the butler law course at hmp warren hill which was led by the late jack merritt (see: n 35). it involved the teaching of legal research and the production of resources explaining key legal issues in the criminal justice system. 25 the inside-out prison exchange program <http://www.insideoutcenter.org/> https://northumbriajournals.co.uk/index.php/ijple/article/view/1063 https://northumbriajournals.co.uk/index.php/ijple/article/view/1063 https://northumbriajournals.co.uk/index.php/ijple/article/view/1063 http://www.insideoutcenter.org/ 104 inmate following a visit to his prison (dallas state correctional institution in pennsylvania), by professor lori pompa and a group of her undergraduate students.26 the model has proved to be both inspirational and effective: an idea conceived in a prison classroom 25 years ago has now grown into an international movement comprised of more than 200 correctional and higher education partnerships, 1,100+ trained instructors … and more than 60,000 students worldwide who have benefitted from these life-changing courses.27 each programme consists of inside (prisoner) and outside (university) students being taught together in the same class on a weekly basis over a term or semester. the teaching and learning strategy typically follows a higher education model: lectures, debates, group work, and the provision of the same reading materials and assessments to all participants. while the first programme delivered by professor pompa explored issues of crime and justice, subsequent programmes have covered subjects across the curriculum. inside-out is predicated on the idea that participants mutually benefit from learning in the same collaborative space. the model is evidently transformative as it informs and shifts individual perspectives.28 a particular feature of this 26 the inside-out prison exchange program, ‘the story of inside-out’ <http://www.insideoutcenter.org/history-inside-out.html> see also lori pompa, ‘one brick at a time: the power and possibility of dialogue across the prison wall’ (june 2013) the prison journal special issue: the inside out prison exchange program 93, 2, 127 134. 27 the inside-out prison exchange program (n 26). 28 for further information about and analysis of the inside out model, see simone weil davis and barbara sherr roswell (eds), turning teaching inside out (2013) palgrave macmillan. http://www.insideoutcenter.org/history-inside-out.html 105 programme is the rigorous training provided to both participating university teachers and to their students. durham university in the united kingdom established the first inside-out programme outside the united states in 2014.29 the initiative was led by fiona measham, a professor of criminology, and the partnership between hmp frankland and durham university was featured in a bbc news item in 2016.30 other universities in england and wales have since followed suit and developed their own inside-out programmes of study.31 the learning together model in 2015, the first ‘learning together’ programme was piloted in hmp grendon by drs amy ludlow and ruth armstrong of the university of cambridge. it has been described as similar to the inside-out model as it includes many of the same elements.32 the model has the same format and blend of pre-session reading, lectures, small group work and assessment. the pilot of ten sessions was again grounded in the discipline of criminology.33 the founders of learning together have been 29 durham university, ‘durham university launches europe’s first prison exchange programme’ (29 october 2014) <durham university launches europe’s first prison exchange programme durham university> 30 bbc news, ‘durham university’s inside-out scheme sees students study with prisoners’ (30 january 2016) <www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-35409927> 31 these include the universities of kent, teesside, greenwich, and salford. 32 coates (n 12) 43. 33 for more information see: ruth armstrong and amy ludlow, ‘educational partnerships between universities and prisons: how learning together can be individually, socially and institutionally transformative’ (2016) prison service journal 225, 9-17 < prison service journal (crimeandjustice.org.uk)> https://www.dur.ac.uk/news/newsitem/?itemno=22565 https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/sites/crimeandjustice.org.uk/files/psj%20225%20may%202016.pdf 106 immensely successful in publicising their model, in generating funding and enthusiastic interest across the criminal justice and higher education sectors, and in fostering the rapid growth of a network of learning together prison universitypartnerships across the uk.34 35 the inside-out and learning together models have both been described as examples of good practice in promoting higher level education opportunities in prisons.36 (although, as indicated above, other forms of valuable prison-university partnerships have been created across the custodial estate.) the literature generated by these programmes of study indicates that they are transformational for many of the inside and outside students taking part. they challenge perceptions, break down barriers and participants learn from each other. they may also provide the inside students with the confidence, self-belief, and encouragement to seek other educational opportunities.37 34 further details about the learning together network can be found in the prisoners’ education trust partnerships directory <partnership directory prisoners' education trust> 35 in december 2019, learning together suffered an appalling tragedy at their conference at fishmongers hall in london, when an ex-prisoner who had previously participated in a learning together programme, killed two from the university of cambridge and injured a further three people. whether the event and the consequential inquests will have a chilling effect on the leadership and development of the learning together network over the longer term, remains to be seen. 36 coates (n 12) 42-43. 37 for further detail, see: jenny fogarty, natalie gray and jennifer ward, ‘transformative learning through university and prison partnerships: reflections from “learning together” pedagogical practice’ (2019) journal of prison education and reentry 6, 1, 7 24 <transformative learning through university and prison partnerships: reflections from ‘learning together’ pedagogical practice middlesex university research repository (mdx.ac.uk)> https://www.prisonerseducation.org.uk/what-we-do/work-with-universities/prison-university-partnerships-in-learning/partnerships-directory/ https://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/24293/ https://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/24293/ https://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/24293/ 107 it has been noted above that criminology is a commonly chosen vehicle for these programmes. it may be that this subject is especially powerful and affective in the custodial environment as all participants, whatever their social and educational background, will have knowledge, opinions and something valuable to contribute from both experiential and theoretical perspectives. although a strong case could also be made for psychology, sociology, creative writing and law. relatively few, however, can benefit from the inside-out and learning together programmes as those prisoners taking part altogether number in the hundreds – while there are around 90,000 – 100,000 prisoners across the custodial estate in the uk at any one time. moreover, most prisoners lack the level of educational attainment needed to participate successfully in a university-level programme of study. many prisoners present with learning difficulties and primary school levels of achievement; many were excluded from school. they would therefore be unable to complete the prereading or assessment tasks required by these programmes.38 it is difficult to evaluate quantitatively the long-term effect of these programmes of study as there are so many variables at play. qualitatively and anecdotally, the insideout and learning together programmes may be intense, immersive and affective 38 see ‘key facts’ in coates (n 12) iii. one third of prisoners self-identified as having a learning difficulty and/or a disability; many prisoners have primary school levels of attainment in english and maths; 42% of adult prisoners report as having been permanently excluded from school. 108 experiences for many of the participants,39 but to what extent do these experiences extend beyond the classroom walls once the programmes have reached their conclusion? inside students may be encouraged to seek pipeline educational opportunities through prison education departments, although many of them may already be benefitting from these opportunities and some have already completed degrees whilst inside prison.40 inside students may be able to use their participation in these programmes to evidence their rehabilitation and support a move to open conditions, an application for parole or a release on temporary licence. acceptance on these programmes can therefore be seen as an important motivation in itself. undoubtedly, outside students become more knowledgeable about the nature and reality of the custodial environment, which informs both their academic studies and their career choice. the street law model in prison settings street law is another teaching and learning model which is used to disseminate knowledge – but specifically legal knowledge in prisons. the street law model began in 1972 when law students from the georgetown university law centre taught sessions on practical law that were age, knowledge and experience-appropriate in 39 although this is the case for many entering the prison environment in other contexts for the first time. 40 for example, john crilly, who was present at the learning together conference at fishmongers hall in december 2019, studied for a law degree with the open university whilst in prison. 109 nearby secondary schools in washington dc.41 ‘street law’ is then a very apt description of what the sessions are designed to do: to provide relevant legal knowledge in an easily assimilable form which is of direct benefit to the recipients. the premise underpinning ple [public legal education] is that people who have even a basic understanding of their legal rights and duties, the way the legal system works and how to access legal advice will be better able to identify and resolve the legal problems they may encounter in the future.42 since its origin in the 1970s, the model has been adopted by hundreds of university law schools across the world, either as a pro bono element of an experiential learning module or as a university law clinic offering for volunteer law students. it has also been extended beyond secondary schools to community settings, including prisons. the teaching model ideally consists of highly interactive sessions which are rich in activities and resources. street law in prisons has been undertaken in england and wales by, for example, bpp university law school.43 bpp has been active in this area since 2004 and works mostly 41 for general information about street law including its history, see: street law <street law, inc. | about> and francine ryan, ‘streetlaw: what is that all about?’ (22 march 2018) lawyer monthly <https://www.lawyermonthly.com/2018/03/streetlaw-what-is-that-all-about/> 42 the open university law school’s open justice centre < open justice & middlesex university street law weekend – two blog posts | open justice> 43 see: ‘streetlaw: prisons’ bpp university law school pro bono centre 1 <streetlaw-prisons-brochure-aug2018.pdf (bppuniversity.ac.uk)> https://www.streetlaw.org/who-we-are https://www.lawyer-monthly.com/2018/03/streetlaw-what-is-that-all-about/ https://www.lawyer-monthly.com/2018/03/streetlaw-what-is-that-all-about/ https://www.open.ac.uk/open-justice/blog/open-justice-middlesex-university-street-law-weekend https://www.open.ac.uk/open-justice/blog/open-justice-middlesex-university-street-law-weekend http://probono.bppuniversity.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/streetlaw-prisons-brochure-aug-2018.pdf http://probono.bppuniversity.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/streetlaw-prisons-brochure-aug-2018.pdf 110 in the field of youth justice. street law in prisons has also been delivered in recent years by the law society of ireland44 and the law society of scotland as a pro bono opportunity for their trainee solicitors. street law programmes may typically deliver one or more sessions inside a prison, but as many as ten sessions over a period of months, as is the case with the inside-out and learning together models, would be less likely. prisoners often have a say in the subject of the sessions, commonly choosing from a list of topics provided by those delivering the sessions and which are usually highly relevant to their circumstances. while in the inside-out and learning together programmes there is some hierarchy between those who deliver the sessions and the students, the inside and outside students are placed on the same footing in the learning environment. in street law programmes, it is the law students who are delivering the sessions, under the supervision of law tutors and practising lawyers. in this sense, there may appear to be more of a hierarchy between the inside and outside students. however, while each law student or trainee solicitor researches the law and prepares learning materials, the inside students invariably contribute a practical understanding of the application of the law, real-world examples and the reality of life both inside prisons and outside them as ex-offenders often in stark contrast to the theory of statutory provisions. 44 law society of ireland, ‘street law’ < street law (lawsociety.ie)> see also: evelyn o’rourke, ‘street law classes in mountjoy prison’ (19 february 2019) rte radio 1 < today with sean o'rourke tuesday 19 february 2019 today with sean o'rourke (rte.ie)> https://www.lawsociety.ie/public/public-legal-education/street-law https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/today-with-sean-o-rourke/programmes/2019/0219/1031497-today-with-sean-orourke-tuesday-19-february-2019/ https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/today-with-sean-o-rourke/programmes/2019/0219/1031497-today-with-sean-orourke-tuesday-19-february-2019/ 111 street law in prisons may thus be mutually beneficial for inmates and university students alike. the open university law school and public legal education in prisons the open university law school through its open justice centre first piloted three different approaches of public legal education in prisons in 2017 and 2018. since then, fifteen projects in eleven prisons in england and wales had been undertaken by 2020.45 most of the law students involved in these projects are studying the open university module w360 ‘justice in action’. this level 3 module is built around students working together in a group under the supervision of law tutors and solicitors to provide members of the public with legal advice. the central themes of the module comprise professional identity, legal values, legal ethics and social justice, and the module is designed to foster legal, employability and personal skills.46 while the prison projects are one of the pro bono opportunities provided by the module, they are also open to other law students studying level 3 modules.47 the different types of public legal education undertaken by the open university law school in prisons are discussed in successive sections. 45 see n 3 for a list of these prisons. 46 for further detail, see the description of the module ‘justice in action’ <module description w360 justice in action (open.ac.uk)> see also: hugh mcfaul et al, ‘taking clinical legal education online: songs of innocence and experience’ (2020) international journal of public legal education 4, 2. 47 for the full range of pro bono opportunities open to the students, see the latest open justice centre annual report <http://www.open.ac.uk/open-justice> http://css2.open.ac.uk/outis/descs/mc_courses/w360.htm http://css2.open.ac.uk/outis/descs/mc_courses/w360.htm 112 prison radio project at hmp altcourse the format of this prison project has been little changed since its pilot in 2018 as it worked effectively for all involved from the beginning. hmp altcourse is a category b local prison on the outskirts of liverpool for sentenced and remanded prisoners and is run by g4s. it was opened in 1997 and was the first prison in england to be privately designed, constructed and administered. a rehabilitative prison culture is strongly in evidence at hmp altcourse.48 in a recent prisons’ inspectorate report, staff/prisoner relationships are assessed as very good to excellent and ‘purposeful activity’ through extensive education and vocational training opportunities is regarded as excellent for a local prison.49 since 2007, hmp altcourse has had its own prison radio which both contributes to and reinforces the prison’s rehabilitative prison culture. the prison radio is led and managed by a prison officer, with prisoners taking on a range of roles, from production to presentation. five hours of content is produced each day and replayed over a twenty-four hour period. 48 hmp altcourse is named after a local river, although one of the inmates working on prison radio said that he had previously believed it to be an abbreviation of ‘alter course’. 49 see hm chief inspector of prisons, report on an unannounced inspection of hmp altcourse 13-23 november 2017 hm chief inspectorate of prisons (2018) 3-4, 13 < report on an unannounced inspection of hmp altcourse by hm chief inspector of prisons 13-23 november 2017 (justiceinspectorates.gov.uk)>; and independent monitoring boards, annual report of the independent monitoring board at hmp altcourse (november 2020) 7 < ar-altcourse-2019-2020-for-circulation.pdf> https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprisons/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2018/03/altcourse-web-2017.pdf https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprisons/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2018/03/altcourse-web-2017.pdf https://s3-eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/imb-prod-storage-1ocod6bqky0vo/uploads/2020/11/ar-altcourse-2019-2020-for-circulation.pdf 113 in this public legal education project, ou law students work with the prison radio production team to produce and broadcast a law-themed programme.50 in the words of prison staff: we call this project ‘legal eagles’. last year’s pilot was so successful that we decided to continue. it can be hard for prisoners to find answers to … legal questions – we have law books in the library, but it can be daunting for many of the prisoners. the legal eagles are able to clear up their queries. it’s a positive experience for the students as well – coming into the prison challenged their perceptions of what prisoners are like.51 50 for more information about the prison radio project at hmp altcourse, see: the open university law school, ‘ou law students collaborate with prison learners’ (28 may 2019) < news | page 14 | the open university law school> 51 pete tinsley, novus information, advice and guidance worker, and dave mcalley, novus tutor and prison custody officer, hmp altcourse (n 50). https://law-school.open.ac.uk/news/open-justice-centre-co-directors-shared-open-justice-centre-successes-openminds-live-alumni?page=13 https://law-school.open.ac.uk/news/open-justice-centre-co-directors-shared-open-justice-centre-successes-openminds-live-alumni?page=13 114 figure 1: a publicity poster displayed in prison wings at hmp altcourse in the words of an ou law student: our task was to help provide content for the prison radio service by researching answers to legal questions put to us by the inmates. our hosts on the prison staff first contacted the mentors – the more senior prisoners on the wings. these mentors then queried the general prison population and a couple of weeks later a long list of intriguing questions were returned to us.52 the legal queries which the students research are general questions which would be of interest to many prisoners listening: they are not case-specific. examples of 52 henry lambert, ou law student, ‘hmp altcourse visit’ (14 january 2019) open justice blog <open justice | law, pro bono and social justice | page 4> http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/openjustice/?paged=4 http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/openjustice/?paged=4 115 questions selected for research have included making child arrangements, home detention curfew and the proceeds of crime act 2002. the students prepare talks of about fifteen minutes on each research question and answer questions put to them by the radio presenter. the students are also asked to choose their ‘desert island disc’ and the story behind it, which adds a touch of light relief. an ou law student has commented on the prison radio project as follows: this experience at altcourse, working with both the staff and inmates who were producing a very high standard of radio programming and the team from the ou, has been entirely unique in my academic and professional life. it was fascinating to collaborate with such a diversity of personal and professional backgrounds. it was gratifying to be part of a project where it genuinely felt as if everyone participating came away with something valuable: the inmates running the radio program[me] and the prison staff working on production, the general prison population that might benefit from the information presented, and the ou students being given this opportunity ... it was my first experience seeing how the law operates in practice: with all sorts of people coming together to ask questions, try to find answers, and communicate them effectively.53 53 ibid. 116 the advantage of this project is the dissemination of legal knowledge throughout the prison population. those prisoners involved in the production of the radio programme and those listening to it, are then able to pass that legal knowledge on to other prisoners. hmp altcourse, its prison radio and the legal eagles featured on bbc radio 4’s law in action programme in november 2019. prison staff, inmates, ou law students and an ou member of staff were all interviewed for the programme.54 learning together (law) in a london prison this public legal education pilot at a local category b prison in london was made possible by the facilitation of the national offender management service (now known as hm prison and probation service) and the learning together network. this project consisted of five ‘law and society’ seminars. after the first seminar on human rights, the subjects for the seminars were chosen by the prisoners themselves and included knife crime, employment law issues after prison, the criminal courts, and trial procedure taught via a mock trial involving both the inmates and students taking on different roles. we trialled the award of certificates of participation at the end of the project, as suggested by the learning together network. these were very clearly appreciated by the prisoners, as many are without qualifications. however, while this project provided worthwhile experiences for the prisoners and students involved, it 54 joshua rozenberg, ‘law in action’ (14 november 2019) bbc radio 4 <bbc radio 4 law in action, abusive parents> https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b5kv https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b5kv 117 did not operate as originally intended and agreed with the prison’s education department. overall, the prison regime in question was chaotic, dysfunctional, and not conducive to the running of the project. there were pockets of rehabilitative practice in the prison, but these were sparse and isolated. there was dysfunction and inadequate communication between the prison officers on the wings and the education department and between the senior managers of the education department and the education tutors on the ground. the lesson learned here is to exercise extensive and robust due diligence and choose with immense care the prison to partner with. although it is difficult and probably impossible to anticipate all the issues that might arise and probe the likelihood of them occurring in advance of project start: you simply do not know what you do not know. for instance, it was originally intended and agreed that we would work with the same cohort of prisoners for all five seminars. this did not turn out to be the case: there were new prisoners at every seminar due to a range of factors which are outlined below. to enable the project to continue, we decided to treat each ‘law and society’ seminar as a standalone session. it also became clear that the street law model was better suited to the circumstances than learning together owing to the level of educational attainment of the prisoners originally allocated by the education department to take part in the project. this again was not as originally agreed. our experience was not unique however: another learning 118 together project at a similar type of london prison encountered the same chaotic and non-rehabilitative prison conditions. ou law students involved in the project commented as follows: as we were running the sessions for an established class, we were working with one teacher and her group of inside students in particular. however, that didn’t mean that we had the same people every time, as was initially assumed. a lot of the time, [the] inside students we expected didn’t come, maybe because they’d been released, because their names weren’t on the register or because no guard was available to take them up [from the cells on the prison wings to the education department], so we were forced to go with the flow, but i think it worked out quite well.55 the response to the sessions by those attending however, was impressive. prisoners were encouraged to challenge views and perceptions relating to legal topics ranging from … knife crime, and privacy through to self-defence. even those initially hesitant about working alongside undergraduates developed confidence to get involved, in a not too dissimilar way to the ou students who worked with a prisoner for the very first time ... maintaining an open mind is 55 anna aitchison, ou law student, ‘public legal education at hmp wormwood scrubs’ (24 may 2018) open justice blog < public legal education at hmp wormwood scrubs | open justice> <blog | page 8 | open justice> https://www.open.ac.uk/open-justice/blog/public-legal-education-hmp-wormwood-scrubs https://www.open.ac.uk/open-justice/blog?page=7 119 crucial – expect the unexpected and refuse to stereotype anybody who finds themselves in detention, without a knowledge of their circumstances … if you believe everybody deserves an opportunity to move on from past wrongs and you are open enough to develop in unexpected ways, then i would not hesitate to recommend embracing opportunities of this nature.56 to conclude, while the open university law school may deliver the inside-out or learning together model against strict operative criteria in another prison in the future, this is not part of current plans. street law in partnership with st giles trust in nine prisons most of the open university law school’s public legal education projects in prisons have been in partnership with the highly respected charity st giles trust. the work of st giles in prisons is thoroughly rehabilitative in its aims, modus operandi and outcomes. the open university law school through its open justice centre has provided legal support for this work in nine prisons using the street law model. the partnership between the two organisations has proved to be effective and beneficial: it was nationally recognised in 2019 when the partnership was selected as a finalist for the annual lawworks pro bono awards for ‘the most effective pro bono partnership.’57 56 phil patterson, ou law student (n 55). 57 lawworks, ‘pro bono awards 2019’ (2019) 36 <lwpba19-brochure-draft1.indd (lawworks.org.uk)> https://www.lawworks.org.uk/sites/default/files/files/lwpba19-programme.pdf 120 st giles trust is an award-winning charity which provides support and services for the vulnerable and those facing poverty, both in wider society and in the criminal justice system.58 their work includes the provision of prison-based support. st giles trust trains peer advisors to become qualified at nvq level 3 in advice and guidance,59 which is a highly transferable qualification. st giles first developed the peer advisor programme in a prison setting in hmp wandsworth in 2002, training serving prisoners to offer resettlement support to fellow prisoners. at first, this peerled approach was met with scepticism and resistance as prison staff and agencies did not trust serving prisoners to be able to offer support services. this programme has since been robustly evaluated by many organisations, which have uniformly found that there is a reduction in re-offending by those prisoners who have been supported by the peer advisors.60 unlike many other rehabilitative initiatives in prison, the peer advisors are also supported by st giles trust on release into voluntary or paid employment, including with st giles. while the peer advisors use their lived experience and expertise to support people in prison facing situations similar to those which they have encountered, this process 58 st giles trust, ‘awards for our work’ <awards for our work (stgilestrust.org.uk)> 59 this is a national vocational qualification accredited by city & guilds. 60 the st giles trust peer advice programme has been assessed by wide range of independent evaluators such as frontier economics; university of kent; southwark council; the social innovation partnership; institute of crime & justice policy research, kings college, london university; pwc; and new philanthropy capital. https://www.stgilestrust.org.uk/our-impact/awards-for-our-work 121 also positively changes their own identity. mann, fitzalan howard and tew have commented that: the underlying principle of ‘do good be good’ has a strong evidence base, confirming that working for the good of others is identity changing.61 the consequential impact of the ‘do good be good’ principle within a prison context is that the peer advisors typically promote desistance and assist in the creation of a non-offending (or pro-social) identity across the prison through being positive role models who are seen as responsible, reliable and trustworthy. one nurturing aspect of rehabilitative prison culture, as noted in a section above, is the creation of hope. one way of engendering hope is receiving the advice and support of others who have overcome similar challenges.62 the peer advisors also help to create a safer, less stressful and more rehabilitative prison environment because their presence means more prisoners can access support and information around the clock, which reduces frustration and a sense of helplessness. before the pandemic, st giles worked in 31 prisons across england and wales and their peer advisors supported other prisoners in all areas and departments, such as reception, induction, diversity, healthcare, education and resettlement (that is, basic 61 mann, fitzalan howard and tew (n 11) 9. see also: timothy wilson, ‘redirect: the surprising new science of psychological change’ (2011) allen lane. 62 mann, fitzalan howard and tew (n 11) 5. 122 housing advice prior to release). however, there is a massive unmet need for generic legal knowledge and advice amongst those imprisoned and these are not within the expertise of the peer advisors. therefore, a partnership with the open university law school and the opportunity to be part of its open justice centre pro bono programme is seen by st giles trust as being of real benefit. projects have been implemented across a range of prisons, including men’s and women’s prisons, prisons in different regions and with various levels of security ranging from local b category prisons to more open c category. the prison projects operate by inviting level 3 law students to work with the peer advisors to inform and develop an area of legal knowledge that would be relevant and useful to serving prisoners. it is very much a collaborative and empowering process with both the peer advisors and law students contributing and learning from each other. each session additionally provides opportunities for reflection and discussion on broader issues relating to peer advice work which both the peer advisors and the law students find stimulating. the project sessions take place in any available space in a prison: the library, the education department, or a room set aside for use by st giles. as may be expected, the facilities are far from ideal. standard classroom equipment such as whiteboards and powerpoint facilities, are usually absent and occasionally the length of a session is 123 compromised by a prison lockdown beforehand (these are imposed when a prisoner or prisoners cannot be accounted for). ou law tutors work with their students on creating presentations, activities, handouts and leaflets on the various legal topics researched. these are thoroughly shaped, reviewed, and quality assured before delivery in the project prisons. this is a timeconsuming and demanding process for students (who are often time-poor) and tutors alike. the resources developed by ou law students that the peer advisors use and refer to when providing advice to other prisoners, have included housing law, release on temporary licence, deportation, joint enterprise, family law issues and legal issues concerning employment after prison. for example, in hmp send the ou law students developed a practical housing law toolkit that the peer advisors use to provide specific and in-depth housing advice to other prisoners. prisoners do not have access to the internet so a toolkit like this is especially useful. in hmp cardiff, resources were created on family law matters such as family visiting rights and the removal of restraining orders – again very relevant as many male prisoners are estranged from their families and need advice and support to re-connect. in hmp high down, the ou law students concentrated on producing resources that enabled the peer advisors there to give advice on ipp sentences, licence conditions and the parole process: all areas of legal knowledge very much in demand in prison. 124 there was much learning for the open university law school from the first pilot project in 2017 about both the sensory intensity of the experience for staff and students in prisons and nuancing and deepening the training given to students before entering the custodial environment. there has also been the additional challenge of preparing students for the prison projects online, as the open university is a distance learning institution. invariably, the first time the law students and their law tutor meet each other is at the prison gate immediately before the first project session. the various modes of preparatory induction, training, facilitation and support which are provided for students online have been set out in another article.63 in the second year of the prison projects, we introduced a celebratory final event following a successful trial in a london prison – presenting certificates of participation to the peer advisors and inviting prison staff to share the success of the project.64 for future projects, we plan to develop further our training on street law methodology and practical legal research by increasing the number of training sessions. the programme has had a positive impact in numerous ways. the resources produced to support the work of the peer advisers have enabled more prisoners to access a wide range of effective practical legal advice. one peer advisor in big prisons such as hmp high down and hmp cardiff, can provide advice to as many as 250 other prisoners in a month. the impact also reaches beyond the prisons hosting each project as st giles 63 mcfaul et al (n 46). 64 the idea for this came from the learning together network. 125 can use the resources developed by ou students in all the prisons they work in. therefore, the impact of the open justice programme is multiplied across the prison estate and the ou law students’ expertise can be widely disseminated. st giles provides ‘through the gate’ support for peer advisors, opening opportunities for them to work in support roles in the community on release from prison. the peer advisors who have been involved in the ou law school prison projects can then use the knowledge and expertise they gained in the wider community, thereby creating impact beyond the prison walls. here are voices of some who have been involved in the ou law school and st giles trust prison projects: ‘in this time of austerity and cuts there is little access for prisoners to specialist support and advice which makes this project even more vital. it is providing an essential service for many prisoners.’ (director of st giles trust) ‘the open justice students have given our peer advisors in the prisons a real opportunity to develop, learn and become more professional but more than anything they have provided a forum where students and prisoners can meet as equals, learn from each other and discuss a whole range of relevant issues. the sessions i have observed have been the liveliest and most stimulating i have ever witnessed inside a prison.’ (st. giles senior manager) 126 ‘i gave up a rotl65 day to attend the ou session! best thing ever after the st giles nvq.’ (prison peer advisor) ‘the tutor and the ou students listened well to our doubts and concerns and were able to come back with lots of answers and information.’ (prison peer advisor) ‘frank and candid two-way discussion about topics such as ipp66 and its impact on mental health and wellbeing.’ (prison peer advisor) ‘useful insight into various legal topics relevant to prisoners and the community.’ (prison peer advisor) ‘i just wanted to say thank you to the ou students who made a massive difference to the peer advisors here with the information and kindness shown to what they do. i know how much effort it took for [the ou students] 65 rotl is an acronym for ‘release on temporary licence’. the st giles trust peer advisor sacrificed this privilege of day release from prison to visit his family because he did not want to miss the session with ou law students. 66 ipp (imprisonment for public protection) is an indeterminate prison sentence without a finite length. while it was abolished in 2012, thousands remain in prison serving such a sentence. 127 individually and as a group to manage this process. the peer advisors … were happy to be given a voice on these issues that affect their daily jobs.’ (st giles prison trainer) ‘the prison visit itself can be nerve-racking. i was nervous about arriving at the prison late, thereby missing the visit entirely. i was worried about forgetting my id which would have been disastrous seeing as entrance to the prison was completely prohibited without it and then i was also incredibly nervous about meeting the prisoners and presenting the information to them. i suppose i was mostly worried about embarrassing myself by forgetting key aspects of my research or worse, not being able to answer the prisoners’ questions. however, as it turned out, i had nothing to be nervous about. the prisoners were incredibly intelligent, intuitive, engaging and also very enthusiastic, which made the visits and the presentations incredibly successful.’67 ‘the legal information that you may be required to provide to the prisoners varies from the sentencing guidelines, especially issues affecting custodial sentences such as licence conditions, early release and imprisonment for public protection (ipps), to joint enterprise cases … to extradition law, particularly on 67 roseline egbejimba, ou law student, ‘hmp high down prison project 2020’ open justice blog: <hmp high down prison project 2020 | open justice> https://www.open.ac.uk/open-justice/blog/hmp-high-down-prison-project-2020 https://www.open.ac.uk/open-justice/blog/hmp-high-down-prison-project-2020 128 issues affecting foreign nationals in prison facing deportation and criminal defences such as insanity, automatism and diminished responsibility. topics are based wholly on what interests and matters to the prisoners. you will find that providing prisoners with any legal information is invaluable, especially to those prisoners who have been incarcerated for a number of years and unaware of changes to the law and for those prisoners who for a number of reasons are incapable of accessing the legal help they require, themselves.’68 ‘i am incredibly appreciative to have been given the opportunity to study this module [w360 justice in action] as it has helped me to develop personally and professionally. i must admit that i was not expecting the prison project to benefit me in the way that it did. i feel privileged to have met the prisoners we worked with … the prison projects have the ability to help your legal development in ways that you cannot imagine and at the same time, it gives you the opportunity to make a difference in prisoners’ lives …’69 ‘programmes like this are helping to break down social barriers and create positive social change. they help change people’s attitudes towards different people, help to shatter incorrect preconceived ideas about prisons, and benefit both students and prisoners alike.’ (ou law student) 68 ibid. 69 ibid. 129 ‘i have thoroughly enjoyed working on this project. the skills i have learnt in this short period of time could not be taught in a classroom or an online tutorial. the direct interaction with prisoners at a vulnerable stage in their lives, working together with fellow students to achieve a common goal and being led by a tutor in a managerial role is [an] experience that is a must for any law student. this project has provided me with a first-hand insight into my achievable aim of becoming a solicitor.’ (ou law student) ‘… i also feel i have contributed to helping these men by taking the time to research issues of huge importance to them. but they have changed me, my views on prisoners and prison life are now much [better informed]. i no longer think that we should be locking people up and throwing away the key but that prison should be a fully integrated rehabilitation programme working towards re-integrating these people back into society.’ (ou law student) conclusion this article has set the open university law school and its open justice centre’s prison projects against the context of other prison-university partnerships in the uk. it has described the models of public legal education used by the open justice centre and the benefits they bring to the partnering organisations, the prisoners and law students. the key distinction between the open university law school’s prison 130 projects and many other prison-university partnerships is that the intention is to disseminate legal knowledge across a prison population, rather than benefitting the numerically few. these are sustainable projects that support prisons and charities in their rehabilitative aims. this article has additionally sought to view these projects through a pragmatic and realist lens, in addition to considering their role within a rehabilitative prison culture. it is also important to appreciate the value of projects in prisons beyond imparting legal knowledge which is relevant and useful to serving prisoners. there is much value in prisoners being able to meet people from beyond the prison walls, from a range of cultural and social-economic backgrounds, with different or even sometimes shared aspirations. working with law students can have a demonstrable impact upon the self-esteem and confidence of prisoners. it is also important to challenge the preconceptions of prisoners that students may have too. the more people outside of prisons who come to witness the conditions inside them, especially the conditions of the victorian prisons, the better. while this is not easily quantifiable, programmes like these bring future lawyers and possibly future magistrates and judges, inside the prisons of england and wales and show them first-hand the frequently disproportionate and long-term impact custodial sentences have on the life chances, physical and mental health of both prisoners and their families. these social costs often exceed by far the gravity of the original crime and the actual sentence length. 131 that understanding will support the work of charities campaigning for both prison education and prison reform and contribute to a groundswell for change. ijple 4 (1) 2020 27 the 4th uk and ireland best practice street law conference 2019 frances ridout1 the uk and ireland best practice street law conference has become a popular annual event on the uk clinical legal education calendar. taking place in early autumn, the conference is unique in celebrating this area, which is often viewed as the smaller sibling of more traditional clinical legal education models. what started as a casual discussion between clinicians at an international street law conference, has developed to be a well-known conference attracting national and international delegates as well as input from ngos and third sector organisations. the unique ethos of the conference is focused on interactivity, delegate contribution and sharing best practice (both theoretical and practical). it aims to be a truly collaborative initiative between the host institution, the oversight and steering committee, and most importantly the conference delegates. it is a valuable resource for those already experienced in street law and a helpful platform for those starting out on the journey. it was our great pleasure that queen mary university of london were invited to host the fourth annual event on september the 9th and 10th 2019, attracting over 60 delegates. in the spirit of collaboration, this article is intended to draw together the themes and discussions from the two days, both for colleagues who 1 director of the legal advice centre (clinical legal education), queen mary university of london ijple 4 (1) 2020 28 were unable to join us, and perhaps also serve as a reminder to those of us who were there but were distracted with the excitement of lego! the two days started with a session titled ‘getting off on the right foot – considerations for impactful street law’. rachael o’connor and niamh byrne really encouraged delegates to think about the reasons behind street law projects by looking at the why, the who and the what. taking delegates through these factors, using the university of leeds’ work as a case study. the session highlighted some common traps that street law projects can fall into, such as placing too much focus on the students (both in terms of numbers and content), insufficient interactivity within workshops, and not selecting relevant and appropriate topics. the session gave some valuable tips to ensure projects are impactful, including; logistical preparations to secure schools early, arranging dates in advance, as well as collaborations both external of the university and internally (e.g. with widening participation / safeguarding teams etc.). supporting projects with proper training for students and collaborators were key, as well as lesson plans and handbooks which will also increase impact. for example, teaching external volunteers about the interactive ethos of street law can be both necessary and useful. the top four takeaways from this session were; 1. start with the why, who and what (and remember them throughout), 2. understand everyone’s involvement, and keep them all connected, ijple 4 (1) 2020 29 3. design street law with your audience in mind rather than just focussing on the participating students, and 4. be organised. the day continued with an interesting insight into the use of student committees to further street law initiatives delivered by a team from the university of east anglia. this session clearly reminded us not to underestimate the power and ability of university students to lead and coordinate street law initiatives. the team outlined their experience using students to help with recruitment, logistics, running projects and dbs training which facilitated a larger programme than staff could otherwise deliver. although sometimes using students can be hard, this session was an important reminder of the power (and educational value) of involving students in leadership. moving from the more general themes of street law to a specific topic many delegates recognise, sex education; rachael kirkup from bpp gave a valuable look into the new sex and relationship education (sre) legislation which will be part of the national curriculum from september 2020. interestingly rachael highlighted the legal duty schools have to protect and safeguard students, which vastly contrasts with the 20 year old guidance in this area (which is old fashioned, outdated and limited in scope). perhaps more crucially its delivery in schools is optional. ijple 4 (1) 2020 30 the session titled “getting street law ready for statutory sre” helpfully outlined the topics that schools will need to teach. in summary, the three core areas are; 1. relationship education in primary school (including families and people who care, caring friendships, respectful relationships, online relationships and being safe); 2. relationships and sex education in secondary school (including families, respectful relationships including friendships, online and media, being safe and imitate and sexual relationships including sexual health; and 3. health education for both primary and secondary aged students (mental wellbeing, internet safety, physical health and fitness, healthy eating, drugs, alcohol and tobacco, health prevention and first aid and changes of the adolescent body). the specific detail of the new topics include more gender neutral language, and discuss lgbt issues as well as the impact of technology for sre. some specific legal topics include; marriage, consent, violence against women, online behaviour including image and information sharing, pornography, abortion, sexuality, gender identity, substance misuse, extremism, gang violence, criminal exploitation, hate crime and fgm. ijple 4 (1) 2020 31 for full details on the topics please see; https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/relationships-educationrelationships-and-sex-education-rse-and-health-education/relationships-and-sexeducation-rse-secondary. the session also highlighted some important resources to help lead street law projects in this area, e.g. free online learning resources from brook; https://learn.brook.org.uk/ and https://legacy.brook.org.uk/our-work/how-to-deliver-sre. following the lunchbreak we had some quick-fire sessions; including specific considerations for delivering street law in primary schools and how to make law accessible to children; and a discussion on the best techniques for making contacts in street law when you have no contacts. so thinking outside the norm to generate the links to start a project. examples included using students as a ‘get in’ to schools and organisations, newsletters, and engaging widening participation teams. delegate suggestions included holding a training session for school teachers which then led to a street law project for the students. the third quick-fire session was led by amy wallace who introduced delegates to the summer bridge programme at new york law school. this remarkable programme is designed to ‘bridge the gap’ between 9th graders moving from junior high school into high school. it involves undertaking a three week street law programme led by law students from new york law school. the topics covered include; the rule of law, gun law and juvenile justice https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/relationships-education-relationships-and-sex-education-rse-and-health-education/relationships-and-sex-education-rse-secondary https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/relationships-education-relationships-and-sex-education-rse-and-health-education/relationships-and-sex-education-rse-secondary https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/relationships-education-relationships-and-sex-education-rse-and-health-education/relationships-and-sex-education-rse-secondary https://learn.brook.org.uk/ https://legacy.brook.org.uk/our-work/how-to-deliver-sre ijple 4 (1) 2020 32 programmes, before moving on to a mock senate hearing and a mock trial in weeks two and three. the project had the joint benefits of getting school students ‘school ready’ and providing a summer job for law students. an interesting idea, developed from a community request – perhaps demonstrating the real ‘why’ of street law. this unique programme no doubt has applicability in numerous jurisdictions and logistically falls in the calendar year when most law students, school students and clinicians have a little more time. we were delighted that the team from street law inc. based in washington dc were able to join us for this conference (https://www.streetlaw.org/). street law inc. started in the 1970s and have developed programmes and teaching materials to educate community groups about law and government. they support classroom teachers, government and community organisations to be effective in and with the law. they brought a wealth of knowledge and support to the conference as well as leading a quick-fire session to show delegates video resources available to use for free on their website. we watched this step by step video on how to set up a street law deliberation; https://store.streetlaw.org/deliberation-resource-bundle-and-video/. there are another three very useful videos which can be found here; https://store.streetlaw.org/videos/ as well as a host of other resources. these cover the topics of facilitator tips, mini-moot courts, and taking a stand. although some may be jurisdiction based, there is cross applicability for many. https://www.streetlaw.org/ https://store.streetlaw.org/deliberation-resource-bundle-and-video/ https://store.streetlaw.org/videos/ ijple 4 (1) 2020 33 many of the sessions at this conference were designed around the problems which are faced in currently running street law projects. hannah busicott from swansea university took on the unenviable task of discussing teamwork in a session titled; ‘teaching teamwork: is it such a dreadful task’. the session highlighted the difference between teamwork and group work (noting tarricone, p. & luca, j. (2002) six criteria; commitment to team success and shared goals, interdependence, interpersonal skills, open communication and positive feedback, appropriate team composition, and commitment to team processes, leadership and accountability). the session discussed techniques about how we as clinicians could empower students to identify when their team is not working together and what can be done about it. interestingly hannah discussed a bpp survey on what employers hoped to see from graduates which put the ability to work in a team as the 6th highest sought after skill2. a thought-provoking point which provides another reason to champion student committees as discussed above. we discussed the usual problems of distracted students, free-loaders and stressed students; and hannah mind mapped a potential solution into the following stages; grouping the students, group formation, expectation setting, task allocation, technology and assessment and feedback. getting these stages right and properly engaging students in each stage can have an overall positive effect with the issue of ineffective teamwork. 2 jo-ann pugh, bpp university law school, “the law training report: what skills do firms expect of new entrants to possess in the post sqe era?” (2018). ijple 4 (1) 2020 34 the conference continued into the afternoon on a slightly more theoretical basis. stephanie jones and lucy blackburn from the university of central lancashire considered the role that street law has to play in helping students develop from being strategic surface level learners to deep learners suitable for future practice. with the solicitors qualifying examination seeming to promote surface level learning, stephanie and lucy urged us to remember peter birk’s phrase; “the practising lawyer who could merely do his job would be no more than a mechanic, useless in comparison with one endowed with the power and reasoning about the law and about its grounds and principles.” a compelling argument to support the ‘why’ discussed in our opening session. the penultimate session of the day focused on professional legal ethics (the solicitors regulation authority principles and the bar standards board core duties). we regularly promote clinical legal education as a good (if not one of the best) setting to teach professional legal ethics to law students. this is perhaps easiest to visualise with 1-2-1 client advisory or representation work. this session invited delegates to consider openly teaching legal professional ethics to students through street law activities as well. a panel consisting of richard grimes, linden thomas and freda grealy shared their wealth of experience as well as delegates simultaneously contributing through a padlet wall (https://en-gb.padlet.com/). the conference https://en-gb.padlet.com/ ijple 4 (1) 2020 35 identified a number of the solicitors regulation authority principles3 as being applicable to street law, including but not limited to; • number 1: acting in a way that upholds the constitutional principles of the rule of law, and the proper administration of justice, • number 3: acting with independence (e.g. if a community group want you to deliver a message in a certain way and you feel that is inappropriate), and • number 6: acting in a way that encourages equality, diversity and inclusion. it was noted that public legal education more widely is directly linked to these principles. there was a general view that street law and public legal education upholds the trust that the public has in the legal profession as it is about legal literacy rather than mystification transparency helping engender trust. general themes raised in this session included; ethics surrounding the choice of audience (for example should we be helping employees rather than employers), the choice of topic and how that topic is delivered to an audience (especially if they are young). issues of insurance for street law projects also raised links to acting with integrity and in the interests of each ‘client’ (which could equally mean each community group). the design of a street law project including the supervision, choice of topic / audience, and feedback all feed into the potential to have interesting reflection on professional legal ethics. 3 the updated version in effect from 25/11/2019. ijple 4 (1) 2020 36 the day closed with alan wheeler from middlesex university leading a session on ‘learning with lego’ which was inspired by lego serious play and facilitates the process of open communication through building and storytelling. we started with the process of building something that everyone feels comfortable with (like a duck), before moving on to building more structured models around law / street law which can generate discussion or reflection. perhaps school students can be asked to build what they think a lawyer looks like in an attempt to target social norms. could street law students build a model of what street law is at the end of a project to start a reflective discussion? after finishing in an array of coloured plastic on day 1; day 2 started with the trickier subject of evaluation. the street law inc. team gave the important reminder that evaluation does not need to be formal or even particularly extensive – something we can forget. we are often so easily intimidated by evaluation which can be as straight forward as getting a coffee with someone and having a discussion. evaluation was considered from various points of view, including teachers, pupils, the institution (like ijple 4 (1) 2020 37 a school) as well our law students and the legal profession. the reminder of a crucial lesson not everything that is important can be measured, and not everything that we measure is always important. much of these variables will depend on the model of street law, the community group, and the students in question. sheffield hallam gave a brilliant case study of teaching a human rights street law project in lesotho. the impact of a wonderbag (https://www.wonderbagworld.com/) on the ability of (usually) woman to access human rights is not ordinarily thought of, but this session led us through the practical impact a physical ‘slow cooker’ could have on their ability to be educated and work. a lesson in how seemingly simple practical matters can impact on fundamental freedoms, and a good reminder to think outside the box when designing street law projects. students from sheffield hallam led street law sessions for locals (mainly women), identifying different human rights issues that were relevant to them. interestingly the community in lesotho raised that there was a human right to a happy life. a truly humbling experience for staff and students to hear. street law that crosses cultural and perhaps more crucially language barriers presented an interesting challenge to law students that was wholeheartedly met by the students of sheffield hallam. this brave venture and lesson in logistics demonstrated that we don’t need to shy away from certain community groups who could be worthy beneficiaries of street law projects. https://www.wonderbagworld.com/ ijple 4 (1) 2020 38 in a week of politics when the rule of law was highly topical, valarie robertson from the law society and michael olatokun from the bingham centre for the rule of law led us away from street law and took us into the broad sphere of public legal education. it was a reminder of cross over these two areas have and the importance of giving this context to the students we are teaching. they asked clinicians to perceive themselves as playing a role in a nationwide movement to forward to the rule of law and achieve social justice through it. the law society aims for ple are as follows. help the public understand how and when they should take legal advice from a qualified and regulated solicitor. inform the public about where legal aid still exists and when they can use it. improve the public’s perception of solicitors and the justice system through increasing their understanding of the law4. justice week (in collaboration with the bar and cilex) is a spin off from national pro bono week. the law society wished to encourage delegates to host events (and offered support with publicity and assistance for collaborations). 4 https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/support-services/public-legal-education/our-public-legal-educationwork/ <accessed 28/10/19>. https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/support-services/public-legal-education/our-public-legal-education-work/ https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/support-services/public-legal-education/our-public-legal-education-work/ ijple 4 (1) 2020 39 the seven key goals for public legal education outlined by solicitor general’s committee on public legal education were discussed5. goal 1: be supported by a robust evidence base and a body of research showing where the need is and what works best. goal 2: be of a high quality, maintained to ensure that it remains accurate, accessible and useful for the people who need it and have significant social impact. goal 3: universality of ple reach across all demographics. prioritising reaching children, young adults and vulnerable groups in significant numbers across the uk – with the support of intermediaries. goal 4: be scaled up through delivery by the legal community. goal 5: harness technology and be delivered through innovative methods both on and offline. goal 6: be embedded into public services and government departments particularly as an aspect of early intervention in health, advice and community settings. 5 https://www.lawworks.org.uk/about-us/news/public-legal-education-new-vision-statement <accessed 28.10.19>. https://www.lawworks.org.uk/about-us/news/public-legal-education-new-vision-statement ijple 4 (1) 2020 40 goal 7: be understood as beneficial and utilised, by other sectors (e.g. banks, insurance, trade unions, and housing). as part of public legal education delegates were encouraged to think about life after the street law project. about the life of those in receipt of projects / workshops moving forward. they noted that there was particular interest in the ‘find a solicitor’ page on the law society website – should we be including this in street law leaflets that are given out? they also built on the message from the wonderbag, and noted that there were particular problems with services for the elderly going online, meaning that some members of society could not access them. delegates were strongly encouraged to read “decentering law through public legal education” by lisa wintersteiger and tara mulqueen6. a fantastic article highlighting the tension of public legal education and the growing trend for the public to have responsibility for coping with their own legal issues (e.g. in light of the fall of legal aid). another useful resource highlighted in the session was the advice now website (https://www.advicenow.org.uk/) which is know how tips to deal with everyday problems. another round of quick fire 5 minute sessions evaluated a secondary school initiative on stop and search which interestingly asked a group of students whether they knew 6 wintersteiger, lisa and mulqueen, tara. (2017) decentering law through public legal education. onati socio-legal series, 7 (7). https://www.advicenow.org.uk/ ijple 4 (1) 2020 41 anyone who carried a knife, before anonymously feeding the information from the session back to the school. this gave the street law initiative more depth and impact than just being a one off session. linden thomas guided us through surveys suggesting they could be used at the beginning and end of session to assist in evaluations. there was also agreement that the teachers or leaders within different community groups could also be asked to contribute to evaluations (rather than just the participants). delegates had a quick introduction to the ease of using qr codes to receive feedback quickly and easily. the open university were finding paper evaluations were just not being used and this provided a modern and useful approach which is a bit different. qr code generators can be easily found on line. in the post lunch session, current street law students debated whether street law should be available for credit in the curriculum or whether the ethos of pro bono meant it was better offered as an extra-curricular activity. while the answer remained split, one thing was clear – the idea of the student voice feeding into this annual event was a popular feature. as we move into the fifth year of hosting the conference, perhaps we will start to encourage more universities to fund equal places to students as to staff to attend the event. the importance of students having a bridge that helps them to develop street law projects was highlighted with the open university’s adaptability model. being able ijple 4 (1) 2020 42 to customise a teaching resource allows students to deliver a sound and bespoke street law service. the adaptability model contains 5 stages. 1. collecting information from the client about the project, including what is already within the knowledge base of the client. 2. processing the information to develop a workshop and methodology. 3. delivery of the workshop adapted to the client. 4. feedback (participants, community group lead e.g. teacher, law students, tutors). 5. reflection (in this model it being part of the assessment). with street law gaining popularity in the uk and ireland we are seeing credit bearing courses arise. with credit bearing courses, arise the need for student reading lists / resources to be collated and published to students. the final session focused on student reading and was led by karen watton (queen mary university of london) and sarah morse (northumbria university). after considering why we have reading lists, and who interested parties might be, delegate groups focused on what the priority of a reading list is. the choices to rank included; skills, topic specific, reflection, street law, clinical legal education and public legal education. delegates then shared their knowledge of authors / journals and articles which could be useful sources for a reading list. karen and sarah have helpfully collated an uber reading list with many suggestions on. for colleagues starting a street law programme or ijple 4 (1) 2020 43 looking to re-vamp reading texts, please do get in contact with karen (k.watton@qmul.ac.uk) or sarah (sarah.morse@northumbria.ac.uk) for a copy of the list so far. there were also discussions on the quantity of reading for practical courses and whether extra-curricular students should also be reading to improve their knowledge and base. the age old query of whether reading should be drip fed through a project / course or delivered ‘upfront’ was also approached although there did not appear to be a consensus. looking back on the themes, problems and issues discussed by delegates and session leaders throughout this conference it was clear that everyone felt proud to be part of a truly collaborative opportunity to share best practice. it is in that spirit, that we felt it proper to write up this brief summary and share the themes topics more widely with readers. do look out for the fifth uk and ireland best practice street law conference which, due to covid-19, we hope will take place in autumn 2021. mailto:k.watton@qmul.ac.uk mailto:sarah.morse@northumbria.ac.uk ijple 3 (1) 2019 street law as a unique learning method: what do students themselves actually find to be its benefits? answers from the czech republic hana draslarová [footnoteref:2] [2: hana draslarová, phd student at charles university in prague, faculty of law, focusing on legal education. she has herself passed the street law course in 2012 and now she has been participating at conducting a street law course for 3 years. e-mail: draslarova@prf.cuni.cz. this text was supported by the charles university research development schemes, programme progress q18. the author is very grateful for the support and valuable comments of her dear colleagues michal urban and tomáš friedel. ] abstract: street law is believed to be a unique learning method. but do street law university students actually acknowledge the benefits street law is supposed to bring them? has a street law course influenced them for their future? and how? this paper focuses on the benefits of street law for university students based on the empirical research conducted among the graduates of the street law course at charles university in prague, faculty of law, during which law students teach law in secondary schools. to find out whether street law actually provided the graduates with benefits, which are often stated in the literature as well as during the courses, all of the street law graduates were approached with a questionnaire. the paper focuses on the results – it shows which particular skills street law graduates feel have improved, whether they feel it has helped them to improve their legal knowledge or influenced their values. it also focuses on the opportunities street law skills can provide in legal practice and whether street law somehow influenced the teaching careers of its graduates. although the research is not on a large scale, it creates an interesting picture about the impact of this untraditional type of education from the perspective of one of the target groups. in general street law graduates in the czech republic confirmed that they find street law to be a strong educational tool for faculties of law to produce better lawyers. 1. introduction can street law produce better future lawyers? we (people involved in conducting street law) believe street law to be a very beneficial experience for the students.[footnoteref:3] but do the students[footnoteref:4] actually feel the same? has street law influenced them for their future? and if it has, how? [3: for example see: arthurs, s., cooperman, m., gallagher, j., grealy, f., lunney, j., marrs, b. & roe, r: from zero to 60: building belief, capacity and community in street law instructors in one weekend. international journal of clinical legal education, 2017, 24 (2), 123-126. available online: http://www.northumbriajournals.co.uk/index.php/ijcle/article/view/599/1017 or grimes, r., mcquoid-mason, d., o´brien, e. and j. zimmer: street law and social justice education. in: fs bloch (ed.), the global clinical movement: educating lawyers for social justice. 2011, oxford university press, 225-240.] [4: when i refer to students, i mean the university students of the faculty of law, unless specified otherwise.] while many texts focus on the positive impact of street law on society,[footnoteref:5] this paper will exclusively consider the impact of the street law course on the university students and the benefits street law brings them based on empirical research. since its beginning in 2009[footnoteref:6] almost 300 students have undertaken the basic street law course at charles university in prague, faculty of law.[footnoteref:7] the aim of the research was to find out whether the street law graduates in prague consider that they have achieved the positive outcomes of street law which are often stated in the literature and will be further analysed below. therefore the street law graduates were approached with an anonymous questionnaire, which should confirm whether and how much do students feel street law had influenced them and this paper will focus on the results of the research. the impact of street law as a form of clinical legal education will be approached from the perspective of the target group. although the research is not a large scale research it intends to create an interesting picture about the impact of this untraditional type of educational activity. moreover, this article should serve as an example of impact research of street law in civil law country, as many texts concerned with the impact of street law are from common law countries.[footnoteref:8] [5: street law benefits for the society are stressed in literature very often. for example see: grimes, r., mcquoid-mason, d., o´brien, e. and j. zimmer: street law and social justice education. in: fs bloch (ed.), the global clinical movement: educating lawyers for social justice. 2011, oxford university press, 225-240.] [6: prague street law program including the basic street law course owes a lot to its founder dr. michal urban, who established the basic course and has been conducting it since then. he is also in charge of the follow-up street law activities. ] [7: next to the street law course there are other street law activities in prague, both as a part of curriculum and as extracurricular activities. however, this text strictly focuses on the basic street law course as such, which also served as a foundation for the follow-up courses and activities. ] [8: for example see: pinder, k. a.: street law: twenty-five years and counting. journal of law & education, 1998, 27 (2), 211-233.; or mohd suhaimi, a., mohd zulkifli, n. f.: street law based cle: a student-impact-assessment. international journal of clinical legal education, 2012, 18, 218-226. available online: http://www.northumbriajournals.co.uk/index.php/ijcle/article/view/7/7; or grande montana, p.: lessons from the carnegie and best practices reports: a look at st. john´s university school of law´s street law program model for teaching professional skills. thomas m cooley j pract clin law, 2009, 11 (1), 97-126. ] the overall question was whether street law can actually produce better lawyers, or whether it serves just as an enjoyable elective module which is suitable for those who would like to teach in the future.[footnoteref:9] the aim of the research was to find out, how the students feel in relation to three main questions: [9: lawyers can teach law on many levels including phd students involved in teaching seminars or being a full time teacher at high school. however, the most common are part time teachers – professional lawyers (e.g. judges or attorneys), who enjoy teaching at high schools or universities at part-time basis. ] 1. what benefits (skills, knowledge and values) have they gained by passing the street law module? 2. have they actually used skills and knowledge from street law in legal practice? 3. how did street law influence their future teaching careers? in the following paragraphs first the street law course is described shortly, then the research details are provided and finally the data outcomes are presented. 2. street law course in prague street law, during which mainly law students teach law to non-lawyers, is a well-known and established unique learning method. however, as street law programmes take different forms all over the world it is important to at least briefly introduce the street law course in prague to set up the general background for the research results. in prague the basic street law course (which will further only be called the street law course) is a one term elective module.[footnoteref:10] at first, students undertake intense training focused on how to teach law to non-lawyers, presentation skills, lesson planning etc. following that they deliver at least ten law lessons to secondary school students, usually in pairs, and reflect upon their experience with the street law course teacher and other peers. [footnoteref:11] they are rewarded with 7 credits – but the question is, what else do they gain? the course was first offered in 2009 and the module has been open twice in each academic year since then. from the academic year 2009/2010 until the academic year 2017/2018, 288 students have passed the course. [10: it is important to realise that the law degree in the czech republic is a 5 year undergraduate master programme. students can undertake a street law elective course at any stage of their studies, although this varied during the years.] [11: for closer examination including the goals of prague street law programme see: urban, m.: how to discover students’ talents and turn them into teaching. international journal of clinical legal education, 2011, 16, 144-153. available online: http://www.northumbriajournals.co.uk/index.php/ijcle/article/view/51/55 or krupová, t., zima, m.: street law and legal clinics as civic projects: situation in the czech republic. oñati socio-legal series, 2017, 7 (8), 1647-1660. available online: http://ssrn.com/abstract=3075162 ] 3. research objectives and research data the aim of the research was to find out how the graduates assess the impact of street law on them. how do they reflect on their street law experience regarding the outcomes of the course? which skills do they feel to have taken from street law? and how often have they used them? did street law course influence their future activities or even careers? what do the students identify as important aspects of the street law? and last but not least, how did it impact on their involvement in teaching activities? all of the 288 graduates were approached with an anonymous questionnaire, which aimed to find out whether and how much do students feel street law had influenced them. overall there was 103 replies; that means the research results are based on answers from 36% of all prague street law graduates.[footnoteref:12] [12: i recognise that the response rate is not very high; however in absolute numbers we still gained data from 103 individuals, which could make the answers interesting for readers. ] questions were often choice formulated, however it was interesting to find out that when students were given an optional chance to an open answer, they used them very often and these answers are to be found very interesting and valuable. what does a typical respondent and his or her street law experience look like based on the questionnaire? there was almost the same number of female or male respondents (51:49%).[footnoteref:13] she or he was teaching in schools in prague (91%) and in pairs (68%, with the rest either teaching on their own or in groups of 3). replies across all the years were gained and reply rate varied from 23% (academic year 2010/2011) up to 53% (academic year 2013/2014) from each year. [13: that is interesting as in the czech educational system there are mostly women teaching. ] it is important to realise, that the findings, which will be further presented, can be only partially generalised. in general the replies were mostly positive; however chances are that those who enjoyed street law were more likely to fill in the questionnaire, so the data cannot be taken as absolute. 4. what did the street law experience give to the students? skills, knowledge and values from the point of view of students during our classes the street law students are trained in formulating student oriented goals with distinction to knowledge, skills and values. the same structure was followed by the research when students were asked subsequently about their opinion on particular skills, knowledge and values they find they have gained or developed by passing the street law course. these questions were formulated based on the research of benefits, which were often claimed in the literature. furthermore, respondents could themselves formulate what other benefits they see in passing street law. separately, they were asked about the teaching skills gained. 4.1. lawyering and general skills as street law is primarily a skills oriented module, we will start with skills as well. based on the literature the following skills were identified and tested: 1) ability to transfer legal information to a non-lawyer, 2) ability to look up/research particular legal information, 3) presentation skills, 4) ability to be less afraid of public speech, 5) stress management. graph n. 1: this graph reflects the results of the student point of view on the improvement of tested skills by passing the street law course. as the graph n. 1 reflects, street law graduates highly appreciate that street law improved their ability to transfer legal information to a non-lawyer (60% yes, 34% likely yes). another highly appreciated area were the presentation skills (60%, 35%), for development which there is usually not so much scope to develop in other, more traditional modules. on the contrary, when the street law graduates were asked whether street law has helped them to improve their skills to research particular legal information (see in graph n. 1 under “legal information research”), for which street law is usually highly appreciated, the numbers were much lower compared to other areas (18% yes, 30% likely yes). although it is still almost 50% of the graduates who believe that street law has (or likely has) helped them to improve their research skill, the results are worse than in other areas. this is quite concerning and the reasons for this should be more closely examined. one of the possible explanations could be, that students are often covering the “secondary school” topics and they are usually using their notes and books from the subjects covered in the faculty of law to prepare them and accordingly to them this is not to be considered as finding particular new legal information. another possible explanation might be based on the fact that within the prague street law course there is currently no lesson in particular focusing on research skills, as much more space is given to the teaching skills. the results of the research should serve as an opportunity to reflect on this fact and add at least one research skill activity as a compulsory part of the course, so the students could prepare better lessons. last but not least, this aspect of street law could be less appreciated also because of the fact that civil law legal research differs from common law and most of the prior papers this research draw on were from common law countries. despite the results of the questionnaire i believe that street law has a potential to improve students’ research skills, which are important lawyering skills. however, we do not fully take an advantage of such a potential. it can be summarised that the hypothesis that street law serves as an efficient tool to develop lawyering skills was confirmed. in general, prague street law can be considered to be highly beneficial for the law student as for developing lawyering skills. however development of particular lawyering skills (transferring legal information to a non-lawyer or presentation skills) by street law is much more appreciated than others (e.g. legal information research) and attention should be paid to that when also designing the changes to the curriculum of the course to the future. as the law school is sometimes criticised for not focusing on development of legal skills enough, especially by its students, street law might serve as a good tool to balance that. 4.2. teaching skills as described above, street law can actually provide future lawyers with important skills, which every future lawyer can benefit from. coming from the unique character of the course, next to the benefits for lawyers, students were separately asked about benefits from the point of teaching techniques they learn in the module, which could be seen as second important aspect of street law in prague. however, it is important to acknowledge that those teaching skills are not solely for law teachers, but are more universal. as street law is known for its unique teaching method[footnoteref:14] which is fully respected by street law in prague, it was not surprising that the numbers were very positive. 95% stated that it helped them to learn how to teach in an interactive way (65% yes, 30% likely yes). moreover, it helped them to learn how to plan their own lesson (74% yes, 21% likely yes) and how to communicate with secondary school students (67% yes, 29% likely yes). these results fully reflect the structure and content of the street law course as well as the unique goals and characteristics of street law in general concerned with the interactive and learners based approach.[footnoteref:15] [14: arbetman, l.: street law, inc.: context, history and future. international journal of public legal education, 2018, 2 (1), 5. available online: http://www.northumbriajournals.co.uk/index.php/ijple/article/view/705/1097 ] [15: for a street lawyer it might be hard to imagine street law lessons to be lecture based only. however, it is not law that would make the interactive teaching inseparable from street law. ] however, it is important to realise that even though students stated it helped them, not all of the lessons are high quality even after the intense training. from our experience many students come to the classes expecting to prepare lectures for their school students and they are surprised by the range of activities they can use within their classes (problems solving, group work, simulations as well as mock trials). while some students adopt these techniques quite quickly and are able to come up with an amazing range of law based activities, it is sometimes very hard to explain to others that they could try to avoid the lecture style delivery to be used throughout or through most of their lessons. 4.3. knowledge street law is believed to be a powerful tool to deepen and extend the legal knowledge of law students. however, the number of respondents stating that street law did not or did likely not help to develop their knowledge was surprisingly high (33%). graph n. 2: this graph reflects the results of the student point of view on extending their legal knowledge by street law. there are two possible explanations for that result. either street law does not have such a high potential to extend and deepen legal knowledge despite the theory. or the emphasis on the legal knowledge is not sufficiently stressed during the classes, so students do not focus on deepening their knowledge, or do not realise that they did. moreover, it could be connected with the results on finding out particular legal information discussed above. meanwhile, more than 60% of students still stated that street law did help to extend their legal knowledge (33% yes, 31% likely yes). those students were asked for a concrete description on how did they deepen their legal knowledge and their answers can be summarised in two main categories, labelled as “class preparation” and “questions from their students”. most of the respondents stated that during the class preparation they really needed to learn the topic properly and understand it to be able to transfer the legal knowledge to their school students/audience. structuring the topic for non-lawyers and preparing concrete examples helped them to gain better knowledge and a more complex overview on the topic. the second most often stated reason were questions from their school students, which served as motivation for future learning either prior to the lessons, or following them. students were more motivated to learn the topic properly to be able to answer the questions of their school students. often they also needed to find out the right answer after the class as they were not able to answer it and promised to provide their school students with the right solution during the next lesson. another interesting and rather controversial topic raised by the questionnaire results was the fact, that present rules allow students to take the course from their first year. especially while taking the course during the first year of their studies, they often face the situation when they need to conduct classes on topics they have not themselves studied at university yet. even though students have a possibility to choose and are recommended to focus on topics they have already covered, it is not always possible. there can be arguments found for as well as against this setting. students usually teach in pairs, which should ensure the possibility to double check every lesson. the positive benefits of street law should be outlined to any student who is interested in street law. younger students tend to have more time to join university offered opportunities, as later on they can get busy with extracurricular activities such as working part time in a law firm and there might be no space for street law at all. so is it better for a student to pass a street law course as a first year student or better not at all? also, it was mostly students of the lower years who stated that street law helped them to extend their legal knowledge. however, even experienced lawyers often need to find out completely new information at times, so learning how to do that in early stage of studies might be useful. however, there are a lot of arguments against street law being open for first year students. it might be argued that it is too hard for first year students to deliver a good lesson. their research skills and legal knowledge might have not reached the lowest acceptable level to be vested with the responsibility of delivering a law lesson on their own. considering the fact that it is not possible to supervise every single lesson, this situation could be dangerous for both, secondary school students, who might be delivered lower quality lesson, as well as street law students, who do not get a chance to realise whether the information they are delivering (and possibly learning themselves as well) is right or not. as there is a high risk of harm, it seems better to postpone the possibility of signing up for the subject at least until passing the first year of the studies and such entrance barriers should be introduced in the future. in conclusion, considering the legal knowledge development the data proved that street law has a potential to deepen and extend the legal knowledge of the law students and serve as an effective teaching method. however, as quite a large number of respondents did not value this aspect of street law, bigger focus and stress should be put on that during the classes in the future. 4.4. values “it is necessary to keep explaining to the public how law works and why it is important.” “i realised how big is the distance between law and non-lawyers.” [footnoteref:16] [16: examples of the answers of the respondents. ] does street law have a potential to influence students perspective on law – the subject of their studies? respondents were asked, whether street law influenced the way they perceive the law and it’s functioning. despite the broad sense of the question, 44% of the respondents have been influenced by street law in that way (14% yes, 28% likely yes). answers of the 38 respondents on the question how did street law change their point of view on law, were of special interest. students often reflected on the relationship between law and non-lawyers which they learnt to focus on during their teaching practice. as future lawyers they will very often either directly communicate with non-lawyers, or influence the non-lawyers by their professional conduct (e.g. writing a legal act), therefore it is of high importance to give the law students a chance to perceive the law from a non-lawyers point of view. the reflection was about how the law is not understandable, how important it is, how unfair it is not to have enough information or what the responsibility of lawyers means. it reflects the important social justice aspect of law, for which there is not always enough space in the “black-letter” lessons. another group of answers focused around approaching law as a system – street law helped the students to value the importance of the system, understand the basics of functioning of law and its meaning in much broader context then the regular subjects enabled them. usually, students are studying particular subjects, but the overall overview of law as a system and its complexity can be easily gained during practice and street law offers this kind of experience. in conclusion, the extra value of the street law course is that students can reflect on law as a system, its social function, professional responsibility of lawyers and the relationship between law and non-lawyers. it might be argued that this could be one of the most important benefits of street law as such. 4.5. other benefits apart from predefined answers – hypothesis based on our experience and literature on street law – students were given a chance to further formulate what other benefits they feel they have gained from street law. 45% of respondents took the chance to answer and the most interesting and the most frequent answers are briefly summed up here. students appreciated the chance to meet with other students and create mini teams. it reflects the fact that the study environment at charles university is very anonymous, as there are more than 600 students in each year and there are no study groups and unless you make a great effort you do not make study partners. based on that it could be argued that street law has a high potential to develop team work skills, which are very important for lawyers as well, as they will often be part of a legal team (may it be in a law firm or a judicial senate). the fact that several students mentioned it on their own, although they were not explicitly asked about that in the questionnaire, might support that hypothesis. students also liked the chance to increase others legal literacy and have a contact with non-lawyers. many of them stated that they liked the possibility to try out teaching.[footnoteref:17] [17: the impact in that direction is further assessed in paragraph 6. ] 5. street law benefits and legal practice after students replied to questions about the benefits they see in street law, we were interested in whether they consider that street law was actually beneficial for legal practice (contrary to the fact that at least at charles university street law is often viewed mainly as didactical course by external viewers). first, they were asked whether they find street law beneficial for future legal practice. the results were surprisingly high (55% yes, 30% likely yes). that goes against a very often statement street law has to face – that it is good for future teaching, but has no real consequences for “the real lawyers”.[footnoteref:18] however, only 20% of the respondents have actually used street law skills in practice, another 20% have likely used them, so there is quite a large difference between the potential and the actual influence of the legal practice by street law. [18: such “attacks” are not exclusive for the czech street law programme, but other programmes often face similar problems. see: pinder, k. a.: street law: twenty-five years and counting. journal of law & education, 1998, 27 (2), 225.] graph n. 3.: potential use of street law benefits in legal practice. graph n. 4.: real use of street law benefits in legal practice. and what were the situations respondents identified as examples of real use of street law skills in legal practice? the most frequent declared use of street law skills in practice was the communication of law to non-lawyers, especially clients in an attorney’s office, which is to be considered as highly important. students come to the law school and are trained in using precise language and technical terms. however, as important as it is to use the precise terms to talk and think about the law, as important it is to have a skill to “translate” the law into an everyday language. if law students are going to pursue a legal career, most of them will at some point (and a lot of them very often) need to communicate the law to non-lawyers, may it be for the attorney to discuss the case with his client, or the judge to communicate with the parties, or the legislator to explain the impact of the novel legislation to non-lawyers. street law teaches its students to constantly think about and reflect on whether the information they present is going to be understood by the other party. i believe that even if this was the only thing students would take from street law, it would still make it suitable for every law student.[footnoteref:19] [19: students may of course learn that skill somewhere else as well, but street law is proven to be effective in that way. ] 6. teaching in future – future in teaching? a hidden benefit of street law may be its influence on future lawyers teaching law. as michal urban put it in 2011, when the prague street law programme was only 2 years old, one of the ambitions of street law programme in prague has been the involvement of law students and lawyers in teaching law.[footnoteref:20] and this ambition has proved to be fulfilled. if we accept the statement that it is better to have lawyers to teach law and it is better to have lawyers trained in teaching law, then based on the research street law has a highly positive influence on teaching. [20: urban, m.: how to discover students’ talents and turn them into teaching. international journal of clinical legal education, 2011, 16, 144-153. available online: http://www.northumbriajournals.co.uk/index.php/ijcle/article/view/51/55 ] very often street law serves as an option to try out teaching.[footnoteref:21] the question is, whether after passing the course students continue with teaching or not and whether they feel it was the street law course that had an influence on that. [21: students were asked about their motivations to sign up and the most frequent answers were “possibility to try out teaching” and “extraordinary elective module”.] 44% continued with teaching after passing street law, while 56% of students did not continue, although quite a few of them stated that they would like to continue and they are thinking about it and planning it in the future, or they regret that there was not such an option during their years.[footnoteref:22] those, who somehow did continue (44%), are analysed further. street law graduates can either continue with street law on faculty level (35%), or continue on their own (27%). 17% continued both, within and outside the faculty model. [22: public legal education is recently slowly getting more popular in the czech republic. for example the czech bar association started its project “advocates to schools”, where it is supporting its members to give legal lectures in the schools. ] since the beginnings of street law in prague many follow-up options have developed and 35% of respondents took advantage of that. basically, you can either take another street law course (either an advanced street law course, which is much more demanding, or quite a light consumer law oriented street law course). another option open to street law graduates is to join a street law team as an extracurricular activity delivering different legal workshops to the public.[footnoteref:23] [23: there are workshops run by street law course students for other schools, prisoners, elderly people, children homes to name but a few. for further details see: urban, m. why there is a need for street law programmes? international journal of public legal education, 2017, 1 (1), 98-103. available online: http://www.northumbriajournals.co.uk/index.php/ijple/article/view/643/1053 or urban, m., draslarová, h.: street law for czech and slovak young roma musicians. international journal of clinical legal education, 2016, 23 (3), 148-171. available online: http://www.northumbriajournals.co.uk/index.php/ijcle/article/view/534/924] 27% of respondents continued with teaching outside of the law school. very often they stated that they continued teaching in secondary schools (either on regular basis or with occasional project lessons). furthermore, some phd students or participants of civic society project appeared within the respondents. secondary schools, law schools (where didactical training is not always an inherent part of phd studies) and civic society projects are important and the more qualified lawyers-teachers there are, the better. street law then proved to be an effective strategy, how to provide more such trained persons into the system. although it is not to be designed as a direct benefit exclusively for the students, it is definitely a benefit for the society to have more trained teachers-lawyers actively taking part in teaching law. 44% did somehow continue with teaching. 38% of respondents are still teaching in the present at least occasionally; in absolute numbers, that is 39 trained law teachers prague street law has provided to the community, who are teaching at the moment at least occasionally.[footnoteref:24] moreover, 86% (33) of those stated that it was street law that influenced them. [24: the prague street law programme is further running educational activities for full time high school teachers, where they can deepen their legal knowledge as well as train their teaching skills. those courses aim primarily at those non-lawyers who are teaching law on regular bases. ] 7. summary answers from 103 prague street law graduates helped us to reflect on the past 9 years of the basic street law course at charles university in prague. it helped to confirm that the street law course can be very beneficial for students. in general, from all the answers those answered with a negative point of view were by only one student, which is surprisingly little. the positive reflection of the graduates was confirmed given that 88% indicated they would sign up again, with an additional 9% likely signing up again. the research proved that street law graduates feel that street law helps to develop key skills for lawyers, among which communication of legal information to a non-lawyer proved to be one of the most important, followed by presentation skills. the important realisation is that those benefits make it suitable for every regular law student, not only those who are interested in teaching in future. therefore even though street law is often considered to be a secondary activity, it has proven to be suitable and useful for law students in general, as important lawyering skills are strengthened through it. a positive externality to be stressed is that street law serves as a platform to produce trained law teachers, who then often continue in increasing legal literacy of non-lawyers even after passing the course (38% of street law graduates are still teaching at least occasionally). however, some “not so satisfying results” are important for a reflection of the present street law course. for now, 3 main changes should be introduced in order to improve the impact of street law on its students and hopefully this might serve as an inspiration for those who might be facing similar problems. first of all, the course must include a legal research workshop. second of all, larger stress needs to be put on extending legal knowledge by street law by both explaining this and checking on their progress. the third change should be based on introducing entrance barriers based on the study year. however, in general the data was mostly positive and it proved street law to be beneficial for its students. i hope this research would also serve as a support for those, who are thinking about establishing a street law clinic at their law school, as it proves that it is a valuable teaching tool. if we return to the question from the beginning of this article, whether street law can produce better lawyers, the answer based on this research is definitely a “yes”. 123 ijple 3 (1) 2019 streetlaw – assisting access to justice in the employment tribunal a practice report sarah saunders senior lecturer, cardiff school of law and politics cardiff university, uk saunderss@cardiff.ac.uk introduction if you have not yet read the judgment of lord reed in the supreme court decision of unison v the lord chancellor[footnoteref:1], please allow yourself a little time over the coming weeks to enjoy a clear and evidence-based statement on access to justice in the employment tribunals of england and wales. the case was brought by unison, the uk public workers union, and challenged the introduction in july 2013 of the requirement to pay a fee to lodge an employment tribunal claim. having reviewed some of the key common law authorities and quoting from the magna carta and donoghue v stevenson no less, lord reed concluded that the fee regime was unlawful “because it has the effect of preventing access to justice”.[footnoteref:2] this landmark decision in july 2017 brought an immediate end to the fee regime. time will tell whether the uk government will attempt another fee scheme in the future, but there are other more pressing issues occupying whitehall at the moment. [1: r (on the application of unison) (appellant) v the lord chancellor (respondent) [2017] uksc 51 (supreme court). ] [2: ibid paragraph 119.] the four-year fee regime and the unison challenge brought access to justice in employment tribunals very much into the public eye. other barriers to access were also widely discussed and reported, including the lack of legal aid and legal representation for claimants in employment law matters. a number of law clinics and pro bono schemes operate to give guidance and advice to the public, in addition to the essential work of acas (the advisory, conciliation and arbitration service). the purpose of this paper is to share with you my experience of a university student streetlaw project at the cardiff employment tribunal providing guidance to unrepresented claimants about tribunal practice and procedure. the concept of streetlaw is familiar to readers of this journal as a form of public legal education aimed at helping members of the public to understand their rights. it is also frequently referred to as “legal literacy”, the importance of which richard grimes explains in a previous edition of this journal.[footnoteref:3] the key aim of our streetlaw project is to educate potential claimants about what to expect in the run up to their employment tribunal hearing and what happens on the day. as i shall explain, however, there are a number of secondary aims and several other beneficial outcomes. [3: richard grimes, 'advancing legal education for all the role of a journal' (2017) 1 international journal of public legal education 82.] the project in 2017, cardiff university joined forces with bpp bristol, swansea university and the university of south wales (“usw”) to provide streetlaw at the cardiff employment tribunal. the purpose was to give a monthly guidance session at the tribunal which unrepresented parties could attend to find out about employment tribunal procedure and what to expect at their hearing. small groups of students prepare a presentation and deliver it each month on a rota basis. the employment judiciary and tribunal staff advertise the sessions through various channels to encourage members of the public to take up the opportunity. a classic public legal education project – in michal urban’s words “citizenship education”.[footnoteref:4] [4: michal urban, 'why there is a need for street law programmes?' (2017) 1 international journal of public legal education 100.] the law school pro bono unit at bpp birmingham had trialled the project at the birmingham employment tribunals and wanted to expand it to allow their bristol based students to participate. cardiff employment judiciary expressed a keen interest, having noted the increasing number of unrepresented claimants appearing before them, and so the ball started rolling. because of the commitment required, bpp wanted to share the project with other law schools, hence approaches to cardiff, swansea and usw. we therefore immediately had the advantages of an idea that was proving successful in another area, and the combined experience of four established student pro bono units, to get the scheme off the ground in cardiff. this streetlaw project is indebted to bpp for generously supplying the presentation materials, allowing us to adapt them for the cardiff project, and for the introductory training session which they provided to all participating students and tutors at cardiff. in the build up to the first year of the scheme (2017/18), there was a lot of discussion between the four project tutors as to design, presentation content and logistics of delivery. whilst email traffic was useful, a few strategically timed conference calls between the collaborating universities’ tutors and members of the tribunal judiciary helped to clarify issues and move the plans forward. an early decision was made to combine the birmingham bi-monthly presentation model into one monthly session that dealt with both the build up to a hearing and the hearing itself. this was based on the fact that the volume of cases heard at cardiff was lower than birmingham and therefore a smaller number of attendees was expected, and also the supposition that claimants may not be prepared to spend time and money travelling twice to the tribunal for two separate presentations. each law school recruited six students for the project, with the idea that teams of three would deliver the monthly sessions at the tribunal. at cardiff the students applied through our usual pro bono application process, providing a cv and the reasons why they were interested in streetlaw. as it was the first year of the project at cardiff, and there were a number of unknowns at this stage, the selection team chose six undergraduate students who had expressed an interest in an extra-curricular employment law scheme and were a mix of 2nd, 3rd and 4th year students. we felt that each team needed some students with the maturity and confidence that came with having completed a work placement year, or spending a year abroad as part of a law and languages degree. other institutions formed teams of students from their postgraduate legal practice courses. with the combined universities’ october training done and a schedule of monthly presentations at the employment tribunal agreed with the employment judiciary for november through to may, the next landmark was a run-through of the draft presentation at the employment tribunal before an employment judge. in the meantime, it was up to each law school to design and run the streetlaw project with their chosen students. design – the tutor’s role i was keen to employ a problem-based learning approach similar to ones that i had previously used for other pro bono student schemes. these had been based on my research into problem-based learning and problem solving (particularly the work of exley and dennick[footnoteref:5] and savin-baden[footnoteref:6]). drawing on my experience and research and applying it in a rather different context, i planned a series of sessions with the students. i began with a tutor-led session, but progressively handed over responsibility to the student teams. i was keen to make the transition from teaching to facilitating, and from hands-on to soft-touch, to allow the students to develop their skills and confidence during the process. this was one of the aims of streetlaw. in planning the sessions, i needed to take into account the students’ academic and personal commitments, as the whole project was extra-curricular. the consensus was to meet on wednesday afternoons, as there was no teaching and it fitted with the employment tribunal practice and presentations, which were to be on wednesdays. [5: kate exley and reg dennick, small group teaching. (routledge falmer 2004).] [6: maggi savin-baden, problem-based learning in higher education: untold stories. (society for research in higher education and open university press 2000).] the first internal training session following the bpp general training afternoon was an opportunity for an ice-breaker, during which each student introduced themselves and explained why they had chosen streetlaw. this helped the team to get to know each other as well as to give me an insight into their experience and motivation. it also revealed that one of the students was a welsh speaker and we planned to use this at the presentation if the need arose. with the ultimate aim being the public presentations, i felt it important at the outset to get the students talking – if any would be put off by this it was better to find out at the start, and suggest transferring to an alternative pro bono project. we discussed and reflected on the previous week’s training. then the students picked a couple of slides each to study and present. following each short presentation, students provided brief peer review and i gave a little constructive feedback. at this stage it was important to instil confidence and encouragement, and i therefore emphasised the better skills that the students had shown and invited them all to emulate those. these included eye contact with the audience, speaking clearly and slowly, and showing interest in what they were saying. we also discussed the underlying employment law and procedure and, as an employment law tutor, i was able to help the students understand the context in which the presentation was set. some of the students were already coming up with suggestions for amendment and improvement of the presentation slides and we planned to discuss this at the next training session. in the meantime, the students agreed which slides they would each practise to be ready to present at the run-through in the tribunal the following week. the next wednesday session was an opportunity for the students to practise presenting in front of each other and me, before doing it in front of the employment judge later that week. the students were engaged and had practised their part of the presentation – some had written notes or bullet point prompts to help them remember what to say. i was fine with this approach as the subject matter was new to all of the students and it was early days in terms of preparing and practising for the public presentations. attending the tribunal for the run-through was a great experience for the students. working in close partnership with the employment judiciary is an important element of this streetlaw project. arriving at the tribunal to be welcomed with a bag search and body scan was an eye-opener for the students and to be shown around an actual tribunal hearing room and meet an employment judge made the whole project come alive. exposing students to “law in the real world” is the underlying concept of all of our pro bono schemes at cardiff. the run-through was a shared experience with the collaborating law schools and an opportunity for tutors and students to share ideas and reflect on each other’s practices. the feedback from the judge on the content and delivery of the presentation was invaluable in ensuring that the law and procedure were up to date and relevant to the practice at the cardiff employment tribunal, knowing that there are some procedural and practical variations at different venues. at the next training session back at the university, we reflected on the run-though at the tribunal and the employment judge’s feedback. the judge suggested reducing the content of some of the slides to make them more “public friendly”, and preferred those parts of the presentation that addressed the audience as “you”. the students also had other ideas about altering slides, simplifying some concepts, improving their own speaker notes and generally engaging fully with the task at hand. they showed a competence and confidence which allowed me to start stepping back from a tutor-led approach. i was able to invite them to plan the next few practice sessions in the lead up to their first public presentation. i handed over to the students responsibility for splitting the team between the two allocated presentations, and liaising with each other about updates to slides and delivery. facebook and whatsapp make this sort of communication exercise very easy for students. there is a sense of freedom when leading an extra-curricular activity such as this. i did not feel hide-bound to have a tutor-led and assessment-driven approach. however, i did have a sound pedagogical basis with clear aims and objectives and learning outcomes that became more visible and greater in number as the project progressed. the next few sessions were therefore very much student-led. i booked a training room at the same time each week and left the students to organise their activities. they let me know when they needed my input, and every so often i attended part of their sessions to help out with employment law queries, affirm proposed changes to slides, listen to part of the presentation and give feedback on delivery skills. this also gave me an opportunity to update the students on the logistics of the public presentations and the feedback from the other law school groups who had delivered monthly presentations ahead of cardiff. whilst the students can be left alone to find a way of working, develop teamwork skills, give each other peer review feedback, and enjoy the freedom of this type of project, the input of a tutor is important for the smooth running of the project and to ensure that the aims and objectives are properly achieved. being a specialist in the field of employment law and having contacts with the judiciary and acas was a definite advantage. as urban acknowledges[footnoteref:7], these programmes need to be co-run by university academic staff to ensure that they continue and are sustainable. i agree, and would emphasise the need to be there in the background overseeing the project, being a quality check at certain key stages and ultimately to ensure delivery of the learning outcomes. the benefit of feed forward into the following year cannot be underestimated either, as i shall explain below in relation to year 2 of streetlaw. it is also essential that the students do not misinform the public as, if acted on, this could lead to unwelcome legal implications. [7: michal urban, 'why there is a need for street law programmes?' (2017) 1 international journal of public legal education 101.] our allocated public presentation dates were consecutive ones in february and march 2018. on the day of the first public presentation, i met the february student team for their final rehearsal. i was pleased to see that they were well-practised, both individually and together, so the presentation was coherent, and clear. the three students had split the presentation into two halves, each of three parts. they alternated the delivery between them to keep it fresh and interesting. through practice and feedback, their presentation skills had improved over the months to produce an engaging submission. my feedback at this stage was encouragement, confidence and a reminder to consciously slow their speech down, as we are all inclined to speed up a little when faced with an audience. it was no surprise that the et presentation went well. a pleasing number of members of the public attended and engaged with questions. the students managed questions by answering those that sought clarity on something they had said, and directing others to the acas representative also present to assist. the latter was invaluable in fielding a number of questions beyond the guidance that the students had given, and their input to an exercise like this is essential. i acted as chair in relation to some of the questions asked, directing them to the students to the extent that they were within the scope of their guidance, or to acas if beyond that and leaning towards advice. the public’s response the students start their presentation by explaining that the aim of streetlaw is to demystify the law to members of the public. we wanted to know if this had been achieved and asked the attendees to complete a short feedback ticket before leaving the presentation. all were very positive – for example, “it was a thorough and informative presentation, thank you”, “excellent presentation on the process, well done to the students” and “answered all questions very well and clearly”. this was a welcome reward for the february student team, and we brought it to the next training session to show and encourage the march team. the february team also reported back on their experience and gave the march team some tips to help them with their presentation. this continued the element of group work and peer review that formed a significant part of the streetlaw project. the march team organised a few more practices amongst themselves, and we had a dress rehearsal on the afternoon of the presentation. as with the february team, by this stage praise and encouragement were the order of the day, and the team were well ready for their public appearance. it was equally competent and well received by the attendees – for example, “helped relieve some of the concerns i had”, “the students helped to make it a less daunting experience and helped to see the room set up”, and “gave me an opportunity to ask questions about the process and give a better insight into the hearing day itself”. so a job well done, with the attendees again endorsing the students’ public legal education project. the student perspective the premise that undergraduate students with little or no knowledge of employment law or tribunal procedure give guidance to members of the public facing an employment tribunal process may seem a strange one, but these are keen law students with a hunger for real world experiences, wanting to impress, and able to view the employment law material at the outset as the lay person may see it. through the project, the students developed their knowledge and understanding of employment law and procedure, but the newness of it helped them to present it to the public in an accessible way. it was a new skill to add to the armoury of students whose experience was previously limited to discussing and presenting to fellow law students and law tutors. at the end of the project, the students were asked to undertake a reflection on their involvement, in line with students completing all of our pro bono schemes. being the first year of the streetlaw project, i did not know what to expect but felt that it was a necessary step to assist with reviewing the project, checking whether the learning outcomes had been achieved, and improving it for the following year. here are some of the students’ comments: what did you particularly enjoy about it? “it felt like you were actually helping people who were in genuine need of support in a time of confusion and stress” – one of the fundamental concepts of public legal education. “it allowed me to learn about an area of law which was not an optional module and it also allowed me to improve my presentation skills in a friendly environment” – advantages and skill development for students. “i enjoyed the flexibility around it” – enabled by its extra-curricular nature. would you suggest any changes for future students? “going to the employment tribunal to watch a real procedure would have been helpful. we talked about going as a group but never did” – the students were encouraged to view a live case but, being an extra-curricular activity, they found it difficult to set aside further time for this. “little and often is the best – read through the lecture slides regularly so you become familiar with them” – this was practical training advice for the following year’s students. have you used your experience of the project in application forms, interviews etc., and if so how, and with what success? “yes. all employers i have discussed streetlaw with have taken a genuine interest in the project and have so far managed to secure a paralegal role with [named firm]. i think the reason they took interest is because unlike academic study, you are learning how the process works in the real world. it’s also a great opportunity to practise your presentation skills” – a great endorsement for the employability benefits of participating in the streetlaw project. “yes, it has provided me with relevant legal work experience and lots of transferable skills so i have included it on my cv and applications forms” – again, the students are improving their employability. i also provided several references for students’ applications for work experience or further study. do you have any other comments about the experience? “it’s a flexible pro bono project which is not too time consuming, something which was useful for me as i had a busy timetable in the first semester”. “the whole experience was relaxed and enjoyable from the beginning”. “the experience is definitely worthwhile. not only is it a great cv booster and a chance to refine your presentational skills but it is also a chance to really help someone in what might be the most stressful process they will go through” – an accurate summary of the value of the streetlaw project as both an educational tool and a public legal education project. in thinking about streetlaw and composing these comments the students went through the process of reflection. we are all aware of the importance of self-reflection and there are several useful texts available to help students (and tutors) to reflect on their work in general and specific projects. key texts i recommend to students are schon[footnoteref:8] and boud, keogh and walker[footnoteref:9] which are suitable for dipping into to develop a sense of the reflective process. [8: donald a schon, the reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action (routledge 2016).] [9: david boud, rosemary keogh and david walker, reflection: turning experience into learning (taylor and francis 2013).] judicial support strong support and involvement from the employment judiciary is an essential component of streetlaw in the employment tribunal. the local judiciary were a driving force in initiating the project, and supporting it throughout. happily, they were also pleased with the outcomes – “i just wanted to thank everyone for their enthusiasm and support for the streetlaw scheme – it has been a very useful addition to the range of ways we can signpost support/advice to litigants in person…i hope that the colleges/universities will want to continue with the scheme next academic year”. [employment judge at cardiff employment tribunal]. this was confirmation that the employment judiciary agreed that streetlaw was a success for citizenship education. year 2 with ringing endorsements from the people who attended and the employment judiciary about this public legal education initiative, all stakeholders were keen to take streetlaw into its second year. despite changes in project leadership at a couple of the law schools, we were able to feed forward the experiences and reflections of year 1 to adopt a much more efficient approach to setting up and running year 2. the structure was in place and the links between stakeholders established, so planning time was markedly reduced. this was good from my point of view as an academic, with increasing pressures on workload and accountability being felt across universities. each law school selected students for the project and we all came together in cardiff again for the initial training from bpp. this was followed by training and practice sessions within each participating law school and a run-through again kindly hosted by the employment judiciary at cardiff employment tribunal. as with the second year of any course or project, there is less wasted time, a better focus, more efficient use of materials and overall a smoother delivery. i was able to cut by half the number of hours the project took me, comparing year 2 with year 1, with no drop in the effectiveness of streetlaw for students or public. there were some new challenges, however, for the second year. the main one was that the students who had expressed an interest in streetlaw were just starting their second year at cardiff, and were not the confident final year students who had formed the majority in year 1. i therefore planned a softer start to the project, but with a view to moving from tutor-led sessions to facilitation of student only sessions as soon as felt appropriate to ensure the learning outcomes were achieved. at the first training session, i orchestrated a soft ice-breaker, to allow each student a voice. this worked well and allowed us to progress to a group discussion about the skills and benefits the students expected to gain from being involved in streetlaw. i had the benefit of knowing the outcomes achieved in year 1, but was interested to know what the year 2 students expected at the outset. later, i say how these expectations were realised and surpassed, which was rewarding. the following week, we watched and listened to part of the presentation that the year 1 students had recorded, to give the year 2 students an idea of what the project entailed. it was useful to have the benefit of year 1’s materials and recording. i followed this by asking each student in turn to stand and talk about their home town or similar for two minutes. the purpose was to encourage confidence and team building, whilst checking the initial level of presentation skills. this was followed by a gentle discussion on the skill of presenting, with the students contributing their views on good and bad aspects and areas for improvement. i was pleased that all six students in the group felt able to stand in front of their peers and speak – a good start – and we learnt about six different towns across five different countries! something else new for year 2 was my request that the students took responsibility for producing minutes of each of our sessions. it is another way of giving ownership of the project to the students, as well as them learning a new skill of minute taking and distribution. the students took it in turns to produce and circulate a brief minutes of each of our sessions. this was useful week-to-week to map progress, and also a handy record for the students at the end of the project when they were writing their reflections. i encouraged students to keep a file of these minutes and the project materials, to help them with their reflection, and indeed their cv or application forms at a later date. the project progressed along the lines of year 1 from then on and the students gained in confidence as they gradually took over the sessions – working on the presentation, making amendments and improvements, splitting it up between them and practising and giving feedback to each other. i was able to withdraw to merely keeping a watching brief from time to time. in year 2, cardiff had one presentation at the tribunal and this worked in our favour as the six students could split it between them, rather than having a third each (over two presentations) as in year 1. it probably suited the less experienced group of year 2 students, allowing them a taste of public presentation without giving them too much exposure. consequently, the public streetlaw session at the tribunal went well and was well received – “confidence giving”, “clear presentation – all questions answered”, and “supportive”. it therefore achieved its public legal education aims. year 2 student reflection with the public presentation complete, and recordings of part 1 and part 2 of the presentation made back at the university, the students were invited to reflect on the streetlaw project. here are some of their responses: what did you particularly enjoy about it? “learning about a different area of law was very worthwhile and i was surprised to find the extent to which i enjoyed the giving of the presentation itself”. “i particularly enjoyed learning how to present orally. before this project, i had never done public speaking”. “i enjoyed working as part of a group”. “i enjoyed being able to present information that can genuinely help or make a difference to someone’s case”. what skills and benefits have you gained from the project? the students referred to a number of important skills here – communication skills, confidence, time management, presenting, public speaking, working independently and as part of a group, professionalism. some of these the students had anticipated in the first training session, but others were unexpected and welcome. all mentioned the gaining of confidence, which was something that this group of students was lacking and therefore had more to gain from the project in this respect. would you suggest any changes for future students? there was nothing of substance to feed forward here. a typical response was “i do not have any changes to suggest to future students as the project was very enjoyable and ran smoothly”. have you used or do you intend to use your experience of the project in application forms, interviews etc., and if so how, and with what success? “i have already used the project as an example for legal experience in a mini-pupillage application. i have also included the project on my cv and all the skills gained from it”. “i intend to use it in application forms and interviews for vacation schemes and training contracts. i would use this experience to highlight team work and communication skills”. “i feel this project has enhanced my employability prospects as i have built on my existing skills, and learnt new skills which are valuable to employers”. “i feel it would help set me apart from other candidates. additionally it showcases a lot of different skills”. all evidence of a worthwhile project from the students’ perspective. do you have any other comments about streetlaw? “it massively improved my confidence”. “it was a great opportunity to be able to practise in front of a judge at the et and then to deliver the presentation to unrepresented claimants”. “it was a very valuable and worthwhile experience”. “it has been very enjoyable and hugely worthwhile”. the students recognised the value not only to themselves, but also in terms of enhancing the legal literacy of members of the public facing the tribunal process. expected consequences the collaborating law schools and the local employment judiciary had set out with several aims and outcomes in mind. after 2 years of the project, i have looked back and reflected on what we achieved. the main expected consequences are first considered. an important outcome shared by the university and the students themselves is that the students develop skills, and their confidence, and furthermore their employability. as nick touati remarks, undertaking pro bono work and participating in extra-curricular activities give students “skills and experience that will be valued by employers far beyond the legal industry.”[footnoteref:10] the student reflections above show that this outcome was certainly achieved through this extra-curricular activity which gave them a feel of pro bono, public presentation skills, confidence and self-esteem, and an opportunity to reflect. it truly was experiential learning in streetlaw style. [10: nick touati, 'opportunities on the horizon for law students' (2016) 160/25 solicitors journal 15.] as a public legal education project, it was also an essential outcome that streetlaw delivered on legal literacy. the attendees’ feedback shows that this was successful – giving unrepresented claimants an opportunity to gain information about the employment tribunal procedure and process, ask questions, and meet acas conciliation officers, all in a real tribunal hearing room. it helped to de-mystify employment law and procedure, which was a key aim of our streetlaw project. as an academic, i enjoyed the opportunity to test a variety of teaching and learning styles through an extra-curricular activity that did not have the strict boundaries of assessment or examination. there was a common general approach across year 1 and year 2 of the project, but some alterations due to the different make-up of the student teams and the added efficiency that year 2 brought. the students’ reflections indicate that they welcomed the approach and the flexibility. for acas it was an opportunity to provide information about the services acas provides and links to other employment law guidance. to strengthen my links with acas was an anticipated outcome, as early on in the planning process the employment judiciary brought acas on board and arranged for them to attend each presentation. this turned out much better than expected, as acas provided one or two experienced conciliation officers for each presentation, and they were invaluable in giving guidance to the attendees on employment tribunal matters beyond the scope of the students’ presentation. acas also played a role in advertising the sessions and informing unrepresented claimants who approached them for advice about the sessions. a driving force for the employment judiciary was to educate prospective unrepresented claimants before they came to their hearing. this was achieved, helping the judges by having more informed and better prepared claimants before them. this has the knock-on effect of saving the tribunal’s time and the ultimate goal of improving access to justice. in addition, my links with the employment judiciary were strengthened resulting in offers by the judges to come and talk to students at the university, and inviting students to observe proceedings at the tribunal and talk to them there. the input and encouragement of the judiciary went beyond our expectation as i mention below. unexpected outcomes in reflecting on our streetlaw project, i also identified a number of unexpected outcomes, the principal of which are mentioned below. we had an existing relationship with lawworks, the solicitors’ pro bono group, and they contacted us in year 1 with an invitation for students to attend a talk on the fundamentals of employment law. this was a great opportunity for our streetlaw students to improve their employment law knowledge and they, and a number of our other law clinic students, signed up for the talk. as it was held at the offices of eversheds sutherland, it was an unexpected treat for the students to see inside a solicitors’ office (and sample their buffet offering!). the bond with law works was strengthened in year 2 of the project, as i offered to provide an introduction to employment law talk for the students, and opened it up to all local pro bono clinic volunteers. it was well attended, and served not only as a context for my streetlaw students, but also those from the other institutions and several other clinic volunteers wanting to find out about employment law. so it was a further opportunity for legal literacy, beyond the streetlaw project. the students’ rehearsal at the tribunal in front of an employment judge was offered in the planning stage as, for their part, the judiciary wanted to make sure that the content and delivery would be appropriate for a presentation to unrepresented claimants in a tribunal room. our students not only met an employment judge at the rehearsal, however, as on the day of their presentation one of our teams was greeted by the regional judge in person, who took the time to speak to them and thank them for taking part. the students were impressed with this and felt it added value to the whole experience. some of them shared their enthusiasm with friends and fellow students on social media, which helped to raise the profile of the project. i have already mentioned the freedom i welcome as an academic in this project, and the experience is all the more fulfilling for the challenges it throws up – for example, being outside the traditional classroom environment, collaboration with other law schools, and testing different methods of teaching and learning. the added bonus of participation in pro bono, strengthening links with practice, and improving my own understanding of employment law and practice, also deserve a mention. final conclusion in conclusion, i recommend streetlaw to you, for all the reasons i have discussed in this paper. employment law and the employment tribunal are the context for this streetlaw project, but the possibilities are endless. i encourage you to explore the creation of a streetlaw project in your academic field. for my part, bring on year 3 of streetlaw in the employment tribunal! acknowledgments i wish to acknowledge and thank those without whom this project would not exist nor be a success. the employment judiciary at cardiff employment tribunal for initiating and encouraging the idea and supporting it throughout. bpp law school for providing materials and experience from a sister project and for giving the initial training. the law schools of bpp bristol, swansea university and university of south wales for participating and collaborating in a supportive and constructive way to make streetlaw a success. the conciliation officers from acas cardiff who attend and support all of the public presentations. the staff at cardiff employment tribunal for enabling the logistics and smooth running of streetlaw. lawworks for providing and supporting training on employment law. last, but by no means least, the students and staff at cardiff university who engage in and support streetlaw. 50 ijple 3 (1) 2019 collaborative public legal education: a case of ‘many hands make light work’, or ‘too many cooks’?! rachael kirkup, streetlaw supervising solicitor, bpp university law school abstract: the following opinion piece offers views on the benefits and challenges of collaborating with other individuals or entities to deliver public legal education, and some practical tips to consider when embarking on such a venture. bpp university law school’s pro bono centre (“bpp”) is entering its 15th year of running streetlaw, a free public legal education (“ple”) project delivered by law student volunteers. the project works with a range of people in the uk including schoolchildren, prisoners and ex-offenders, people affected by homelessness, and mental health charities. in the 2017/18 academic year, over 450 bpp law student volunteers delivered over 350 hours of ple to over 3500 members of the public, in and around the seven cities in the uk in which bpp operates. to deliver ple on this scale, bpp has often looked outside of the university for external support for its projects. we have collaborated with other professionals, universities, organisations and charities in a number of ways, including co-delivering discrete ple events (e.g. a nationwide campaign to engage law students and legal professionals in teaching young people about social media and the law, in collaboration with young citizens[footnoteref:1]), and ongoing projects (e.g. delivering ple about tribunal procedures to litigants in person running employment tribunal claims, in collaboration with local universities, tribunals and acas). [1: http://www.cleo-uk.org/product/national-pro-bono-week-volunteer-bring-law-life-local-school/ [accessed 26 11 18] ] many of our ple collaborations have been and continue to be successful. however, there have been times where the projects have encountered stumbling blocks, perhaps because we, or our collaborators, have been slow to recognise problems, or too polite to voice our concerns about them. the bpp team recently met to exchange views about the various collaborative ple projects in which team members have been involved. the outcome of that meeting is this article: a summary of the main benefits and challenges of collaborative ple as the bpp team perceives them, and a list of 5 practical tips for anybody considering launching a collaborative ple project. we found little in the existing literature on collaborative ple projects; however, we have been able to draw support for our views and extrapolate lessons from scholarship emanating from the chiropractic, medical and business fields. the definition of collaboration for the purposes of this article we have adopted the definition of collaboration favoured by mattessich and monsey (1992)[footnoteref:2]: a “mutually beneficial and well-defined relationship entered into by two or more organizations to achieve common goals”. this relationship includes the sharing of responsibility, accountability, resources and rewards. [2: mattessich pw, monsey br. 53 st. paul mn: amherst h. wilder foundation; 1992. collaboration – what makes it work: a review of research literature on factors influencing successful collaboration. wilder research center. available at: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ed390758 [accessed 14 12 18] ] benefits of collaborative ple so, do many hands make light work? true collaboration, done well, can lead to a ple project that is wider in scope, and higher in quality, than might have been achieved on one’s own. you may have a fantastic idea for a topic, and/or a target audience, but lack the know-how, contacts, and/or resources to bring that idea to life. this is where collaboration can really add value. drummond and mckeever (2015)[footnoteref:3] report that 75% of university law clinics they surveyed had formal collaborative arrangements with solicitors, barristers, advice agencies and legal charities, and that the main value such collaborations brought (from the perspective of the universities) was supervision, expertise, capacity, and support. in a ple context, externals may be able to provide the expertise that you/your institution are lacking – whether that is regarding the legal content of your workshops, or knowledge about how to deliver that content to a specific audience. at bpp, for example, since 2016 a mental capacity specialist external to the university has provided the legal content and training to equip law student volunteers with the confidence and competency to deliver ple workshops to dementia carer groups, focussed on their legal rights and responsibilities under mental health legislation (the ‘with law in mind’ project). over 300 carers in the greater manchester area have now benefited from these workshops. bpp has also benefitted from numerous barristers from carmelite chambers dedicating their free time to check the legal content of our criminal law streetlaw workshops, including sessions on knife crime and secondary liability. certainly, collaborations of this kind can help support the goals of the government’s recently launched 10 year vision and goals for public legal education[footnoteref:4] (“the 10 year vision”), which include ensuring that the legal content of ple is accurate and of high quality. [3: drummond, o. and mckeever, g. (2015) access to justice through university law clinics (ulster: ulster university law school). available at: https://www.ulster.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/132654/access-to-justice-through-uni-law-clinics-november-2015.pdf [accessed 14 11 2018]] [4: ‘a ten year vision for public legal education’ prepared by the solicitor general’s committee on public legal education, found at: https://www.lawworks.org.uk/about-us/news/public-legal-education-new-vision-statement [accessed 15 11 2018] ] if not their legal expertise, other potential collaborators may be able to share contacts; staff and student resource; physical space and equipment; or our personal favourite – money to buy the tea and cakes for your ple events (which, joking aside, can often put many streetlaw audiences at ease)! the result of this pooling of knowledge, resources and costs can mean much needed information is delivered to a wider audience (in line with the 10 year vision’s aim of scaling up ple delivery by the legal community). it can expose your law students to professionals who are willing to provide career advice, demonstrate good practice and show a career-long commitment to pro bono work, as well as providing students with new experiences which can develop knowledge and skills relevant to their chosen discipline, including communication, teamwork and client empathy. green and johnson (2015)[footnoteref:5] cite many of the benefits referred to above in their review of inter-professional collaboration in the healthcare sector, as well as the ‘reflected’ benefit of associating with others who are successful. [5: green bn, johnson cd. interprofessional collaboration in research, education, and clinical practice: working together for a better future. j chiropr educ. 2015;29(1):1-10. available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc4360764/ [accessed 13 12 2018]] challenges of collaborative ple there are, of course, potential barriers to successful collaboration – the dreaded ‘too many cooks’ spoiling the proverbial ‘broth’. green and johnson (2015) comment that conflict of some degree is inevitable during collaborative projects, because in all likelihood there will be some differences in culture, attitude, value and customs between different institutions. frustrations can rise where individuals feel that there is an unequal distribution of tasks or effort, the group lack a shared vision, or there are clashing agendas of institutions. there is also the much derided ‘trial by committee’ – getting everyone’s comments on the minutiae of a draft document or email can slow progress and foster an atmosphere of distrust. a negative atmosphere can be exacerbated if individuals sense they/their institutions are viewed as having a ‘lower status’ than their fellow collaborators, or territorialism exists (because collaborators may be rivals in other respects e.g. competing for funding, staff or students). at their worst, joint ple projects can leave you feeling exhausted, overworked and undervalued, and concerned that your own and your institution’s reputation will be marred by inconsistent quality in project delivery. to make sure you reap the benefits that a collaborative ple project can afford, and to avoid the pitfalls, we set out below bpp’s top 5 tips for keeping your collaborative ple project on track. 1. agree a set of shared goals and values at the outset mattessich and monsey (1992) identify a shared vision, with clearly agreed upon objectives, as a key factor influencing the success of collaboration. vangen and huxham (2003)[footnoteref:6] argue that the differing resources that provide potential for collaborative advantage are, in fact, often a result of differences in organisational purpose. therefore, organisations having different reasons for wanting to collaborate is not just a likelihood, but to be expected. for example, drummond and mckeever (2015) report contributing to their organisation’s corporate social responsibilities as a key driver for private corporations collaborating with university law clinics; the universities themselves may be more focussed on raising their institutions’ and students’ profile within the legal market, and improving graduate outcomes. [6: vangen s, huxham c. nurturing collaborative relations: building rust in interorganisational collaboration. j appl behav sci. 2003; 39:5 – 31. available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/239536801_nurturing_collaborative_relations_building_trust_in_interorganizational_collaboration [accessed 11 12 2018] ] institutional and individual agendas may be different, but it does not mean they are incompatible. it is important that all collaborators are as honest as they can be about what they/their institutions are prepared to invest in the alliance (e.g. finance; human resource) and what they hope to gain from it. such honesty can help with trust building, and allows parties to consider if the differing aims can be accommodated. if they cannot, ask yourselves if you should be pursuing this particular collaboration. your agreed set of objectives and values should ideally be committed to paper, and can be revisited at pre-agreed times, or whenever you feel the project is going in a direction you did not agree to or expect. an example of this is the key objectives document drawn up for the law ambassador programme which runs at bpp leeds. this is a two-year programme which matches sixth form students with a local law firm and bpp students, providing them with a range of legal experiences including office tours, court visits and mock trial challenges. it seeks to improve young people’s legal knowledge and skills, raise their career aspirations, and create positive perceptions of the legal profession. specific objectives for each collaborator differ: for the law firms, a significant motivator is the provision of an accessible way for staff to contribute to their corporate social responsibility agenda, whilst refining their mentoring skills for translation back into the workplace. bpp is drawn to the opportunities for its own students to enhance their employability skills (e.g. public speaking) and to network with / learn from legal professionals. bpp also had a particular interest in launching a project which could potentially track recipients of ple across a period of time and thus provide the opportunity to measure the impact of ple on its audience (in line with the 10 year vision’s goal (number 1) of supporting ple with a robust evidence base). the collaborators are all, however, united by two overarching objectives: to use their legal expertise to make a valuable contribution to their local community, and to promote inclusivity in the legal profession. as the project sees its first law ambassador cohort graduate, and enters into its annual review period, the key objectives document has proven pivotal in shaping ongoing improvements with the project (e.g. changes to preand post-programme participant questionnaire design; the introduction of one-to-one email mentoring opportunities for lawyers) and thus securing future commitment from all collaborators. 2. tell each other about the relevant skills, knowledge, interests, resources and timetables you/your institutions have clearly delineated roles and responsibilities have also been identified as crucial to successful collaboration (mattessich and monsey, 1992). such discussions should take place at one of your earliest meetings – arguably even before you agree to embark on the collaborative project. someone might have particular expertise in relation to a legal topic, in training people to deliver effective presentations, or working with the target audience (e.g. an ex-school teacher or prison officer). another person may have useful contacts externally (e.g. potential venues for delivery) or internally (e.g. marketing teams; outreach and widening participation teams with established contacts in the community; lecturers in drama, technology or business faculties, whose students could contribute to content development). others might lack experience in, for example, networking, but be looking for the opportunity to develop these skills. it pays to be conscious that each person/institution will have different pressure points in their work calendar – for universities, this might be induction weeks, exam periods or inspections from regulatory bodies; for external professionals, this might be the end of the financial year, or conferences they regularly host or attend. equally, you are all entitled to your ‘down time’ and don’t expect or want to be contacted about the project during those periods. discuss these issues openly and early on, so you can plan the ple project timetable (and scale) around this, and share the workload accordingly. you can then agree a list of tasks and deadlines and (being mindful of general workload allocation) match those tasks to the relevant person(s) – and importantly, let them get on with it; they can report back on their progress at regular catch ups. try to share those dreary but unavoidable tasks evenly (e.g. endless photocopying!), so people remain passionate about their involvement in the project, and feel their contribution is valued. open discussions in this regard – and having a key person at each institution answerable for the project – have aided the smooth running of the streetlaw in the cardiff employment tribunal project since 2017. bpp is one of four universities collaborating on this project. the ple workshops on tribunal procedures run on a monthly basis from november to may each year, to align with the academic year. at the outset of this collaboration, major tasks were divided up between the four participating universities according to internal expertise and resource e.g. a staff member with employment law experience developed the workshop and training content; others utilised their contacts to lead on marketing strategy; and another institution with the most central and suitable conference facilities hosted the student training. all student volunteers attend the same training and use the same presenting materials to ensure consistency and quality across the board. valuable insight was also provided early on by birmingham university, who germinated the idea of ple workshops about tribunal procedure at their local civil justice centre in 2015[footnoteref:7]. an all-party conference call now takes place each august to reflect on the previous year and plan for the year ahead (although bi-monthly catch ups may be needed in the fledgling year of such a project). application, training and workshop dates are agreed with a tribunal judge on this call, with universities assigned to monthly presenting slots according to their teaching and exam timetables. whilst each university is responsible for their assigned workshops, feedback (e.g. on audience attendance or questions raised) is filtered back to all collaborators after each workshop, via an email group. [7: see further: https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/law/life/pro-bono/aboutus.aspx] 3. aim for “small wins” to start with mattessich and monsey (1992) also identify the presence of mutual trust and respect as pivotal to the likely success of a collaborative project. however, trust takes time to build. trust between collaborators with no shared history may be based on reputation in the market alone, and therefore will require a ‘leap of faith’ from the parties to initiate the collaboration in the first place. for this reason, vangen and huxham (2003) make the case for setting realistic, modest outcomes at the beginning of new collaborative projects, which can, once met, reinforce trusting attitudes, heighten enthusiasm and set the groundwork for more ambitious collaboration. low risk initiatives might include running a one-off ple event or a pilot that is limited in scope with regards to, for example, the number of student volunteers, target venues or topics involved. by way of example, bpp’s employment tribunal ple project (limited in scope to a single venue and topic (tribunal procedures); and initially for a 12 week pilot) is entering its fourth year of successful collaboration with local universities, the tribunals and acas in london. this successful ‘blueprint’ has then been used to expand the project to the cardiff and manchester tribunals. by contrast, another collaborative ple project initiated in leeds with local universities and offering entirely bespoke workshops to a variety of community groups, has recently closed. hindsight has shined a light on the overly ambitious nature of this bespoke offering, which led to difficulties in meeting audience expectations, and overreliance on one particular lawyer’s expertise (immigration law) and good nature! 4. embrace online technology open and frequent communication has been recognised as essential to successful collaboration (mattessich and monsey, 1992), but so are efficient working practices. no-one wants to return to their desk to a trail of emails debating whether you should serve garibaldis or bourbon biscuits at your ple project’s launch event! software and web-based platforms are available (often, without charge) to share ideas and information in a communal space, which can arrive separately to your main inbox. we mention a few here by way of example, but recommend you investigate what is right for your budget and your ple project’s specific needs. consider using a messaging platform for project specific communications (e.g. slack). these platforms can often integrate other features / platforms mentioned in the remainder of this section (and can be accessed via a smartphone). you may be a regular user of telephone and video conferencing, but do explore all the features of any facilities you have access to (e.g. skype) – many have the ability to share files and screens, to support working on project content as a group in real time. online polls can be used to establish best availability for progress meetings and ple workshops (e.g. doodle; sign up); event platforms can be used to centralise the organisation of student training dates (e.g. eventbrite); and presentation editors allow staff, students and external supporters to collaborate remotely on shared documents such as your workshop materials (e.g. google slides). virtual noticeboards (e.g. trello) provide a visual journey for your project’s timeline, and can be used to supervise students’ research. tasks can be assigned to individuals, deadlines set and progress monitored. whichever platforms you ultimately adopt, remember you are likely to be sharing information and potentially personal data (e.g. student contact details) outside of your organisation. be mindful, therefore, of your obligations under the general data protection regulation[footnoteref:8]. beyond password protecting documents, it would be wise to seek guidance from your internal legal team about best practice with regards to sharing project information externally via e-mail or web-based platforms. collaborators less familiar with new forms of technology (prensky’s (2001)[footnoteref:9] so-called “digital immigrants”) may also appreciate receiving training and / or support from any willing “digital natives” amongst the group (those born into the digital world and who have been comfortable interacting with it since childhood). the (now closed) collaborative ple project in leeds suffered early setbacks in this regard, as a lack of confidence with document sharing and communication platforms amongst some collaborators led to inconsistent adoption of these tools within the group (thus undermining the tools’ intended benefits). [8: https://gdpr-info.eu/ [accessed 15 11 2018]] [9: prensky, m (2001). digital natives, digital immigrants part 1. on the horizon. 9. 1-6. available at: https://www.marcprensky.com/writing/prensky%20-%20digital%20natives,%20digital%20immigrants%20-%20part1.pdf [accessed 13 5 19]] 5. reflect, adapt, and be prepared to make difficult decisions revisit your shared objectives and values at appropriate and pre-agreed points in time. when exactly you do this may be dictated by the timeline of your ple project (e.g. one-off event, term or academic year long). evaluate the extent to which the values have been adhered to and the objectives met. identify what worked well, what could be done better, and be honest about whether these reflections (or any recent or anticipated change in circumstances e.g. changes in personnel or resources available) mean that the ple project should continue in its current guise, or at all. green and johnson (2015) tell us that it is important to know when it is time to stop. as professor morten hansen says, “the goal of collaboration is not collaboration but better results”[footnoteref:10] – and you need to regularly assess whether those results have been achieved and/or remain achievable. closing a ple project does not equate to failure: you will have added value to your students’ and audience members’ lives for the duration of the collaborative project, and fostered professional relationships (which may beget further collaboration). one of the biggest lessons we have learnt working in pro bono, is that there are more people to help and more ways to help them than we possibly can, so it’s important to recognise that even our collective resources are finite, and we should all direct them to where they can deliver the best value for all relevant stakeholders. [10: harvard business review ideacast: ‘the right way to collaborate (if you must)’: https://hbr.org/2010/03/the-right-way-to-collaborate-i.html [accessed 26 11 18]] future collaborative ple projects: looking beyond the legal sphere for potential collaborators whilst running pro bono projects at bpp, it has become evident to us that many clients and audience members experience a clustering of problems. whilst law students may traditionally study and be assessed on legal issues in discrete subject areas, real life rarely presents legal (and associated) problems in such neat packages. for example, a person on sick leave from work due to bullying and harassment may find themselves experiencing mental health issues as well as facing financial hardship (with a knock-on effect on their employment, housing situation, personal relationships, and so forth). in 2017 citizens’ advice reported that 82% of clients surveyed reported legal problems making them feel more stressed, depressed or anxious, and 60% felt their physical health worsened as a result[footnoteref:11]. [11: citizens advice: modelling​ ​our​ ​value to​ ​society​ ​in​ ​2016/17, technical annex: the difference we make: our impact in 2016/17. available at: https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/about-us/difference-we-make/impact-of-citizens-advice-service/all-our-impact/ [accessed 26 11 2018] ] given this reality, curran (2017)[footnoteref:12] is critical of traditional courses which teach law in isolation from social contexts. the author is a keen advocate of inter-disciplinary collaboration and supervises a legal service within a community health setting at the anu school of law, australia. recognising a synergy between skills teaching in a number of disciplines (e.g. problem solving; relationship-building; interviewing; communication), she has introduced joint learning at an undergraduate level across a variety of courses, including nursing, psychology and law. she encourages law students to emerge from their traditional silos to consider the broader health, social and economic dimensions of their clients’ legal problems. she argues that better client outcomes can be achieved when professionals have a deepened understanding of the contextual and interconnected causes and solutions of clients’ issues, and a heightened appreciation of other professionals’ roles in solving a person’s problems (so they can, for example, refer clients to appropriate sources of help). in one longitudinal study, curran (2017)[footnoteref:13] reports that 91% of clients of a law clinic in a health setting indicated that they would not have seen a lawyer about their legal problem, had they not been referred by a health professional. [12: , 11 curran, l (2017): 'reflections on practice and recent research to enable future practitioners to learn about working collaboratively across disciplines to better help the community', journal of commonwealth law and legal education, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 46-64. available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321878476_'reflections_on_practice_and_recent_research_to_enable_future_practitioners_to_learn_about_working_collaboratively_across_disciplines_to_better_help_the_community'_vol_12_no_1_autumn_2017_journal_of_c [accessed 13 12 2018] ] [13: ] bliss et al. (2012)[footnoteref:14] have also run a successful interdisciplinary clinic at georgia state university college of law since 2006, providing law, social work and medical students with opportunities to learn together through joint classes (e.g. exploring each discipline’s rules, ethics and beliefs) and attending rounds in both law clinics and hospitals. bliss et al. comment that the opportunity to learn with (and from) students from other disciplines has better prepared law students for practice in a myriad of ways, including enhancing their problem solving, reflective and collaborative skills, developing a wider community of professionals, and broadening their understanding of social justice issues. the authors also report an increase in medics’ recognition of socio-economic factors that can affect people’s health and potentially engage legal issues (e.g. a lack of adequate heating exacerbating a child’s asthma condition). over time, this has led to a growth in referrals to the student law clinic, and thus positive outcomes for patients. [14: bliss, l & caley, s & pettignano, r. (2012). a model for interdisciplinary clinical education: medical and legal professionals learning and working together to promote public health. international journal of clinical legal education. 2012. 149. 10.19164/ijcle.v18i0.4. ] bliss et al.’s findings chime with those of galowitz (2014)[footnoteref:15], who also cites improved student problem-solving, reflective and collaborative skills as some of the observed benefits of law and medical student participation in the medical-legal advocacy clinic at new york university school of law (ultimately leading to better, more creative responses being provided to clients’ various problems, as those problems are considered from a more diverse range of viewpoints). [15: galowitz, p. (2014). the opportunities and challenges of an interdisciplinary clinic. international journal of clinical legal education. 18. 165. 10.19164/ijcle.v18i0.5 [accessed 15 5 19]. available at: http://www.northumbriajournals.co.uk/index.php/ijcle/issue/view/6 ] interdisciplinary collaboration naturally bring forth some challenges, with lerner and taliti (2006)[footnoteref:16] drawing attention to the differences in language, customs and values of the different professions creating anxiety amongst some students (particularly early on in a course), albeit ultimately providing a learning opportunity and mirror for reflection for those students. there are also logistical difficulties in scheduling timetables across different schools / professions. our top 5 tips can hopefully go some way towards preparing you for such eventualities. [16: lerner, a & talati, e (2006). teaching law and educating lawyers: closing the gap through multidisciplinary experiential learning. international journal of clinical legal education. 10. 96 [accessed 20 5 19]. available at: http://www.northumbriajournals.co.uk/index.php/ijcle/article/view/80/83 ] universities in the uk have generally been slower to recognise and act upon the potential value of partnerships between health and legal services. however, ucl laws (2017)[footnoteref:17] have recently taken heed of research which posits a positive correlation between unresolved socio-legal problems and ill health (particularly mental wellbeing), and which suggests that people vulnerable to social exclusion are not only more likely to develop such problems, but are also less likely to access relevant support. their report advocates for the co-location of advice services to increase access for those unable or unwilling to seek advice (e.g. elderly; disabled) and to reduce potential stigma associated with advice receipt (and indeed, they have operated an integrated legal advice clinic from a health and wellbeing centre in east london since january 2016). it is possible that similar initiatives will spring up around the uk in the next decade, in light of the ministry of justice’s (2019)[footnoteref:18] recent review of legal aid reforms. the report floats the idea of embedding legal services into other services (such as gp surgeries) to create a ‘one stop shop’, with the aim of better addressing issues (such as housing and benefits) which could exacerbate individuals’ mental health problems. [17: ucl centre for access to justice, health justice partnerships in social prescribing international workshop, background materials and full event report, november 2017 accessed 15 5 19]. available at: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/access-to-justice/sites/access-to-justice/files/hjp_workshop_background_materials_and_event_report_2.pdf ] [18: ministry of justice, post-implementation review of part 1 of the legal aid, sentencing and punishment of offenders act 2012 (p.104), february 2019 [accessed 15 5 19]. available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/post-implementation-review-of-part-1-of-laspo ] in light of the above findings, we encourage you to consider whether there is scope for you to look for potential ple collaborators within other schools in your universities, and outside of the legal sphere altogether. bpp staff are currently developing links with colleagues in our health school and business school with a view to launching community education packages co-delivered by students from a variety of disciplines, including psychology, nursing and accounting. part of the educational package is likely to involve law students and students from other disciplines educating each other on the role of their respective professions in identifying and resolving (potentially interconnected) client problems. law students delivering ple workshops to women’s support groups about female genital mutilation (“fgm”) could, for example, benefit from input from staff and students from healthcare, education and social care fields, in order to gain an understanding of the role of multiple agencies in supporting fgm survivors, and tackling the underlying causes of this criminal activity. the potential benefits of a knife crime workshop for youth offenders could be greatly increased if it moved beyond the legal consequences of being caught in possession of a knife, and medical students spoke of the devastating impact of a knife wound on a victim, and addressed myths about “safe” areas of the body to stab someone. impending updates to the relationship and sex education national curriculum (due to come into force in september 2020)[footnoteref:19] include the introduction of topics such as mental wellbeing and digital resilience; the laws relating to sexting, revenge porn and sexual consent; cyberbullying; and keeping personal information private in an online environment. this surely provides opportunity for collaboration amongst law, health and technology-minded students and professionals, in order to deliver relevant relationship and sex education workshops to school aged children. these and other potential multi-disciplinary collaborations would fit well with the 10 year vision’s goal (number 7) for ple to be understood as beneficial, and utilised by/embedded in other sectors that do not traditionally deliver ple (e.g. health, banks, insurance, housing). [19: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-relationships-and-health-education-in-schools [accessed 15 11 2018]] evaluation of the first 12 months of bpp schools’ joint initiative is planned, and we look forward to hearing about progress made by similar initiatives, such as portsmouth university’s establishment of a multidisciplinary service practice in a community setting, between the schools of law and nursing (with ambitions to eventually incorporate the schools of pharmacy, dentistry and social work). curran et al. (2018)[footnoteref:20] report that the first stage of the pilot at portsmouth university will involve students from a variety of disciplines working in community settings (e.g. community centres and care homes) to provide educational workshops on topics such as powers of attorney, accommodation rights, and access to benefits by the elderly. [20: curran c, ryder i and strevens, c (2018): educating future practitioners through an interdisciplinary student clinic: international journal of clinical legal education, vol 25, no 2,pp 4 – 34. available at: http://www.northumbriajournals.co.uk/index.php/ijcle/article/view/693 [accessed 14 12 2018] ] closing comments ultimately, as green and johnson (2015) acknowledge, building a successful collaboration cannot be reduced to a set formula. it is a somewhat organic process which requires constant nurturing. you may find some of the suggestions in this article trite, but we hope they serve as a useful jumping off point to shape initial conversations with your potential ple collaborators. they may have equal applicability to collaborations on other pro bono projects (e.g. clinics), and, indeed, working on internal projects with your own colleagues. we wish you the best of luck with your collaborative ple projects – may many hands make light work! 75 ijple 3 (1) 2019 law related education in japan – developments and challenges[footnoteref:1] [1: a version of this paper was originally published by the united nations asia and far east institute for the prevention of crime and the treatment of offenders, as resource material series. no. 105, 2018, 116-126, and is reproduced here with the publisher’s approval.] kyoko isoyama[footnoteref:2] [2: professor, faculty of education, shizuoka university, japan] i．introduction the purpose of this paper is to discuss the current state of and challenges facing law-related education (lre) in japan. what follows defines the concept of lre, the particular characteristics of lre in japan, curriculum developments in japan and elsewhere (especially the united states of america (usa)) and, specifically, the subject of justice studies in elementary and junior high schools. lre in japan has been heavily influenced by developments in the usa. both have been affected, in a positive sense, by public legal education luminaries notably the american dr. isidore starr and yuji eguchi in japan[footnoteref:3]. [3: yuji eguchi. (1993). shakaikaniokeru ‘hokyoiku’no juyousei: americashakaikaniokeru ‘hokyoiku’no kentowotoshite. nihonshakaikakyouikugakkai. shakaikakyouikukenkyu. no. 68. pp. 1-17. (江口勇治「社会科における『法教育』の重要性―アメリカ社会科における『法教育』の検討を通して―」日本社会科教育学会『社会科教育研究』no. 68，1993年，pp. 1-17.)] social studies in japan was established after world war ii and focused on constitutional education aimed at promoting democracy. however, this resulted in a limited understanding of the relationship between the state and individuals, given then existing hierarchical structures. lre in japan is an attempt to re-position legal citizenship as a concept that includes horizontal relationships between society and the citizen and between citizen and citizen[footnoteref:4]. [4: kyoko isoyama. (2006). shakaikaniokeru hokyoikuno hokousei. nihonshakaikakyoikugakkaishuppanproject, ed. shinjidaiwo hiraku shakaikano chosen. daiichigakushusha. p. 238. (磯山恭子「社会科における法教育の方向性」日本社会科教育学会出版プロジェクト編『新時代を拓く社会科の挑戦』2006年，p. 238.)] ⅱ．the idea of lre a． definition of lre according to the relevant legislation in the usa lre is defined as “education to equip non-lawyers with the knowledge and skills pertaining to the law, the legal process, and the legal system, and fundamental principles and values on which these are based.” [footnoteref:5] [5: public law 95-561. (1978). law-related education act of 1978. ] since then, lre in the usa has been actively positioned as one of the educational subjects to be addressed throughout the country as a whole. the u.s. department of education promotes the concept nationwide. according to applicable regulations, lre helps students “respond effectively to the law and legal issues in our complex and changing society.”[footnoteref:6] the above definition has three components. first, the target is the non-lawyer, including children. it differs from formal law-school education, which is targeted to those seeking to become lawyers themselves. secondly, it addresses legal rules themselves, and the legal process including the operation of the legal system itself. it also has regard to the fundamental principles and values on which law and the legal system are based. lre in the usa deals with the law in its broadest sense, not being limited to the substantive rules of civil and criminal law, but addresses dynamic, active and working laws, processes, and values. thirdly, it fosters ‘knowledge and skills’ that can be used in a practical sense. in addition to gaining knowledge, it is important to encourage skills acquisition and attitude formation to empower citizens to take a more active role in society. [6: american bar association division for public education. law-related education network. (https://www.americanbar.org/ groups/public_education/resources/law_related_education_network.html)(visit; 2018.1.5).] from the late 1960s to the latter half of the 1970s, in the usa, with the backdrop of civil rights struggles, there was a growing awareness that it was important to engage in lre to promote active citizens but also to address perceived problems of discrimination, corruption and juvenile delinquency.[footnoteref:7] with such impactful events as the watergate scandal and widespread social problems, a diverse and concrete approach to citizenship including civil rights (and duties) and multicultural education was actively discussed. in addition, lre was aimed at recognizing the meaning and value of justice. moreover, the acquisition of knowledge and skills was seen as important, providing tools to help citizens to identify and possibly solve legal and related problems. secondly, and specifically, lre was also intended to address and prevent juvenile delinquency. crime and anti-social behavior increased significantly during the latter half of the 1960s, and was seen as a major and growing problem.[footnoteref:8] [7: report of the american bar association special committee on youth education for citizenship. (1975). law-related education in america: guidelines for the future. american bar association. pp. 3-4.] [8: ibid. p. 3.] b． lre goals, subject matter and methods one of the principal goals of lre is therefore to develop legal literacy. this concept rests on two main ideas[footnoteref:9]. first, lre should be recognized as an integral part of each person’s basic education for becoming a knowledgeable and responsible citizen. secondly, promoting the ‘legal literacy’ of citizens safeguards our democratic institutions. [9: study group on law-related education. (1978). final report of the u. s. office of education. u. s. government printing office. (ed175 737). p. xi.] according to lre: a crucial component of american education presented by the american bar association special committee on youth education for citizenship, “legal literacy is an essential prerequisite if one is to function effectively as a citizen in private and public affairs.”[footnoteref:10] [10: ibid. p. 51.] legal literacy is also concerned with the idea that law is not static – it changes to reflect the needs and realities in wider society. as well as covering what the law actually says, a greater awareness of the role law plays can lead to more developed reasoning and analytical skills along with ethical awareness. in addition, appreciating how the law functions and the processes associated with it can help with the understanding of the purpose of law in its operational context. charlotte c. anderson states that the following are characteristic outcomes of lre[footnoteref:11]. [11: anderson, charlotte c. (1980). promoting responsible citizenship through elementary law-related education. social education. vol. 44-5. p. 384.] ① perceiving law as promotive, facilitative, comprehensible, and alterable ② perceiving people as having potential to control and contribute to the social order ③ perceiving right and wrong as issues all citizens can and should address ④ perceiving the dilemmas inherent in social issues ⑤ producing reflective decision-makers and problem solvers who make grounded commitments ⑥ giving reasoned explanations about commitments made and positions taken ⑦ being socially responsible conflict managers ⑧ being critically responsive to legitimate authority ⑨ being knowledgeable about law, the legal system and related issues ⑩ being empathetic, socially responsible and considerate of others ⑪ being able to make mature judgements in dealing with ethical and moral problems anderson states that “the major goal of lre is to move children away from negative characteristics and toward characteristics more in keeping with the demands of democratic stewardship.”[footnoteref:12] she also states that “lre is congruent with good social studies in general and is a means of fostering the goals of citizenship education.”[footnoteref:13] [12: ibid. p. 383.] [13: ibid.] according to the study group report on lre, the likely coverage for an effective lre programme will include some or all of the following:[footnoteref:14]. [14: study group on law-related education, op.cit. pp. 1-3.] ① legal principles and the values on which they are based ② the bill of rights and other constitutional laws ③ the role and limits of law in a democratic society ④ conflict and dispute resolution ⑤ the role of law in avoiding conflict and disputes ⑥ development and administration of rules ⑦ the administration of the criminal and civil justice systems, and their strengths and weaknesses ⑧ informal laws ⑨ authority, freedom, enforcement, and punishment ⑩ law as a vehicle to illuminate and resolve social and political issues ⑪ areas of law that affect the daily lives of citizens ⑫ international relations, anthropology, and economics as can be seen from the above points the content of lre is not therefore limited in the narrow sense to substantive rules found in statutory or case law but rather covers wider-reaching content such as principles of democracy, dispute resolution, legal process, custom and practice and the daily impact of law and the legal system. the educational methods of lre lend themselves to inquiry and problem-based learning and other experiential approaches to study[footnoteref:15]. lre encompasses many educational strategies and teaching methods such as moot court simulation and mock trials. the lre curriculum, as detailed below, provides rich educational material and lends itself to class participation and interactive study methods. [15: ibid.] ⅲ．the diversity of the lre curriculum a． features of lre curricular according to the booklet youth for justice; making a difference[footnoteref:16] published by the american bar association, a specific lre curriculum was developed during the 1990s supported financially by the office of juvenile justice and delinquency prevention, part of the us department of justice. [16: american bar association. youth for justice; making a difference.] the focus is to ensure that the “youth for justice is a unique national initiative that uses the power of active learning about the law to build upon the vitality of young people and to address the risks of being young in america today.”[footnoteref:17] this initiative builds on the overall aims of lre as outlined above, including developing a greater sense of citizenship among youth with a view to tackling juvenile delinquency. [17: ibid. p. 5.] b．types of lre curriculum a number of bodies, principally in the usa, have developed lre curricula. these include: 1. foundations of democracy[footnoteref:18] [18: center for civic education. (1998). foundations of democracy; upper elementary, middle school, high school.] the center for civic education developed its foundations of democracy also during the 1990s and has revised the curriculum many times. this can be described as a ’legal values’ model. the knowledge component is aimed at recognizing the system of constitutional democracy and the basic principle and values this is based on. foundations of democracy targets the k-12 grade. foundations of democracy teaches four concepts: ‘authority’, which focuses on making law in society; ‘privacy’, which focuses on individual freedom; ‘responsibility’, which focuses on how to assign and accept responsibility; and ‘justice’, which focuses on applying law in society. 2. street law[footnoteref:19] [19: national institute for citizen education in the law. (2005). street law; a course in practical law, seventh edition. west publishing company.] building on the pioneering work at georgetown university’s school of law in the 1970s, street law inc., a nonprofit group based in washington dc, further developed what is now an internationally recognized model of lre known, now globally, as street law. whilst there is no one recommended curriculum the many street law programmes, that exist across the civil and common law worlds and in both the northern and southern hemispheres, cover a wide range of subjects and issues. the common denominator is the focus on teaching and learning the law through interactive classes that deal with the law as its affects everyday life. much of this focuses on young people, often in schools, but there are also many examples of street law sessions that work with others including in prisons and community centres and often involving ‘training or trainers’ initiatives. another common feature of street law programmes is that the sessions are often designed and delivered by law students under the supervision of professionally qualified lawyers. in this way the law students learn, as well as the community groups involved, by having to research and present the relevant subject matter. 3. project citizen [footnoteref:20] [20: center for civic education and the national conference of state legislatures. (2008). project citizen.] again, in the 1990s, the center for civic education developed project citizen. this can be best described as ‘community activities’ model. the goals of project citizen are to enable students to express their opinions, to decide which institution of the government should deal with certain problems, and to influence government policy decisions. this initiative has six steps. specifically, these are ‘clarifying the policy problems of the community’, ‘choosing the research theme’, ‘gathering information on the research theme’, ‘creating the portfolio’, ‘presenting the portfolio’, ‘evaluating the learning experience’, and ‘the class portfolio’. while learning about legal participation, project citizen has the distinctive feature of requiring actual participation in the community as a citizen. 4. i’m the people[footnoteref:21] [21: american bar association division for public education. (1995). making rules & laws. american bar association division for public education. (1995). resolving conflict. american bar association division for public education. (1996). serving the community. american bar association division for public education. (1996). influencing public policy.] the american bar association’s initiative, youth education for citizenship, has developed a programme known as i’m the people. this sees an integration of all the other models described above. the curriculum is aimed at recognizing a constitutional democracy, essential concepts such as law, power, justice, freedom, and equality, pursuing rights and responsibilities under the law, resolving conflict and discussing and analyzing public policy. the skills acquisition component is aimed at developing critical thinking and the ability to gather and analyse material and to participate effectively in debates and discussions. the programme looks at: ‘making rules & laws’, ‘resolving conflicts’, ‘service in the community’, and ‘influencing public policy’. ⅳ．lre in japan a． reasons for introducing lre in japan as we have seen it is important for citizens to improve their legal literacy, as it is a necessary component of citizenship. developing of legal literacy for citizens in japan is significant from three viewpoints: the social, the institutional and the educational. social background includes a concept known as the ‘legalized society’. a legalized society is one established on the basis of a legal relationships. according to shigeaki tanaka, a representative researcher on legalization theory in japan, two factors have contributed to the progress of a legalized society in japan[footnoteref:22]. the first is the rapid urbanization and progress of industrialization that has taken place since the latter half of the 1960s. the second concerns international considerations including global trading arrangements and the presence of multinational corporations. [22: shigeaki tanaka. (1996). gendaishakaito saiban: minjisoshono ichito yakuwari. kobundo. p. 1. (田中成明『現代社会と裁判―民事訴訟の位置と役割―』弘文堂，1996年，p. 1.)] the idea here is that where a legalized society has developed, not only can we build clearer legal relations but also have a more effective dispute resolution system. in order to do this, it is extremely important for every citizen to develop their legal literacy as a condition of citizenship. specifically, each citizen is required to acquire the awareness and ability to participate in and make informed choices about legal matters. institutional considerations include the relatively recent introduction of the lay judge（saiban-in）system in japan. the establishment of the justice system reform council in july 1999 provided the opportunity to introduce lay judges and in june 2001, the council finalized this system. in may 2009, this development was launched to give ordinary citizens a direct role in the criminal judicial process. changes in institutional provision can be considered as one of the developments of the legalized society. in such a society, not only lawyers, but also citizens are required to take up active legal citizenship. the justice system reform council has also expressly recognized the importance of lre[footnoteref:23]. [23: shihouseidokaikakushingikai. (2001). shihouseidokaikakusingikai ikensho: 21seikino nihonwo sasaeru shihouseido. pp. 102-103. （司法制度改革審議会『司法制度改革審議会意見書―21世紀の日本を支える司法制度―』2001年6月，pp. 102-103.）] educationally there have been developments around lre in japan too. in january 2008, the report on improvements of courses of study at kindergarten, elementary school, junior high school, high school and special school, etc.” was issued by the central council for education.[footnoteref:24] this states that lre has an important role to play in school education. specifically, with an early understanding of socio-economic systems such as the role of law and justice, a more sustainable society can be developed through active citizenship. [24: chuoukyouikushingikai. (2008). yochien, shogakko, chugakko, kotogakkoyobi tokubetsushiengakkono gakushushidoyoryono kaizennitsuite(toshin). (report on improvements of courses of study at kindergarten, elementary school, junior high school, junior high school, high school and special school etc.). （中央教育審議会「幼稚園，小学校，中学校，高等学校及び特別支援学校の学習指導要領等の改善について（答申）」2008年1月。）] lre in schools in japan is addressed through a cross-curricular approach. for example, social studies classes focus, at least in part, on developing citizenship. home economics looks at appreciating family life and the role of work. moral education is taught based on respecting commitments, abiding by laws and other rules, developing personal responsibility, and understanding the meaning of justice for all. particular attention is also given to solving problems. b． lre in social studies[footnoteref:25] [25: educational contents and learning items in “social studies course of study” are distributed into numbers and katakana for each grade. ] 1. lre in elementary social studies in the 2008 elementary social studies course of study, lre, was positioned clearly within the curriculum. in grade 3 and grade 4, students are expected to learn about: securing drinking water, electricity, gas and waste necessary for the lives of local people and the prevention of disasters and accidents in communities, we deal with important laws and rules in conducting local social life. in grade 5, laws and rules are covered including the importance of protecting public health and the environment from pollution and the state of nature in japan. in grade 6, the constitution of japan is focused on along with the main events in the history of the country. the relationship between the national assembly and the cabinet, the courts’ powers, and the judicial participation of the people are also addressed.[footnoteref:26] [26: monbukagakusho. (2008). shokakko gakushusidoyoryo kaisetsu shakaihen. （文部科学省『小学校学習指導要領解説社会編』2008年6月。）] the 2017 elementary social studies course of study saw a revision of the curriculum with improvements to existing content and new sections on political work in japan, cultural assets and international law.[footnoteref:27] [27: monbukagakusho. (2017). shokakko gakushusidoyoryo kaisetsu shakaihen. （文部科学省『小学校学習指導要領解説社会編』2017年6月。）] 2. lre in lower secondary social studies similar, but more in-depth, content can be found at secondary school level in the 2017 secondary social studies course of study.[footnoteref:28] this now includes views and perspectives in society, work and the market economy, respect for human beings and the constitution, democratic politics and political participation, world peace and human welfare. typical keywords of lre in lower secondary social studies are ‘rule building’, ‘conflict and agreement, efficiency and fairness’, ‘mutual respect of human rights’, ‘participation in the judicial system’ and ‘participation in society/social participation’. [28: monbukagakusho. (2017). chukakko gakushusidoyoryo kaisetsu shakaihen. （文部科学省『中学校学習指導要領解説社会編』2017年6月。）] c． lre and the ministry of justice an lre promotion council, established in may 2005, has been conducting an ongoing range of activities[footnoteref:29]. according to the guidelines for the promotion of lre[footnoteref:30], the purpose of the council is to promote learning opportunities on justice and law in schools in japan by ensuring lre features in school education, by promoting cooperation between educators and lawyers, through the preparation of teaching materials for lre on the lay judge system and by encouraging other activities, such as research into lre. [29: homusho. hokyoikusuisinkyougikai. （法務省「法教育推進協議会」（http://www.moj.go.jp/shingi1/ kanbou_houkyo_kyougikai_index.html）（visit; 2018. 1. 5））] [30: homusho. (2005). hokyoikusuisinkyougikaikaisaiyouryou. （法務省「法教育推進協議会開催要領」2005年5月（http://www.moj.go.jp/kanbou/houkyo/kyougikai/gaiyou01-01.pdf）（visit; 2018. 1. 5））] the activities of the lre promotion council can be divided into 5 phases –the first from may 2005 to april 2007, the second from july 2007 to february 2010, the third from april 2010 to february 2014, the fourth from march 2014 to february 2016, and the fifth from march 2016 onward. the goal of the first and second phases was to develop teaching materials. in the 1st phase, the lre promotion council created teaching materials for junior high school. in the second phase, the lre promotion council dealt with lre materials in private law and improvements in lre in elementary school. the goal of the third phase though to the current phase is to improve teaching materials and disseminate them. in the third phase, the lre promotion council discussed ways to disseminate lre, including holding a lre writing contest. in the fourth phase, the council discussed ways to disseminate and provide information on lre. in the fifth phase, the lre promotion council dealt with (and is still developing) audiovisual teaching materials for lre. ⅴ．justice studies in elementary and junior high school a．an lre programme for junior high school 1. development of the first lre[footnoteref:31] [31: hokyoikukenkyukai. (2005). hajimeteno hokyoiku: wagakuniniokeru hokyoikuno fukyu・hattenwo mezashite. (first lre). gyosei. （法教育研究会『はじめての法教育―我が国における法教育の普及・発展を目指して―』ぎょうせい，2005年3月。）] the ministry of justice launched the lre study group, organized the lre teaching materials preparation subcommittee, and developed the lre unit in lower secondary social studies. in march 2005, the first lre was published. it contains the lre study group report and 4 lre units with teaching materials and appendices. in 2013, the ministry of justice reviewed the practices of lre in junior high schools in japan[footnoteref:32]. of the 5,000 schools surveyed, 1,072, 21.4% returned valid responses[footnoteref:33]. according to the survey, 80.1% of responding schools used at least one of the 4 lre units[footnoteref:34] and rated the content of the unit significant in terms of subject matter and student learning.[footnoteref:35]. the programme has since developed further although we await detailed evaluation. [32: homusho. (2013). ‘chugakkoniokeru houkyoikuno jissenjyokyonikansuru chosakenkyu’ hokokusho.（法務省『『中学校における法教育の実践状況に関する調査研究』報告書』，2013年11月。）] [33: ibid. p. 1.] [34: rule making, private law and consumer protection, the significance of the constitution and justice.] [35: ibid. p. 45.] 2. establishment of lre in japan according to the first lre, lre in japan is defined as “education for the public who are not legal experts to understand the law, the justice system, the values underlying these, and to acquire legal thinking”[footnoteref:36]. the goals of lre in japan are to understand the basic principles of the constitution and law, to develop the abilities necessary to participate in the management of a free and fair society, to understand that the law is part of everyday life, to act according to law consciously in daily life and to foster the ability to use the law actively and constructively. [36: hokyoikukenkyukai. (2005). hajimeteno hokyoiku: wagakuniniokeru hokyoikuno fukyu・hattenwo mezashite. (first lre). gyosei. p. 2. （法教育研究会『はじめての法教育―我が国における法教育の普及・発展を目指して―』ぎょうせい，2005年3月，p. 2.）] the content of the first lre was organized into four units: ‘rule making’, ‘private law and consumer protection’, ‘the significance of the constitution’, and ‘justice’. ‘rule making’ means the necessity and manner of rule creation. ‘private law and consumer protection’ covers the relationship between individuals and individuals with law. ‘the significance of the constitution’ means the relationship between individuals and the state. ‘justice’ here means dispute resolution under the law. 3. the idea of justice studies for lower secondary school the aims of justice studies here is that students understand that, first, justice is a means of preserving law and order by protecting rights, upholding legal responsibilities and dealing with rule violations; secondly, that in a trial no party should be given preferential treatment and procedures, including judgments, should be consistent and fairly conducted and arrived at. the goals of justice studies for lower secondary school are to: increase interest in the trial process while comparing it with other dispute resolution methods; recognize legal problems and to analyse and evaluate the causes and points of conflict; to make judgments based on the evidence; and, to encourage students to think about and decide how to deal with laws and rule violations on a case-by-case basis. b． lre programme for elementary school 1. development of whose rule? considering lre[footnoteref:37] [37: hokyoikusuishinkyogikai. (2014). rulewa darenomono: minnade kangaeru hokyoiku. (whose rule? considering lre). homusho. （法教育推進協議会『ルールは誰のもの？―みんなで考える法教育―』法務省2014年3月。）] the lre promotion council summarizes the following three ways to develop teaching materials for lre in elementary schools in its report, creation of lre teaching materials for elementary school students[footnoteref:38]. first, in the elementary school, there is a possibility to devise various classes based on the philosophy of lre – promoting active citizenship in the context of everyday life. secondly, learning can be enhanced by incorporating educational methods such as role-play on familiar issues. thirdly, practical examples are used, based on commonly occurring situations, where students have to think about not only the nature of the issue concerned but how to address and possibly resolve the problems arising. [38: hokyoikusuishinkyogikai. (2009). shogakkowo taishotoshita hokyoikukyozaireino sakuseinitsuite. (creation of lre teaching materials for elementary school students). homusho. （法教育推進協議会『小学校を対象とした法教育教材例の作成について』法務省，2009年8月。）] in march 2014, whose rule? considering lre was published. the content is in four lre sections: ‘resolving a quarrel between friends’, ‘to promise and to defend’ for 3rd and 4th grades; ‘living in an information society: as a receiver and sender’ for 5th grade; and ‘conflict resolution: participation in judicial judgment, making rules’ for 6th grade. 2. the idea of justice studies for elementary school the goals of justice studies for elementary school are to increase interest in the lay judge system and develop understanding of the significance of citizen's judicial participation; accurately grasping and evaluating facts and expressing ideas based on practical and realistic case studies from familiar situations in school life; understanding the significance of thinking actively and finding solutions, in order to solve problems; and, thinking about the significance of the rules in social life by creating rules to solve problems. the contents of justice studies for elementary school is based on 3 themes: ‘the structure of the court, the role of people involved in the trial’; ‘resolution of disputes concerning everyone's interests’; and ‘what is the truth?’. ⅵ．the challenges of lre lre in japan, as a matter of public education, is overseen by a variety of agencies and organizations including the ministry of justice, the ministry of education, culture, sports, science and technology, the japanese federation of and individual bar associations, the japanese federation of and individual shiho-shoshi lawyers associations, and the supreme court. however, there still remain a number of challenges to be addressed and cooperation to be developed between lawyers and educators. these challenges include, the need for greater planning and coordination of existing and future projects, effective liaison between lawyers and educators research into the impact and value of lre, the monitoring of the quality of lre teachers and, the improvement of training for those involved in the design and implementation of lre. [footnoteref:39] [39: kyoko isoyama. (2018). practice of law-related education to develop legal literacy. the united nations asia and far east institute for the prevention of crime and the treatment of offender. resource material series. no. 105. p. 133.] ⅶ．conclusion this paper has attempted to show the current situation of lre in japan and the challenges associated with it. whilst there have been many significant and far-reaching developments there is still much to be done. the survey of lre in social studies shows that many teachers indicate that they are now involved in legal literacy education.[footnoteref:40] it is hoped that this will be a springboard to future sustainable growth in lre in japan – so essential not only to make active citizenship more of a reality but to promote respect for human rights in general and to build a more peaceful and democratic nation and society. [40: homusho. (2013). op. cit.. p. 12.] bibliography public law 95-561. (1978). lre act of 1978. american bar association division for public education. law-related education network. (https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_education/resources/law_related_education_ network.html)(visit; 2018.1.5). report of the american bar association special committee on youth education for citizenship. (1975). law-related education in america: guidelines for the future. american bar association. study group on law-related education . (1978). final report of the u. s. office of education. u. s. government printing office. (ed175 737). anderson, charlotte c. (1980). promoting responsible citizenship through elementary law-related education. social education. vol. 44-5. center for civic education. (1998). foundations of democracy; upper elementary, middle school, high school. national institute for citizen education in the law. (2005). street law; a course in practical law, seventh edition. west publishing company. phi alpha delta public service center. (1995). respect me, respect yourself. american bar association division for public education. (1995). making rules & laws. american bar association division for public education. (1995). resolving conflict. american bar association division for public education. (1996). serving the community. american bar association division for public education. (1996). influencing public policy. center for civic education and the national conference of state legislatures. (2008). project citizen. kyoko isoyama. (2000). construction of lre in the united states. annual report of graduate studies in education. vol 24. doctoral program education university of tsukuba. pp. 133-144. original japanese. （磯山恭子「アメリカの法教育におけるカリキュラム構成に関する研究―法の社会的機能の類型を手がかりとして―」『教育学研究集録』第24集，筑波大学大学院博士課程教育学研究科，2000年，pp. 133-144. ） kyoko isoyama. (2001). amerikaniokeru hokyoikuno toutatutenkara manabu. zenkokuhoukyouikunetwork, ed. hokyoikuno kanousei: gakkouniokeruniokeru rironto jissen. gendaijinbunsha. pp. 164-176. （磯山恭子「アメリカにおける法教育の到達点から学ぶ」全国法教育ネットワーク編『法教育の可能性―学校教育における理論と実践―現代人文社，2001年7月，pp. 164-176.） yuji eguchi, kyoko isoyama, eds. (2008). shogakkono hokyoikuwo tsukuru: hou・rule・kimariwo manabu. toyokanshuppansha. （江口勇治，磯山恭子編『小学校の法教育を創る―法・ルール・きまりを学ぶ―』東洋館出版社，2008年5月。） yuji eguchi, yaruhiro okura, eds. (2008). chugakkono hokyoikuwo tsukuru: hou・rule・kimariwo manabu. toyokanshuppansha. （江口勇治，大倉泰裕編『中学校の法教育を創る―法・ルール・きまりを学ぶ―』東洋館出版社，2008年5月。） yuhikaku. (2004). jurist. vol 1268. （『ジュリスト』no. 1268，有斐閣，2004年6月。） shihouseidokaikakushingikai. (2001). shihouseidokaikakusingikai ikensho: 21seikino nihonwo sasaeru shihouseido. （司法制度改革審議会『司法制度改革審議会意見書―21世紀の日本を支える司法制度―』2001年6月。） chuoukyouikushingikai. (2008). yochien, shogakko, chugakko, kotogakkoyobi tokubetsushiengakkono gakushushidoyoryono kaizennitsuite(toshin). (report on improvements of courses of study at kindergarten, elementary school, junior high school, junior high school, high school and special school etc.). （中央教育審議会「幼稚園，小学校，中学校，高等学校及び特別支援学校の学習指導要領等の改善について（答申）」2008年1月。） monbukagakusho. (2008). shokakko gakushusidoyoryo kaisetsu shakaihen. （文部科学省『小学校学習指導要領解説社会編』2008年6月。） monbukagakusho. (2017). shokakko gakushusidoyoryo kaisetsu shakaihen. （文部科学省『小学校学習指導要領解説社会編』2017年6月。） monbukagakusho. (2008). chukakko gakushusidoyoryo kaisetsu shakaihen. （文部科学省『中学校学習指導要領解説社会編』2008年6月。） monbukagakusho. (2017). chukakko gakushusidoyoryo kaisetsu shakaihen. （文部科学省『中学校学習指導要領解説社会編』2017年6月。） homusho. hokyoiku. （法務省「法教育」（http://www.moj.go.jp/housei/shihouhousei/index2.html)(visit; 2018.1.5).） hokyoikukenkyukai. (2005). hajimeteno hokyoiku: wagakuniniokeru hokyoikuno fukyu・hattenwo mezashite. (first lre). gyosei. （法教育研究会『はじめての法教育―我が国における法教育の普及・発展を目指して―』ぎょうせい，2005年3月。） hokyoikusuishinkyogikai. (2007). hajimeteno hokyoiku q&a. gyosei. （法教育推進協議会『はじめての法教育q&a』ぎょうせい，2007年3月。） hokyoikusuishinkyogikai. (2007). saibaninseidowo daizaitoshita kyoikukyozai. homusho. （法教育推進協議会『裁判員制度を題材とした教育教材』2007年。） hokyoikusuishinkyogikai. (2009). shihobunyakyoikuno jyujitsuto hokyoikuno saranaru hattennimukete. homusho. （法教育推進協議会『私法分野教育の充実と法教育の更なる発展に向けて』法務省，2009年5月。） hokyoikusuishinkyogikai. (2009). shogakkowo taishotoshita hokyoikukyozaireino sakuseinitsuite. (creation of lre teaching materials for elementary school students). homusho. （法教育推進協議会『小学校を対象とした法教育教材例の作成について』法務省，2009年8月。） hokyoikusuishinkyogikai. (2014). rulewa darenomono: minnade kangaeru hokyoiku. (whose is rules?). homusho. （法教育推進協議会『ルールは誰のもの？―みんなで考える法教育―』法務省2014年3月。） hokyoikusuishinkyogikai. (2015). hoya rulette naze hitsuyonandarou? watasgutachito ho. (why do we have to make laws and rules?). homusho. （法教育推進協議会『法やルールって、なぜ必要なんだろう？―私たちと法―』法務省，2015年3月。） 96 ijple 4 (1) 2020 4 a law-themed charter high school born at new york law school remains indelibly linked amy l. wallace1 it was a confluence of unrelated events at new york law school in the spring of 2009 that led to the founding of the charter high school for law and social justice (chslsj) in the bronx, new york. dedicated law school faculty members were crucial to the school’s launch and the law school, its law students and faculty continue to nurture this unique and reciprocal relationship. professor richard marsico2 was the unstoppable force behind the founding of the charter school and its close connection to new york law school (nyls). this article details the origins of chslsj, the current relationship between nyls and the high school, and plans for future cooperation. 1 amy l. wallace is an adjunct professor of law at new york law school. wallace founded and teaches the street law experiential course at nyls. she is a graduate of the university of toronto (b.a. in political science), georgetown university law center (j.d.), and lehman college (m. ed. – new york city teaching fellows program). she consults for street law, inc., a non-profit focused on law-related education based outside of washington, d.c. at street law, inc. she helped design the chslsj summer law program and continues to serve as the legal director of that program. 2 richard marsico is a professor of law at new york law school, and director of the impact center for public interest law. ijple 4 (1) 2020 5 1. origins professor marsico has identified three factors in the spring of 2009 that led to the birth of the charter school3: (1) a conference discussing the devastating effects of the school-to-prison pipeline; (2) thank you notes from middle school students who had participated in nyls’s street law program and completed their oral arguments at nyls; and (3) an education law and policy class discussion on nontraditional public school alternatives. in the united states public schools are institutions that are operated and funded by the local, state, or federal government.4 at the elementary and secondary level, public schools are generally free to attend. most public schools are open to any student who lives within the geographic area. on april 1, 2009, the american civil liberties union’s racial justice program, new york law school’s racial justice project, and the new york law school law review co-sponsored a national symposium entitled “challenging the school-toprison pipeline”. the pipeline is identified as “the collection of education and 3 telephone interview with richard marsico, professor of law, new york law school (june 20, 2018). 4 42 u.s.c. § 2000c(c). ijple 4 (1) 2020 6 public safety policies and practices that push our nation’s schoolchildren out of the classroom and into the streets, the juvenile justice system, or the criminal justice system.”5 a disproportionate number of urban students of color are being thrust into this pipeline with catastrophic and lasting consequences.6 according to a 2000 united states department of education survey, african american students made up 17% of public school enrollment nationally but 34% of suspensions.7 an earlier study found that african american students were suspended or expelled 250% more often than white students.8 the symposium hosted advocates, attorneys, and education experts from around the country to discuss strategies to address this issue and its effect on urban communities. as co-chair of the nyls justice action center, professor marsico attended the conference and felt compelled to take action. before chslsj was conceived, new york law school worked with middle school students at jordan l. mott middle school (ms 22) in the bronx. the assistant 5 deborah n. archer, introduction: challenging the school-to-prison pipeline, 54 n.y. l. sch. l. rev. 867, 868 (2009-2010). 6 id. 7 the advancement project, education on lockdown: the schoolhouse to jailhouse track, at 18 (2005) citing u.s. department of education, 2000 office of civil rights elementary and secondary school survey. 8 russell j. skiba, suzanne e. eckes, and kevin brown, african american disproportionality in school discipline: the divide between best evidence and legal remedy, 54 n.y. l. sch. l. rev. 1071, 1086 (2009-2010) citing kevin p. brady, zero tolerance or (in)tolerance policies? weaponless school violence, due process, and the law of student suspensions and expulsions: an examination of fuller v. decatur public school board of education school district, 22 b.y.u. educ. & l.j. 159, 198 (2001). ijple 4 (1) 2020 7 principal at ms 22, josh brookstein was an nyls student at the time. on friday afternoons, new york law school students visited ms 22 as part of a volunteerrun student organization. the middle school students examined a criminal procedure issue, prepared for, and completed oral arguments through the law school’s existing street law program.9 nyls hosted the oral arguments as a way to expose the middle school students to a law school environment. upon completion of their oral arguments in spring 2009, the ms 22 students sent notes to nyls thanking the school for hosting the program. some students went further expressing a dream that they would one day attend nyls. as the students illustrated with their letters, instead of a school-to-prison pipeline, at-risk students in the bronx need a higher education/law school pipeline. as he had many times before, professor marsico taught an upper level elective course entitled education law and policy in nyls’s spring 2009 semester. part of the course included a discussion of non-traditional public school alternatives including magnet schools, school zoning, and charter schools. one afternoon, the discussion grew quite animated and professor marsico suggested, “we should start our own school that would counteract the school-to-prison pipeline by 9 as discussed in section 3 below, law-school-based street law programs vary throughout the country. nyls initially had a student-run program. the faculty-taught credit-bearing program began in the fall of 2017. the student-run volunteer program still exists as the renamed criminal law moot court competition. it takes place on friday afternoons at nyls and the competition is open to chslsj students as well as other schools. ijple 4 (1) 2020 8 creating a middle school to law school pipeline.” the problem illustrated by the pipeline conference had a concrete action plan. despite a minimal understanding of charter schools, professor marsico and his team began an intensive four-year odyssey to research and prepare the charter application for chslsj. along with justice action center fellows, law students working on capstone projects, final papers, and as research assistants explored the legal requirements to start a charter school in new york state.10 a feasibility study was performed that examined the different charter school models including different law-themed schools. the team created three working groups: a group focused on community outreach; a management group; and a group to draft the charter application. the community outreach committee initially considered the tribeca neighborhood because of its proximity to the law school. after a location study was performed, the group ultimately decided that the educational needs were far greater in the bronx. the group then identified local stakeholders including community leaders, elected officials, government agencies, and non-profits. the committee reached out to almost sixty individuals and groups, and held thirty 10 56 n.y. educ. l. § 2854 (2015). ijple 4 (1) 2020 9 meetings with interested parties.11 these stakeholders were critical for community interest, input, and cooperation. a founding group of experts in law and education was formed to prepare the charter application.12 the group included among others professor marsico, nyls professor of law lawrence grosberg, nyls assistant professor of law cynara mcquillan, and nyls graduate fellows kelly weiner and katie smelas. because of the school’s close relationship to nyls, law and social justice was chosen as the school’s theme. although charter schools are not required to be themed and many are not, some schools choose a theme to attract students, and guide elective class and extracurricular choices. regardless of theme, new york state charter schools are required to teach and administer all state-mandated courses and exams.13 the charter application filed with new york state, carefully details everything including governance, facilities, curricular goals, professional development, assessment, and a fiscal plan.14 the school’s close association with nyls is evident throughout the charter application. 11 charter h. sch. for l. and soc. just., n.y.s. charter application, § i. e., at 12 (2013). 12 charter h. sch. for l. and soc. just., n.y.s. charter application, § iii. a., at 40-1 (2013). 13 56 n.y. educ. l. § 2854 (d) (2015). 14 56 n.y. educ. l. § 2851 (2015). ijple 4 (1) 2020 10 the application begins with a detailed description of the school’s law and social justice theme and the role that its law school partner will play. the mission statement reads in part: using a theme of law and social justice, the school will engage, inspire, and empower its students, and will equip them with the academic skills to earn a regents diploma and gain admission to the college of their choice prepared for success. the school will create a pathway for its students to law school and careers as attorneys. the pathway will include mentoring opportunities with law students and attorneys and partnerships with institutions of higher learning. these institutions will offer college and law school experiences to our students and share with them the academic benchmarks and habits necessary to gain entrance to college and law school.15 from the outset the school was designed to create unique opportunities for high school students, law students, and attorneys to work together. 15 charter h. sch. for l. and soc. just., n.y.s. charter application, § i. a., at 1 (2013). ijple 4 (1) 2020 11 new york law school is identified in the charter application as an organizational partner.16 the application details the law school’s contributions to the new high school. law school faculty will provide curricular support to ensure law and social justice topics are incorporated into the core curriculum. in addition, law school faculty will train chslsj faculty on legal skills including trial advocacy, appellate advocacy, and debate. new york law school will recruit and train law students as mentors and to assist with classroom teaching. law students will also contribute to the school’s summer law program. the law school will help design community service projects, and through its extensive alumni network, connect high school students with legal experiences. new york law school faculty will use expertise in restorative justice17 to draft the chslsj code of conduct for students. finally, nyls will host chslsj students to expose them to the law school experience. as a law-themed school, the curriculum is designed to include a law or social justice course in each academic year. the application asserts that the law school, its faculty, and its law students will be crucial in the development and execution 16 charter h. sch. for l. and soc. just., n.y.s. charter application, § iii. c. 2, at 47 (2013). 17 “the idea behind restorative justice is that criminal acts are not just random acts against the state – they harm victims, offenders themselves, and whole communities. sentences that reflect restorative justice principles include ways for offenders to repair the harm done to victims, to understand the impact of their actions, and to learn new skills while connecting to their communities in positive ways.” lee p. arbetman, street law: a course in practical law 194 (9th ed. 2016). ijple 4 (1) 2020 12 of law-related education at chslsj and the integration of law and social justice themes into other core courses such as literature, chemistry, and biology.18 the charter application also outlines the desire for chslsj to be a pathway to college and even law school.19 it describes the unique relationship between the high school, the college of mount saint vincent, and nyls. the application explains that this broad network will provide experiences and exposure unlike those offered in the new york city public school system. the charter application was initially filed in march 2013. the state responded with some questions and the application was resubmitted in september 2013. the charter for the four-year high school was granted on december 13, 2013. eighteen months later, chslsj accepted its first class of ninth grade students. acceptances to chslsj are awarded on a first-come first served basis unless the number of applicants exceeds the available spots. in that case, acceptances are assigned based on a lottery. in the united states, high school is typically ninth through twelfth grade. although it varies, students entering ninth grade are fourteen or fifteen years old. when the charter was granted, chslsj applied for a three-year grant from the united states office of innovation & improvement’s charter schools 18 charter h. sch. for l. and soc. just., n.y.s. charter application, § i. a. (b),(d), at 1, 2 (2013). 19 charter h. sch. for l. and soc. just., n.y.s. charter application, § i. a. (e), at 2 (2013). ijple 4 (1) 2020 13 program20 to finance the founding of the school. the grant was crucial to the startup phase of chslsj. in new york state, charter schools are funded by the school district based on student enrollment.21 however, certain programs at chslsj, including the summer law program (see section 2 below), are partially funded by private donations. 2. summer law program the charter high school for law and social justice welcomed its inaugural ninth grade class in the summer of 2015 for the school’s mandatory summer bridge program. increasingly schools in the united states are implementing summer programs to help students make the difficult transition from middle school to high school. including a summer program is a recommended strategy to support incoming ninth-graders.22 these programs have “led to improved pass rates for ninth-graders, fewer discipline problems, and increased self-esteem.”23 four nyls law students taught the two ten-day summer bridge sessions. held on the campus of the college of mount saint vincent in riverdale, new york, the 20 https://innovation.ed.gov/what-we-do/charter-schools/. 21 56 n.y. educ. l. § 2856 (2015). 22 see ronald williamston, transition from middle to high school, education partnerships, inc. (apr. 23, 2010) accessed july 4, 2019, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed538706.pdf. 23 sarah butrymowicz & linda shaw, summer-bridge classes help kids kick-start high school, the hechinger report (sept. 8, 2010) accessed july 4, 2019, https://hechingerreport.org/summerbridge-classes-help-kids-kick-start-high-school/. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed538706.pdf https://hechingerreport.org/summer-bridge-classes-help-kids-kick-start-high-school/ https://hechingerreport.org/summer-bridge-classes-help-kids-kick-start-high-school/ ijple 4 (1) 2020 14 program covered causes of crime, theories of punishment, criminal procedure, and mock trial. in late spring 2016, in an effort to solidify a comprehensive program for its students, chslsj issued a request for proposals to law-related education organizations asking for revamped summer bridge program designs. the summer bridge program is organized as an introduction to the legal courses that are offered as part of the regular academic year at chslsj and to prepare the students for the level of academic rigor expected at the high school level. the request for proposals sought plans for a fifteen-day experiential law and social justice curriculum. street law, inc., an international leader in law and civics curriculum development was awarded the contract. street law’s interactive student-centered lessons help students develop their “analytical and critical thinking skills, their communication and advocacy skills, and their creativity and problem solving skills.”24 because of time constraints, chslsj hired both law students from nyls and other law schools to teach the new summer bridge program that summer. ten law students taught the revised three-week curriculum. it included an introduction to the rule of law as well as lessons on criminal law and procedure, the bill of rights, juvenile justice, contracts, and torts. the program concluded with a weeklong preparation 24 sean arthurs, street law: creating tomorrow’s citizens today, 19 (4) lewis & clark l. rev. 926, 931 (2015). ijple 4 (1) 2020 15 for a final mock trial. volunteer lawyers from schulte, roth & zabel llp visited the program to judge the mock trials. new york law school’s participation in the summer bridge program continued to develop in the summer of 2017 when five nyls law students joined three students from other law schools to teach the program. in 2018 all eight instructors were nyls students. that year the summer bridge program became the summer law program and was expanded to include a street law, inc. designed simulations program for tenth through twelfth grade students. twenty students participated in this voluntary summer program. the upper grade students spent a week preparing a mock trial and a week preparing oral arguments for a moot court. lawyers from schulte, roth & zabel llp and attorney volunteers from the legal department of dentsu aegis network (see section 4 below) judged the oral arguments and both the upper grade and the ninth grade mock trials. for summer 2019 seven nyls law students will teach the program. two law students will be returning to teach for their second summer and two instructors just finished teaching at chslsj through the street law experiential course at nyls (see section 3 below). ijple 4 (1) 2020 16 in addition to helping the ninth-graders transition to a new high school environment, the summer program exposes the high school students to enthusiastic law students who serve as mentors and role models. the law students also benefit from their role as legal instructor. when asked what the program meant to her, summer law program alumnus sydney hershenhorn explained, [t]eaching street law during the summer was one of my most meaningful law school experiences. spending the summer in the classroom was the perfect opportunity to help others while also developing essential lawyering skills of my own. each street law lesson helps the high-school students learn to use the high-order analytical thinking skills that they will need as they progress in their education, and in turn provides a chance for instructors to practice indispensable professional skills like explaining the law to non-lawyers and answering complex legal questions on the spot.25 these reciprocal benefits have cemented the commitment of both nyls and chslsj to this important relationship. 25 letter from sydney hershenhorn, nyls student to amy wallace, nyls adjunct professor of law (june 25, 2019). ijple 4 (1) 2020 17 3. street law experiential course at the completion of the 2016 summer bridge program, the high school students completed anonymous surveys about the program. because of the positive response to the interactive law-themed lessons, professor marsico sought to expand the involvement of nyls at chslsj during the school year. following a model founded at the georgetown university law center in the early 1970s, many law schools now have street law programs where law students are paired with local high schools, and law students facilitate interactive law lessons in civics or history classes. the georgetown program has been a blueprint for over 120 programs at law schools in the united states and abroad.26 some programs are taught by law school faculty for course credit, and some are led by law students as community service projects. the courses taught by faculty are generally designed with more frequent classroom visits by law students, which therefore can have a greater impact. in addition to learning substantive law, street law courses help law students improve lawyering skills, oral communication skills, organizational skills, and community connections. the law school quickly approved a four-credit experiential course to start the following academic year. 26 lee arbetman, street law, inc.: context, history and future, 2(1) int’l j. of pub. legal educ. 3, 4 (2018). ijple 4 (1) 2020 18 in fall 2017, ten law students signed on as the inaugural street law class at nyls. the students spent the first three weeks in seminar where they learned legal content, interactive teaching techniques, and classroom management skills. as part of the experiential program, the law students continue to attend a weekly seminar to discuss the substantive legal topic being taught at chslsj that week. unlike the summer law program, the law students then write a student-centered lesson plan, which they submit to the professor for review and comment. on fridays, the law students then teach their lesson at chslsj. in september 2017, the law students were paired to team-teach five law sections at chslsj focused on criminal law. law students taught lessons on topics including crimes against people and property, defenses, and juvenile justice. most sections concluded the semester with a mock trial. in order to ensure a high level of instruction and to provide meaningful feedback on teaching skills, the law students are regularly observed by faculty. as part of their required course work, law students submit weekly journals to review their experiences in the classroom. law students also share successes and struggles in weekly discussions during seminar. in a journal reflection written later in the semester, a law student wrote, ijple 4 (1) 2020 19 [o]ne of the most pivotal moments this week was when we were going over how the laws in new york have changed surrounding stop and frisk situations. we had a very open discussion about the ability individuals have to change the laws that impact their society. i kept reiterating how making these big changes starts with passing street law, graduating high school, maybe going onto[sic] law school.27 law students teaching at chslsj contribute to realizing the mission statement of the school. as mentors, they deliver legal content and encourage the high school students to see themselves as powerful participants in their community. following a positive first semester for high school and law students, nyls decided to offer street law in both the fall and spring semesters for the next academic year. law students are still only permitted to take street law for one semester. in fall 2018, nyls welcomed a new clinic to its broad lineup of offerings. the legislative advocacy clinic – everytown for gun safety was established and partnered with the nyls street law program to address these issues in the high school setting. because of current events, students at chslsj expressed enormous interest in the legal issues involving gun violence. half of the fall 2018 street law 27 journal from allyson balcolm, nyls student for nyls street law seminar (nov. 11, 2017). ijple 4 (1) 2020 20 semester at chslsj was devoted to lessons on gun laws. at the end of the semester, the high school students prepared a mock trial addressing a massshooting incident at a mall. charter high school for law and social justice students came to nyls for the mock trial and two attorneys from everytown for gun safety volunteered to serve as judges for the trials. through teaching at chslsj, the law students develop empathy and a greater understanding of the law’s impact on the community. on the first day of school that fall, one law student commented, “i had a great time with the students and am very much looking forward to being their teacher and establishing a connection with my students.”28 this relationship is more valuable to both the high school and law students than any one topic they will cover in class. later in the semester the same student recalled, “i told the class that they had done a great job and that we were in the presence of twelve future attorneys.”29 in 2019, law students taught street law in the spring semester for the first time. the semester started with the same training program for the new group of law students. the extra classroom time enabled the law students to focus entirely on criminal procedure. they wrote lessons on search and seizure, rights against self 28 journal from hannah osman, nyls student for nyls street law seminar (sept. 21, 2018). 29 journal from hannah osman, nyls student for nyls street law seminar (oct. 12, 2018). ijple 4 (1) 2020 21 incrimination, and even the death penalty. the semester concluded with a deep dive into carpenter v. united states.30 the high school students were particularly interested in how this case impacts the privacy of cell phone data. the students completed the semester by mooting the case with oral arguments held at new york law school and judged by a panel of street law law student alumni and nyls professor of law susan abraham. oral arguments can be daunting for law students so unsurprisingly some of the high school students were intimidated by both the assignment and the venue. one law student instructor remarked, [i]t is so intimidating for these students to stand up, in a law school setting especially, and argue in front of a bunch of adults. but they all faced their fear and did it anyway. my biggest takeaway from the day was that important lessons, including embracing your fear, can be learned from the most unexpected teachers. i am so grateful for all that my students taught me this semester.31 30 carpenter v. united states, 138 s. ct. 2206 (2018). the question in this case was whether the warrantless search of cell phone records including cell-site or location data violate the fourth amendment to the u.s. constitution. the united states supreme court decided the search was a violation of the defendant’s fourth amendment rights. 31 journal from erin peake, nyls student for nyls street law seminar (may 3, 2019). ijple 4 (1) 2020 22 both the law students and the high school students are proud of the knowledge, skills, and courage they develop over the semester. another law student commented, i think moot court is such a great thing for these kids to do in order for them to build confidence, realize their strengths as students and as people, and give them a glimpse into what practicing the law might look like. a student came up to me after they argued and said that they[sic] were really considering applying to law school once they finished college. i told her that i thought she was incredibly talented, and should definitely consider attending. these kids have more potential than they believe, and it was great seeing them acknowledging [sic] towards the end of the semester.32 faculty participants have also enjoyed working with the high school students and observing the nyls law students in a new role. professor abraham commented that it was a pleasure to participate as a judge for the moot court.33 32 journal from cara sheena, nyls student for nyls street law seminar (may 3, 2019). 33 email from susan abraham, nyls professor of law to amy wallace nyls adjunct professor of law, july 10, 2019. ijple 4 (1) 2020 23 4. legal professionals in spring 2018, professor marsico, as director of the nyls impact center for public interest law was approached by miri miller, associate general counsel of dentsu aegis network. dentsu aegis network (dan) is an international advertising and brand management company. while spearheading the company’s united states pro bono program ms. miller was looking to get involved with nyls, ideally with an education-related project. she was immediately excited about partnering her colleagues with chslsj. dentsu aegis network already had extensive experience delivering intellectual property (ip), and privacy advice and training to internal clients, and was excited to design student-friendly lessons on these topics for chslsj. in april 2018, in honor of world intellectual property day, a group of dan attorneys visited nyls to facilitate workshops with chslsj students. the interactive discussions focused on different forms of intellectual property and how ip affects the students’ daily life. the student-centered seminars allowed each chslsj student to assume the role of an ip attorney. to celebrate youth law day34 in may 2019, a group of chslsj students, accompanied by their nyls street law instructors and their classroom teacher, 34 the new york state bar association partners with new york state law schools to host events that expose underserved high school students to law school and legal careers. https://www.nysba.org/youthlawday. https://www.nysba.org/youthlawday ijple 4 (1) 2020 24 visited dan’s tribeca offices in lower manhattan. after they learned about the different types of ip, the high school students had to craft an advertising campaign and identify potential ip issues. the dan lawyers were particularly impressed when one of the high school groups designed a campaign very similar to what the company was about to unveil. after the visit, a law student reflected, i think the attorneys who gave presentations to the students prepared thoroughly and explained ip law in an understandable way. i really loved how they incorporated so much pop culture into their morning with us because it does a great job in bridging the age gap between the students and the attorneys. they talked about current trends in ip such as the debate on whether certain dance moves can be subject to ip protections and i think the students really enjoyed learning a bit about a different area of law.35 dentsu aegis network attorneys have also served as judges for final mock trials and moot courts during the chslsj summer law program. intellectual property is a growing and increasingly critical field and both the high school and law students benefit from this partnership and these experiences. 35 journal from gianna signorille, nyls student for nyls street law seminar (may 1, 2019). ijple 4 (1) 2020 25 5. what lies ahead as with many new high schools there have been a number of staff and administrative changes at chslsj over the last four years. the close connection between nyls and chslsj has been a constant. twenty nyls law students will team-teach ten street law sections at chslsj in the 2019/2020 academic year. the charter school added one grade level each academic year starting in the fall 2015. on june 27, 2019, chslsj held its first commencement ceremony at lehman college in the bronx. the momentousness of this first graduation was perceptible to the students, parents, faculty, and staff. in her speech, the valedictorian referenced the school’s theme and mission, and charged her fellow classmates to go out into their community, live up to their school’s name, and make a difference.36 not all elements of the high school’s charter mission statement have been fulfilled. work remains on developing community service projects and internships for upper grade students. the high school hopes to incorporate more legal and social justice themes into non-social studies core courses. the charter school’s mission will truly be actualized when new york law school enrolls its first chslsj 36 aaliyah ball, charter high school for law and social justice student, valedictory address at the commencement ceremony for the charter high school for law and social justice (june 27, 2019). ijple 4 (1) 2020 26 graduate. until then, nyls and chslsj will continue to work together to strengthen the skills of both high school and law students with this special partnership. ten years after the idea for the charter high school for law and social justice was born at new york law school, the schools remain indelibly linked. practice report 135 the silver lining in the black cloud of covid-19 tia ebarb matt1, natasha bellinger2, kim mcdonald3 abstract little did we imagine that the effects of covid-19 would ultimately make us a stronger and more accessible clinic. the sudden halt of providing in-person services clouded the entire university of exeter clinical programme with uncertainty. however, we could not simply stop our clinical provision – we had existing clients that still needed assistance, as well as students who were taking the clinic as a module. furthermore, we wanted to continue servicing the community. to consider converting to a remote service, there are fundamental questions a university clinical programme must address: why does the clinic exist? what are the goals of the clinic and can they still be achieved by a remote service? this paper outlines the process of converting our in-person clinic to a remote service, by detailing steps taken such as developing a remote operating student training manual, establishing a new case triage 1 tia ebarb matt j.d. is a sfhea senior lecturer/director of clinical legal education/director of education university of exeter school of law, solicitor in england and wales, attorney at law in washington state and arizona state, united states 2 natasha bellinger is a barrister, magdalen chambers lecturer/deputy director of clinical legal education university of exeter school of law 3 kim mcdonald is a partner, civil and commercial mediator, gilbert stephen solicitors, llp lecturer/legal director, community law clinic university of exeter school of law practice report 136 system, utilising zoom sessions, and developing a user focused website. it reflects upon the process of finding effective ways of communicating and collaborating with students and clients, while managing and mitigating the potential barriers to technology. both the successes and the challenges taught us more about the human connection and the human experience. ultimately, the lessons learned from a swift shut down to reopening a fully remote clinic made us better organised, better communicators, and more accessible for clients. once we safely return to in-person meetings, the value gained in providing a remote service will remain embedded in our offering, committing us to a hybrid service of in-person and remote meetings to provide a better service to our clients. for the next academic year, our strengthened service enables us to move seamlessly between a fully remote service and our new hybrid model with minimal disruption, should covid-19 continue to cast a dark cloud. introduction a relationship of trust between a lawyer and a client is something that is developed through a series of positive interactions. these interactionns tend to begin with an inperson meeting. through this initial meeting the lawyer establishes a rapport, sets the client at ease, and instils confidence in the client of the lawyer’s ability to assist the client with their legal problem. being in-person for the initial meeting means there is a human connection. the client and the lawyer can read each other’s body language, practice report 137 assess emotions, and respond through a sort of human experience. what happens when the in-person meeting is replaced with a phone call or video on a screen? the dynamics change in such a setting. you can’t hand someone a tissue through the screen or the phone. this report examines the uncertainties faced by the university of exeter’s community law clinic caused by the black cloud of covid-19. it outlines the trials and tribulations of quickly moving from an in-person service to a fully remote service and the unexpected benefits and lessons learned as a result of this challenging time. background the university of exeter law school’s community law clinic offers a free legal advice service in the south west region of england. 150 third year law students, supervised by lecturers/legal practitioners and supported by volunteer legal practitioners, provide aid in areas such as immigration, housing, employment, consumer, benefits, and environmental law. over the last year, the clinic assisted over 200 clients. in february 2020, the clinic was at a point of needing to expand. the clinic had a strong foundation, but demand was far exceeding resource. we needed more staff and a physical presence in the community. we had secured accommodation in a university building in the city centre and were scheduled to have our opening the first week of practice report 138 may 2020. this would allow us to expand our hours and bring in more practitioners to assist. however, late march arrives, the pandemic was peaking, and like the rest of the country, the university went into lockdown. all in-person classes ceased, and campus was closed. moreover, many future funding projects were put on hold, which included the funding for the space we had secured and the hiring of another solicitor and clinic coordinator. we had ongoing cases coupled with national and international students needing to get home. this necessitated an immediate assessment of our current situation and the viability of our service moving forward. our duty of care both for our students and our clients provided us, as a university clinic, with an interesting dynamic. our main priorities at that time were (1) making sure the students could get home and get settled, and (2) making sure that there was not any detriment to the clients due to our service. thankfully, we were in a position where we could continue with our current clients and we were able to wrap up those cases swiftly and effectively. once we dealt with the immediate concerns, we needed to assess whether our inperson service could effectively be converted to a remote service. a main driver for setting up the clinic was to provide a much-needed community service in an area of dire need. the provision of a consistent service was important to us. we began the process by asking ourselves several questions: who are our clients? was there an alternate provider for these individuals? how did these individuals come to us? the clinic had formed several key partnerships with regional organisations such practice report 139 as the judiciary, solicitors’ firms, barristers’ chambers, and advice charities, which enabled us to provide a more comprehensive approach to services in the region. after an assessment, we realised that most of our clients came to us through referrals from these key partnerships. the referring organisations were either over capacity or couldn’t provide legal advice. our service was invaluable to the local community. we also noted that many of our clients had internet access or at least telephone access. initially, we may see them in-person, but after this initial contact, most of our communications were electronic. next, we asked ourselves, if we were to convert to a remote clinic, can we still achieve the same access and same level of assistance? we built strong relationships and good rapport with our clients. we needed to be able to keep that bond and trust with the community. our initial questions focused on the clients, but then we needed to ask ourselves would students still benefit from this changed service? we are a university and needed to evaluate the educational needs of our students. in a remote service, would students still gain the skillset and in the in-depth critical thinking and learning obtained from being part of an in-person clinic? believing more firmly that “[l]earning the law in isolation of the social context in which it operates can be seen as a significant gap in legal education which leaves those emerging into at least the solicitor’s branch of the profession inadequately equipped to perform competently as practising lawyers”4 it became clear that we needed to continue. operating a remote clinic during 4 lawyers and clients: the first meeting (modern law review, vol 49, issue 3, may 1986) practice report 140 a pandemic, when so many firms and chambers also needed to operate remotely, was an opportunity to give our students a social context to their learning experience. next, we set out to determine how a remote clinic would operate. we began with a list of things that we needed: another solicitor, a full-time clinic coordinator, and reliable technology for interviews. the technology must be reliable and accessible for us as supervisors, for our students, and for our clients. one of the key things for our clients’ accessibility is that we needed something that was accessible by video or by phone. after hiring a new solicitor and a coordinator, we turned to our documentation. this needed to be updated with our new way of operating. it should incorporate step-by-step instructions of how our new service operated, how to find us and how to connect through the technology. the student training had to be completely revamped with updating all training manuals and techniques. training to interview on a virtual platform is different than training for an in-person platform. establishing rapport and trust through the phone or video is a whole new skillset. even us supervisors had something to learn. we also knew that if we were going to have clients connecting with us more virtually, then we needed to build a website. a website that was client-focused for clients to come and get practical answers, as well as being able to directly engage with us. we also needed to inform those partners, that usually referred clients to us, of our new service. the referrers needed to know exactly how to refer clients to us and how we would operate so that they could prepare clients for this new type of service. practice report 141 the redesign was the easy step. we then held practice training sessions and practiced with the technology to see how it would function. we created training videos for sessions that we would normally deliver live. we even made a training video tour of our case management system. digitising most of the practical elements of the clinic meant that we could focus on the human connection side in our online client interviewing training we found quite easily that we were able to convert to a remote clinic almost seamlessly and that was something quite unexpected. the conversion the new remote operating clinic has a very streamlined operating system. probably, more streamlined than before going remote. clients come to us through email either directly or through a referral. once we receive that email, the case is triaged by one of our internal solicitors. this triage is used to determine if this is a case suitable for students. it is still just as imperative that we are taking on cases that are not only beneficial for students but also manageable by students. one immediate benefit of running the remote clinic is that we can put more time and consideration into the triaging of cases compared to what we normally would. although it is rare for us to reject a client, when we do, we can refer them out to a more tailored referral due to the ability to take time and research who may be able to assist them. typically, a client would just come into the in-person drop-in clinic without a chance for us to assess the suitability or who might be a good referral for them. practice report 142 after triage, we decide whether that case needs to be scheduled for an interview prior to receiving written legal advice, or it might be that someone is only looking for some information that we can give quite quickly through email. next, we assign students and supervisors, and an appointment is booked on zoom for those seeking legal advice. if it is a case requiring only information by email, the students will begin working on it immediately. after the virtual appointment, the students proceed with preparing our standard client care documentation, any necessary continued client communication, followed by their research, and finally provide a one-off advice letter advising the client of their legal position and the suggested next steps. depending on what those next steps are, we may offer to assist the client further. we continue to monitor client and student feedback to ensure that moving to a remote clinic has still allowed us to maintain the high level of client and student satisfaction. engaging with a remote clinic is quite different than a client being able to just walk into somewhere and talk to someone and for the students in how they explain things or do things in-person. we found that doing everything remotely was not only working just as efficiently, but in fact, enabled us to expand our service despite not being able to move into the city premises. we were indeed still managing to establish that trust and confidence, it is just a bit harder earned. practice report 143 challenges moving to a remote service has been a positive experience, however it has not been without its challenges. managing technological barriers for our clients to ensure they can access the service effectively all while continuing to receive a high standard of service was essential. moreover, a remote service continues to raise questions with regards to whether the students are able to fully develop their skills and gain the necessary experience of client interviewing and advising ordinarily obtained via the invaluable experience of meeting with clients in-person. technology a major hurdle to overcome with a fully remote service is access for both the clients and the students. both need adequate internet provision and equipment to be able to participate in online meetings and corresponding solely by e-mail and other remote communications such as zoom and microsoft teams. some of the issues we have faced as a clinic when attempting to arrange a meeting with clients are inadequate internet speeds, the lack of a device which can connect to the internet, or indeed no internet at all. in our experience these barriers have been particularly difficult to overcome with elderly clients, clients with disabilities affecting their ability to communicate and otherwise vulnerable clients. we needed to overcome these hurdles to ensure we were able to provide the same level of service to every client. practice report 144 it is extremely difficult to remove the barriers to technology for a fully remote service especially in a short timeframe. we used zoom for our client meetings which most of our clients were able to successfully use with or without their cameras on. using this platform meant we had the ability to arrange for clients to call into the meeting using a mobile phone or landline without the need to connect to the internet. clients asking for straightforward advice often asked for advice by e-mail only with no meeting. this meant all communication was by e-mail, which we were happy to provide in cases where this was appropriate. in deciding which cases were appropriate for email communication only, we considered whether it would affect the level of service, the complexity of the issues involved and the type of assistance the client was seeking. this has gone someway to alleviate access issues, but some clients will always prefer an in-person meeting and will not feel comfortable having a meeting in any other form. we were fortunate that all students on the clinic had access to the necessary technology allowing them to easily transition to remote working along with the supervisors. we also always have students working in pairs, so if one loses internet connection or is having issues, the other can take over. we purchased a clinic mobile phone to enable our coordinator to safely make calls to clients and protect her privacy. we once had a client lose internet connection and a supervisor was able to call the client by phone using the country’s 141 option which hides someone’s phone number and put the call on speaker next to the computer so that the students and the client practice report 145 could still hear each other. a remote service means needing to be creative and adaptive. as a clinic we were of course concerned about data protection and internet security with all meetings being on-line and we had to quickly decide the best forum for meetings taking into consideration our duty of confidentiality towards the client and duty of care to the students. we were already obliged to and did follow the university’s procedures and practices. our case management system could already be accessed remotely by the students, but we reviewed and reorganised our files to ensure that both accessibility and confidentiality could be maintained as far as possible. upholding our regulatory duties in such times is paramount. client and student relations we know as practitioners how important it is to build a rapport with a client when you meet with them. this builds trust and confidence in your ability as an adviser and enables the development of a successful professional relationship between client and lawyer. whilst our students are not legal professionals, we always instil in them the need to remain professional. this can be something much harder to achieve in a remote setting where informality can creep in or participants can accidentally speak over one another and there is a risk the human connection can be lost. our students interview in pairs and so we recognised that it is much harder for them to communicate with each other in order to manage the interview. we covered these practice report 146 issues as part of our training prior to re-opening the clinic as a remote service. always having one person to keep that human experience going is crucial. a remote service also throws up problems with being able to read body language and picking up on subtle cues. it is more difficult to react to the client and gauge their emotions when you are not in the same room. again, it is difficult to build rapport and develop trust when you are not in the same room and able to look the client in the eye. the fear for us as supervisors is that the students are not gaining experience at the same level of human connection with the client. video calls go some way to help with better reading a client, but this is not an option for everyone. regular checking in and reframing issues for the client through more frequent email communications enabled students to attempt to gauge where their client was at with a dispute. time often needed to be given to some clients who became upset and students were encouraged to demonstrate empathy with the client’s predicament as well as empathy with the covid-19 situation where this too had had an impact on the client’s wellbeing. in addition to the physical barriers to technology, our experience was that many clients were not confident in using an on-line platform such as zoom and many have struggled to follow the instructions to access meetings. this added an extra layer of stress and anxiety for many clients and an extra issue to worry about in addition to their legal case for which they had come to us for assistance. we ensured that instructions were sent out to clients in good time, we were relaxed and reassuring practice report 147 about any missed or late-starting appointments, and we had our intern on hand at the beginning of meetings in case a client needed help joining an online meeting. we developed and regularly reviewed our instructions to ensure they kept up with any changes made by the provider or the university to accessing zoom calls (such as having to have a registered account) and we did our best to accommodate any alternative means if the technology we were using was not working. a serious worry for the clinic supervisors was and continues to be that students may feel less supported during client meetings and through their research and writing their advice to clients when all contact is remote. the usual practice as detailed above was for supervisors to be in the room when students met with clients meaning students could quickly ask questions of the supervisors and the supervisors could pick up on the body language of the students to ascertain if there were any problems or questions arising. there is the ability on the remote meetings on zoom to enter into a private chat with the students if issues arise but this risks interrupting the student's concentration which can leave them feeling flustered and can affect their confidence during a remote meeting. in addition, students are not having the in-person contact with their peers and supervisors. they may feel less able to bounce ideas off each other and there is the real risk that students may start to feel isolated working remotely. we regularly check in with our students and encourage them to virtually meet with their group and us as supervisors to discuss cases. we give open and constructive feedback practice report 148 to them, whilst praising them for their efforts under the difficult circumstances which they have had to work. another problem the clinic faces is that we cannot see who is in the room with the client and often a client does not turn on their video function during a zoom. this means there is no way of knowing who is present with the client which raises the question of who is listening to the meeting and the advisers cannot tell if there is any issue of undue influence or duress. although the clinic does not record meetings this does of course not mean that clients are not recording the meeting on a separate device, which we have no control over. this does raise the question of liability on what is said. however, we already mitigate this through our established practice of the students only providing advice in writing after the meeting as this is also a challenge in an in-person meeting should a client later say they were given incorrect advice. it is nonetheless still a point that needs to be considered together with the potential impact this has on our duty of care to our students and our clients. together with the issue of who may be present with the client there is also the issue of the student’s environment when they are taking part in a remote meeting. students may be in shared houses or be living with younger siblings at home which may not be conducive to providing an ideal environment allowing the student to concentrate on the meeting. we emphasise to our students that it is important they take client meetings in rooms where they cannot be overheard to ensure confidentiality is maintained. practice report 149 student learning and development as supervisors and university lecturers a big question for us is whether running a fully remote clinic provides students with the best opportunity to learn. we were concerned about whether students would get the same experience that in-person interactions with clients provide and whether their development of client interviewing skills would be limited. coupled with this, the limited ways to communicate with their peers and supervisors has changed the way students are taught. all this raises the question as to whether the students are feeling supported and confident in their work and has an impact on us building rapport with our students, which is more of a challenge. we offer students drop-in zoom meetings to discuss any concerns or issues and we seek to regularly check in with them. it is however much harder to gauge and obtain engagement remotely but through regular training sessions and the provision of a variety of opportunities to engage, we hope this support mirrors an in-person meeting with us. the need for a human experience and connection is vital in a student to teacher relationship, as well. we have found that many students are more open about what they are struggling with over email than in-person, but we recognise each student is different and that some may struggle to approach us in a remote setting. practice report 150 benefits despite the numerous challenges we faced in moving to a fully remote service, there are many benefits, some of which are quite surprising and many that we would seek to carry forward in a hybrid service. accessibility now that the clinic offers a remote service, we have been able to reach clients that would not have attended an in-person meeting. this could be for a variety of reasons including anxiety and physical practicalities. remote working results in less travel by the clients, students and supervisors reducing the carbon footprint of the clinic. no travel saves time for all parties and eliminates the risk of clients being late to appointments or not showing altogether due to traffic or other travel issues. student learning and flexibility on-line meetings allow for flexibility. the clinic can offer a range of times and dates compared to the former more rigid appointment times. additonally, remote communication with students provides for more flexibility and greater availability of supervisors. both new arrangements make us more accessible to students to support them and encourage their development, while meeting clients’ needs. practice report 151 when you develop such things as social presence and supportive discourse, research has shown that on-line learning produces just as good results as in-person learning.5 we believe we have done this with our frequent communication and increased availability. turning most of our training into videos allows students to revisit and refresh, as needed. however, this presence and discourse does not necessarily consider the developing of the less conventional skill of interviewing and dealing with clients. this is a skill that needs to be nurtured overtime and an in-person meeting is always going to be needed to perfect it. creating our online clinic community enables us to provide for the flexibility of this service and the changing needs of our students, as well, as our clients. in many ways, it allows us to keep trying to get it right. now more than ever, it is important that we maintain our standard reflective piece as a form of assessment for our students to maintain that supportive discourse and presence. in brayne, duncan and grimes, learning from experience “occurs not in the doing but in the reflection and conceptualisation that takes place during and after the event.”6 this reflection impacts the way students learn from what they are doing and ultimately, we gain the critical thinkers we set out to make. the lack of in-person time cannot be compensated by reflection only, but the reflection can give students the opportunity to understand the needs and differences in the approaches. once they can 5 swan, k., garrison, d. r., & richardson, j. c. (2009). a constructivist approach to online learning: the community of inquiry framework. in c. r. payne (ed.), information technology and constructivism in higher education: progressive learning frameworks. hershey, pa: igi global, 43–57. 6 brayne, h., duncan, n. &. grimes, r. (1998) clinical legal education: active learning in your law school (london, blackstone press ltd). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285177901_a_constructivist_approach_to_online_learning_the_community_of_inquiry_framework https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285177901_a_constructivist_approach_to_online_learning_the_community_of_inquiry_framework practice report 152 go back to in-person meetings, they will be able to take the lessons of remote operating with them to make them even better lawyers. another extremely important part of the clinic is ensuring the safety of students and applying a strict risk assessment. meeting clients on-line and not in-person does significantly reduce the risk of potential harm to students. in addition, if the clinic experiences a difficult client, the meeting can easily be terminated by the supervisor or student, which is not so simple at an in-person meeting. adaptability now that the clinic has successfully moved to remote working, if another full lock down is imposed due to covid-19 or another problem arises where in-person meetings are not possible, the clinic is fully prepared to continue to provide a high level of service with no interruption ensuring the continuation and longevity of the clinic. for our students, we realised that creating independent learners at the same time as critical thinkers is a challenge. we continue to challenge the students, with minimal guidance from ourselves, to find the information that they need. as we tell them, “be comfortable with the unexpected”.7 we can guide them to feel comfortable with the challenge of their newly required independence. they are gaining the valued skill of being capable to adapt quickly. 7 balachandra, l. et al., ‘improvisation and negotiation: expecting the unexpected’ (2005) negotiation journal 415 practice report 153 going forward we discussed the challenges and benefits of a clinic offering a fully remote service compared to an in-person service. going forward we now can offer both an in-person and a remote service to cover all needs and practicalities. such a hybrid service will allow the clinic to overcome the hurdles and barriers to technology we have experienced with a solely remote clinic and take advantage of the benefits of both a remote and in-person service. the new hybrid service will benefit the community since it offers greater accessibility to our services and should the necessity arise to go fully remote, the clinic is fully prepared to continue to seamlessly provide, without interruption, a high level of service. this new way of working will also enhance the university of exeter school of law clinic module and provide greater opportunity for students to be able to develop their practical skills using different forums and technologies and broaden their understanding and experience. they now have the skills of operating a remote clinic to take forward with them to firms and chambers. these skills will no doubt be desirable for future employers in the legal sector. conclusion remote working was thrust upon us as a clinic. the experience showed us how vitally important the human connection is between client and lawyer and teacher and practice report 154 student. although, we have navigated ways to attempt to alleviate the loss of the inperson human connection, through technology and frequent communication, there is a real risk that a fully remote service will never be able to replicate the level of human connection as an in-person service. the uncertain effects that the dark cloud of covid-19 cast on our clinic ultimately made us a stronger and more accessible clinic. our shared human experience of the pandemic meant we all needed to find ways to adapt. for the clinic, our silver lining was recognising our ability to adapt, reflect, and take forward the newly presented opportunities. ultimately, we remembered, virtually or in-person, we all want to be heard and to have a chance to tell our story. that is the real human connection. practice report 62 clinical legal education: a virtual mode of access to justice dr. gigimon v.s. & ms. shruti nandwana1 abstract legal education, all over the world uses a mix of practical and theoretical means to train students. for purposes of practical training, specialized legal clinics are established by legal education institutions to train the students to apply the classroom learnt law in live cases. these legal clinics serve dual purposes, first, of training students in the practical aspects of the law and second, providing access to justice to people in areas where it is difficult to get legal help and where reaching institutions of justice delivery is difficult. the pandemic situation prevailing world over now has had deep impacts in imparting legal education. the physical classrooms have turned into virtual classrooms, delivering only theoretical education and leaving doubts in the mind of students due to lack of practical training resulting from non-functioning of legal aid clinics in this situation. in order to ensure access to justice in india during the time of pandemic, the judiciary has taken recourse of virtual courts, whereby the 1 dr. gigimon v.s. is associate professor of law, dharmashastra national law university, jabalpur. their contact details are contact number +918123011980, email id profggvs@gmail.com. ms. shruti nandwana, assistant professor of law, dharmashastra national law university, jabalpur. their contact details are contact number +91–7987179434, email idshruti@mpdnlu.ac.in mailto:profggvs@gmail.com mailto:shruti@mpdnlu.ac.in practice report 63 listing and hearing of cases which require urgent hearing are done online. the same methodology has also been adopted by the national legal aid service authority by conducting virtual lok adalats where cases are entrusted to them2. by studying the same mode of virtual courts and virtual lok adalats, the present paper aims to devise a working model to ensure that clinical legal education is continued in india during these times of pandemic, and that legal aid clinics work efficiently to ensure that people are not deprived of their right to legal assistance. the working model proposes a collaboration between the legal aid clinics of the universities and colleges and the justice delivery institutions to ensure dual purpose of legal aid clinics is met. the model will also be tested in the institution, and a pan india plan of action for implementing this model would be devised. introduction legal education is incomplete without practical training. clinical legal education is a method of ‘learning by doing’ where students are trained in the practical skills of how the law works in action. in the words of prof. n.r. madhava menon, the pioneer of legal education in india, clinical legal education is “a learning environment where students identify, research and apply knowledge in a setting which replicates, at least in part, the world where it is practiced. it almost 2 lok adalats are a form of alternative dispute resolution see https://nalsa.gov.in/lok-adalat practice report 64 inevitably means that the student takes on some aspect of a case and conducts this as it would be conducted in the real world.”3 this clinical legal education serves the dual purpose of imparting practical skills to students and ensures access to justice to the deprived and distressed sections of society. clinical legal education in india has been made a mandatory part of law course curriculum and most law schools take it up in the form of legal aid clinics/cells which function in their universities/ law colleges. they aim to provide a public service and access to justice to those who are unable to approach the justice delivery institutions in the country. however, the covid-19 pandemic has created unique challenges to legal education and to access to justice. with universities and colleges being shut down due to the pandemic, teaching has shifted online through virtual means. this has ensured that imparting theoretical knowledge is not hampered, however, it has posed serious obstacles in imparting practical training with most legal aid clinics/cells in universities/colleges being shut down. similarly, courts of law in response to the pandemic suspended their physical functioning and hence this has caused a hurdle in access to justice to public at large. the indian judiciary responded quickly and embraced technology by adopting virtual means to hear cases to ensure that the functioning of the courts is not impeded. the lok adalats in india which are intended to ensure legal aid to large numbers of people has also adopted virtual means to settle disputes. hence, there becomes a pressing need that the legal aid clinics/cells 3 n.r. madhava menon, clinical legal education, eastern book company, 1998 https://lawbookshop.net/eastern-book-company.html practice report 65 in india adopt virtual modes of functioning to ensure that the pandemic does not obstruct their functioning the issue of practical training which is curtailed during this period can be resolved if we try to use technology, that had aided the government and judiciary, to continue to reach the needy. the present paper is looking to propose a working model for ensuring that these legal aid clinics/cells use technology platforms to function during the pandemic and continue even after the situation is overcome. the first part of the paper briefly discusses clinical legal education in india. it then moves on to discuss lok adalats and the e-lok adalats which were conducted in india during the pandemic and their success. the next part of the paper discusses various successful legal aid initiatives undertaken by students from various law schools prior to and during the pandemic times. finally we move on to discuss the working model for functioning of legal aid clinics virtually. clinical legal education in india the indian constitution, provides that the citizens should be provided social, economic and political justice.4 the indian constitution also guarantees legal aid to citizens in case of violation of their rights.5 despite strong basis for legal aid in the 4 preamble to the constitution of india 5 article 39a, constitution of india practice report 66 constitution, the concept of legal aid and clinical legal education emerged relatively late in india. in 1949, the bombay legal education committee for the first time recommended that practical courses should be made compulsory for those students who wish to enter the legal profession.6 this was the starting of cle in india. various committees and commissions have been set up in india to ensure that legal aid reached the needy and deprived section of the society. the government of india legislated the legal service authority act ,1987 in order to ensure free legal aid to citizens who cannot afford it. the act has established legal service authorities at three levels – national, state and district level which are responsible for providing free legal aid and ensuring that the needy sections of the society get legal representation. however, it was understood that given the large population of india, the number of people who are eligible for free legal aid is huge and the instrumentalities of the state are not enough to support free legal aid programs for all. hence, various committees were set up which suggested that including law schools in legal aid programs would serve dual purposes, first to train students and develop their skills, which are necessary for practically implementing what they have learnt in theory in law schools, and second to ensure that access to justice is ensured for all.7 the committees also identified seven components of legal aid which include 6 frank s. bloch & iqbal s. ishar, legal aid, public service and clinical legal education: future directions from india and the united states, 12 mich. j. int'l l. 92 (1990). 7 government of india, ministry of law, justice and company affairs, department of legal affairs, report of expert committee on legal aid : processual justice to the people (1973). government of india, ministry f law, justice and company affairs, department of legal affairs, report on national practice report 67 legal representation, advice, awareness, paralegal services, public interest litigation, promotion of alternative dispute resolution and legal reforms. all the aforesaid components of legal aid can be achieved by means of legal clinics in law schools except for the first one.8 on the basis of reports of various committees, bar council of india, which regulates legal education in india, used its authority given to it under the advocates act 1961 and issued an order making it compulsory for all law universities and colleges to include four practical papers in their course curriculum. the first practical paper includes moot courts, second relates to drafting, pleading and convincing, third deals with professional ethics and the fourth paper is concerned with training students in legal aid. this resulted in cle becoming an integral part of law school training where it became mandatory for the final year students to undertake legal aid programs and services in order to get practical training and develop lawyering skills. universities and colleges across india have adopted diverse means to implement the practical paper on legal aid in their institutes. some have joined up with non-governmental organisations in order to assist them in legal aid and advising them, some of them adopted certain local areas in order to provide legal aid to the residents of those areas, the most common method adopted by the universities and colleges was to set up legal aid cells in order to meet the object of practical training. these legal aid cells serve juridicare: equal justice – social justice (1977). report of committee for implementing legal aid schemes (cilas) 1981 8 since law students in india are not allowed to practice before the completion of their degree. practice report 68 diverse needs of ensuring spreading awareness, imparting legal advice, and ensuring the underserved section of the society is given legal representation. these legal aid cells also establish legal clinics to carry on their activities and tie up with lawyers to act on pro bono basis in order to represent the weaker section of the society. lok adalats and the functioning and success of e-lok adalat the lok adalats are set up under the legal service authorities act, 1987. the act aims to constitute legal service authorities in order to provide competent and free legal services to the economically deprived and distressed sections of the society and to organise lok adalats to ensure that access to justice on equal basis is ensured to all. lok adalat is a forum where cases which are pending in the court of law or are at a pre-litigation stage are compromised/settled amicably. lok adalats were established in order to ensure speedy disposal of cases where settlement is possible. cases which are referred to the lok adalat are of civil nature, matrimonial cases, motor accidents claims and petty offences. the essence of lok adalat proceedings is that the parties should be willing to amicably settle the disputes between them. the covid-19 pandemic had resulted in suspension of regular functioning of lok adalats in various states. this resulted in serious hardships to persons whose cases were referred to the lok adalats. in order to cope up with the pandemic the legal service authorities of various states adopted virtual means to conduct lok adalats. hon’ble justice n.v. ramana, judge, supreme court of india and executive practice report 69 chairperson of the national legal services authority, while talking about e-lok adalats said “we [the judiciary] always thought of making use of technological services like video conferences, e-courts, etc. to enable marginalised people to access justice. now, finally it has been put into action.”9 in order to conduct e-lok adalat, states adopted different platforms such as videoconferencing, website or mobile applications developed specifically to conduct e-lok adalats to connect the judges, lawyers, authorities and litigants. the first step in each case involved identification of cases which can be settled or decided in lok adalats. post identification, the parties involved were contacted and asked whether they wanted their case to be decided in lok adalat. on the basis of this, the number of cases is identified, and necessary benches are constituted to deal with the cases by means of videoconferencing or other digital platforms. the secretary of district legal service authority has to ensure that the litigants who consent to their matters being taken up for virtual lok adalats, fill in a form for referring the dispute to lok adalats. once the benches are constituted, links are created for each case and the information is uploaded on the websites of district court. whatsapp groups are created by the district courts for the parties and advocates to give them information and communicate smoothly regarding the cases. on the date and time designated for the case to be heard, the parties and judge joins the link. the parties are heard, and the 9 concept of e-lok adalat has potential to transform legal landscape: sc judge, september 19, 2020 https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/karnataka/concept-of-e-lok-adalat-has-potential-totransform-legal-landscape-sc-judge/article32650701.ece practice report 70 matter is decided. the award of the lok adalat is uploaded on the district court website which can be accesses by the litigants and lawyers.10 e-lok adalats have been a huge success in various states and states have settled thousands of cases on a single day in e-lok adalats. the following is the data on cases settled in one day in various states by means of e-lok adalat:11 serial no. state e-lok adalat was held number of cases settled 1. delhi 5838 2. jharkhand 3,308 3. karnataka 1,50,000 4. chhattisgarh 2270 5. tamil nadu 70,000 6. andhra pradesh 1,222 7. haryana 104 8. uttarakhand 1,787 9. gujarat 10,954 10. punjab 19,432 11. rajasthan 33476 12. jammu and kashmir 4237 total 202629 student initiative legal aid programs – covid -19 10 sop for conducting india’s first state level e-lok adalat or vc lok adalat in chhattisgarh 11 the data has been taken from the website of district legal service authorities of the respective states. practice report 71 university and college students across india have taken initiatives to assist the needy and deprived sections of the society to make them aware of their rights and to ensure that justice is done. in a few such cases, students from various national law universities from different parts of india have come together to assist people to get their rights enforced. a few of such initiatives for legal aid by students at a pan india level are: • mazdoor mitra: covid – 19 forced nations to call for a nation-wide lockdown in the initial stages as a measure to control the virus from spreading. during these difficult times of lockdown, the most severely hit were the daily wage earners and migrant labourers who left their homes and travelled kilometres to find employment. they were left stranded and were unable to contact their state governments to transport them back to their respective states. the students from national law institute university, bhopal joined hands to assist the migrant labours to procure food, arrange night shelters and provided them with e-passes and means of transport to return home. it is an entirely studentled program. since all educational institutes were also closed during the lockdown period, the students communicated with each other and kept in constant touch through videoconferencing and whatsapp. they coordinated with various state authorities and ngos to provide assistance to migrant labourers. the mazdoormitra website was set up within 24 hours which had contact details of various covid-19 helpline numbers for states as well as practice report 72 labour welfare agencies. the students were available 24/7 through their website and through the contact details furnished on the mazdoormitra website. within a month they had solved more than 200 inquiries from migrant labourers from across india, and, were able to connect people during this emergency situation.12 • initiative by students from gandhinagar national law university, gandhinagar: students and alumni of gandhinagar national law university, gandhinagar (gnlu) came together during the nation-wide lockdown enforced due to covid -19 to assist the migrant workers to return home. they worked with zenith legal aid clinic in madhya pradesh in order to provide aid to migrant workers with respect to food, shelter and conveyance in order to travel back to their hometown. the team also worked in collaboration with governmental and non-governmental agencies to assist the migrant workers. they provided information to migrant workers regarding trains scheduled for them to travel back home, assisted the labourers to register themselves for trains scheduled for them, assisted the labourer to reach home from the railway station, and tracked the location of migrant labourers on their way back to their homes. they also assisted the governmental authorities and ngos to connect to labours to provide them with food and shelter facilities. in their first phase 12 student-led nliu project assist over 200 migrant labourers with practical advice, help on dealing with lockdown, wednesday, 20 may 2020 https://www.legallyindia.com/lawschools/student-led-nliuproject-assist-over-200-migrant-labourers-with-practical-advice-help-on-dealing-with-lockdown20200520-11429 practice report 73 i.e. from may 14, 2020 to may 21, 2020 they assisted a total of 6000 workers from madhya pradesh who were stranded in maharashtra. the team has also assisted workers who were being abused by their employers and being forced to work extra hours when they wanted to leave for their hometowns. the team contacted the officials and administration in the area and the workers were given police protection and sent back home. 13 technology assisted legal aid programme the initiative by the students of dharmashastra national law university, jabalpur, (dnlu, jabalpur) the instances stated above in the form of mazdoormitra, initiative by students from gujarat national law university, gandhinagar as well as the huge success of the e-lok adalats in various states forms the basis of our current model for setting up online legal aid clinics connecting law schools pan india. the present paper proposes a model for setting up collaborative legal aid clinic among law schools pan india which would help to ensure dual purpose of legal aid clinics. the project would be implemented in phases where at the first phase it would be initiated in our university, i.e. dnlu, jabalpur and would then be based on collaboration of 22 national law universities (nlus) established in different parts of 13 success stories of assisting migrant labour, gnlu centre for law and society, 2020 http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6922849-gnlu-centre-for-law-and-society-gclssuccess.html practice report 74 the country. post this phase, such nlus would then collaborate with the law schools in their region to connect the legal aid clinics pan india. figure 1 – parties involved in the functioning of online legal aid clinic parties involved: • legal aid cell of the university: the legal aid cell of the university would act as a nodal centre through which all the legal aid activities would be carried out. • legal service authority: the legal service authority would be contacted to provide requisite support for providing assistance in connecting people virtually. practice report 75 • student volunteers : student volunteers would be responsible for running the legal aid clinic for purposes of providing advice; assisting pro bono lawyers to draft the petitions; maintaining the website and web portal for receiving complaints and requests for legal advice; and undertaking all activities at the university level to run the legal clinics. • trained paralegals – they would undertake advisory work, running of kiosks and assist the students where they need additional support. • local area governance institutions: such as gram panchayats and gram nayalaya to help people in distress connect with the legal clinics virtually • schools: legal awareness camps would be set up in schools so as to make students aware of their rights and duties figure 2: stages of implementation of the model practice report 76 stage i dnlu, has an active legal aid cell which provides legal aid and advice to citizens in need. the students have been visiting villages to understand the legal issues which people face and to provide advice. hence, this legal aid cell would act as the nodal centre for implementing the project and establishing legal clinics in their university. as per the legal education regulations of bar council of india (bci) rules, there should be a faculty member who would head the legal aid program in the university, and hence an experienced professor would be designated as the head of the cell who would be responsible for ensuring that the legal clinic functions in a proper manner. bci mandates training students in legal aid as a compulsory subject for law students, and hence, each year there would be about 100 final year students who would have to take clinical legal education as a mandatory subject and they would be the volunteers in the legal clinics. apart from the student volunteers, alumni of the university, on a pro bono basis, will be the advisors and lawyers for representing the clients based on advice given to them in the clinics. the volunteers can assist the lawyers in preparing case briefs and representations in cases assigned to them. the legal aid clinic would also recruit certain paralegals to assist them in the activities of the clinic. stage ii the legal aid clinic would adopt a village nearby to start implementing the project. a website would be created which would give details of the clinics. helpline numbers practice report 77 would be circulated by way of information pamphlets in areas where the legal aid clinic aims are to start implementing the project so as to make the people aware of the existence of centres where people can access legal help. apart from the website and helpline numbers, the clinic would have a kiosk which will function once a week in each area where legal aid is to be provided. the kiosk would be managed by trained paralegals and student volunteers working with the clinic so as to ensure that those who are unaware of technology and cannot access websites or helpline numbers are helped at regular intervals. the helpline numbers would also increase take up of those in emergency situations such as domestic abuse where the complainant seeks urgent help. the national legal service authority is entrusted with the task of promotion of clinical legal education and the provision of guidance and supervision for the establishment and working of legal aid clinics in universities and law colleges. hence, the legal aid clinic at dnlu, jabalpur can connect with the state legal service authority in order to make the legal aid clinics function virtually. the virtual facilities available with the state legal service authority can be used to provide legal aid to those in distress. to provide legal aid, the cell at dnlu would establish a portal on its website where the people who require assistance call fill in the requisite details with respect to their case and such details necessary for the students to assist and provide counselling to these persons. the student volunteers would be divided into groups which would specialise in one particular law. the matters as received on the portal would then be practice report 78 segregated and assigned to the respective groups. these groups would understand the matter, take assistance from the panel of pro-bono lawyers and ensure that they are well versed with the case at hand. they would then contact their client either through telephonic calls or through videoconferencing in cases where it is necessary. to this end the legal service authorities at the state, district and village level can provide support by creating a setup where such persons who do not have means to connect through video conferencing can come and use the facility to have meetings with the volunteers at the legal aid clinics. these volunteers after meeting with the clients with respect to their cases, will be assigned lawyers who agree to work on probono basis and represent these cases in the court of law. here the task of the volunteer would be to assist the lawyer in drafting the case and act as an intermediary between the lawyer and the person represented to ensure that there is complete exchange of information. whatsapp groups can also be created by students so that they connect large number of people together and it is easier to communicate. stage iii after the initial stage of implementation and working, these legal aid clinics would then contact the district or taluka legal service authorities in their states to refer cases which are fit for settlement through lok adalats and ensure that the decisions of the lok adalats are implemented. coordination and collaboration with the legal service authorities would also help these clinics to refer cases which include more complex practice report 79 issues to be dealt by panel of lawyers and mediators, empanelled with the legal service authorities and they can help people who require legal aid by representing them. stage iv at the next stage, the legal aid clinic would contact the gram panchayats (village council) and gram nayalays (village courts) in each village where the legal aid clinic aims to provide legal aid. gram panchayats and gram nayalays can through their administration provide ways to connect the people to the legal aid clinics via online modes and hence ensure that the people in need are connected to the legal aid clinics in their respective areas. further, collaborating with gram panchayats can help in spreading awareness among the villagers regarding legal rights and duties, and various welfare schemes which are available and implemented by the government for them. a major challenge in the rural areas in india is that the rural population is unaware of their legal rights and welfare schemes conducted for their benefit. hence more than providing legal aid, legal awareness among rural people is an important aspect which needs to be taken care of. the student volunteers and the paralegals can take up these activities by contacting the gram panchayats and organising screening of documentaries on legal rights or organising videoconferencing of the legal aid clinic with the villagers to solve their queries and to give them information about laws. similarly, the legal aid clinics can also organise online legal awareness camps in practice report 80 schools by means of videoconferencing to spread awareness among students about their legal rights. stage v once the project is successful at dnlu, jabalpur it can then be adopted by the 22 national law universities (nlu) established in each state in india. the nlus are connected with each other through a consortium which is called common law admission test (clat) consortium and is responsible for admissions into the nlus. the clat consortium can act as the central body to regulate the collaborated legal aid activities in the nlus. most of these nlus have active legal aid cells which can act as nodal centres for the implementation of the project in each university. a common portal for all the nlus can be created where aggrieved persons can submit their legal disputes. the nlus can within themselves specialise in certain subjects and the cases received on the portal can then be divided among the clinics based on the specialisation. the student volunteers in these clinics can take up the matters at a pan india level using virtual means to connect. this method can also be used to spread awareness among people of their rights and the laws in general. each legal aid clinic can take up certain areas of laws and impart awareness through videos and online means. the legal aid clinics in each state would be entrusted with the task to ensure that such videos reach the local level and persons are made aware of the same. the practice report 81 legal aid clinics can also take up online sessions for students in collaboration with schools to spread awareness among the children of their legal rights and duties. conclusion practical learning adds more skills of advocacy for the young, budding lawyers, and will also help them to understand the needs of society at large. acquiring such knowledge and understating of the socio-economic needs of disadvantaged people, will help the students to learn the implementation process of a legislation and lacunas in it. this will also help the students to be active in public policy formation and implementation. this experiment will be a functional experience for not only the students but for the teachers too. the use of technology in the justice delivery system has already proved successful in the court system in india and is functioning effectively. this led to the idea of the use of technology in legal aid model. the huge success of e-lok adalats and that of the student initiatives during times of covid-19 pandemic in providing legal aid has proved that providing legal aid through online means is possible and very well received by people who do not have much knowledge about it as well. by providing mechanisms for legal aid clinics to function online, the dual purpose of legal aid clinics i.e. to impart practical training and to ensure access to justice can be achieved. once this model starts functioning, it will ensure that legal aid is always made available to the needy persons and that the collaboration between various nlus ensures that legal aid achieves its real purpose of providing social practice report 82 justice. this will allow us to reach the length and breadth of this vast country where access is difficult, but justice needs to be provided. it is the mandate of the state to provide justice, to all and it’s a basic human right. references concept of e-lok adalat has potential to transform legal landscape: sc judge, september 19, 2020 https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/karnataka/concept-ofe-lok-adalat-has-potential-to-transform-legal-landscape-sc-judge/article32650701.ece frank s. bloch & iqbal s. ishar, legal aid, public service and clinical legal education: future directions from india and the united states, 12 mich. j. int'l l. 92 (1990). government of india, ministry of law, justice and company affairs, department of legal affairs, report of expert committee on legal aid : processual justice to the people (1973). government of india, ministry f law, justice and company affairs, department of legal affairs, report on national juridicare: equal justice – social justice (1977). report of committee for implementing legal aid schemes (cilas) (1981) n.r. madhava menon, clinical legal education, eastern book company, (1998) student-led nliu project assist over 200 migrant labourers with practical advice, help on dealing with lockdown, wednesday, 20 may 2020 https://www.legallyindia.com/lawschools/student-led-nliu-project-assist-over-200migrant-labourers-with-practical-advice-help-on-dealing-with-lockdown-2020052011429 success stories of assisting migrant labour, gnlu centre for law and society, 2020 http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6922849-gnlu-centre-for-law-andsociety-gcls-success.html https://lawbookshop.net/eastern-book-company.html practice report 39 ‘the best of times and the worst of times’: reflections on developing a prison-based business law and tax clinic in the midst of a global pandemic helen codd, lucy blackburn, david massey, deborah wood & stephanie jones1 introduction this practice report explores the dynamics, opportunities and challenges of developing an in-prison cle programme offering advice on business law and tax, against the backdrop of the covid-19 pandemic and the pre-existing constraints of prison security. this initiative has its roots in two clinical education initiatives at the university of central lancashire (uclan) an existing business law clinic based in the school of justice, and an experimental low-income taxation advice project run by the uclan business school. the interdisciplinary team taking forward this project includes staff with expertise and experience in taxation, cle, business law, penology, and prison research. 1 helen codd, professor of law & social justice, school of justice, uclan; lucy blackburn, senior lecturer in law, school of justice, uclan; david massey, lecturer in taxation, school of business, uclan ; deborah wood, lecturer in accounting & finance, school of business, uclan ; stephanie jones, senior lecturer in law, school of justice, uclan. email: hlcodd@uclan.ac.uk & leblackburn@uclan.ac.uk mailto:hlcodd@uclan.ac.uk mailto:leblackburn@uclan.ac.uk practice report 40 clinical education at uclan legal education at uclan has a long history of commitment to clinical legal education, and to offering students opportunities to develop ‘real life’ skills and experience, including the provision of legal advice. in the early years, prior to the mid1990s, this was offered via the preston free legal information service, which was based in the law department and which employed a part-time legal caseworker to oversee student volunteers along with experienced and professionally qualified academic staff. this in turn led to the creation of a generalist law clinic, and more recently a specialist business law clinic, which has developed to include a specialist franchise clinic. in addition, uclan works alongside a local solicitors’ firm to provide a free immigration clinic once a month. the business law clinic was established to provide local smes and entrepreneurs with guidance relating to matters such as contracts, intellectual property and gdpr. run by stephanie jones and providing real-world experience for uclan’s students and graduate legal advisers, clients are provided with six months of support which includes written advice and drafting of documentation. helping small businesses and providing experience for otherwise disadvantaged graduates and students casts a less-traditional lens on social justice but it is certainly a valid one. to date, the clinic has advised over 170 small businesses but the need for this type of help is evidenced by a 2018 report of the legal services boardbased on research over five years where they concluded: practice report 41 “we estimate the annual cost of small businesses’ legal problems to the uk economy to be roughly £40 bn. furthermore, 20% of businesses reported health impacts on personnel, which extrapolates to a minimum of 1.1m individuals, with possible knockon effect for health services.”2 over 50% of small businesses try to solve their legal problems completely alone. the legal and regulatory needs of small businesses, start-ups and charities are often overlooked because these organisations are presumed to have money in their budgets that can be used to pay for legal advice, but this becomes unlikely, particularly in an era of difficult trading conditions and rising legal fees. many law firms offer a 30minute free consultation but that is simply not enough to allow a small business to create a compliant structure where problems can be prevented rather than simply latterly reacted to. the business law clinic was the first business-dedicated clinic of its kind in the north west and helps uclan undergraduates and graduates gain otherwise elusive experience of working with commercial clients. the business law clinic attempts to level the playing field for uclan graduates and students whose a-level results or social background may prohibit them from acquiring essential work experience in commercial law firms, which recruit mainly from russell group universities. over 88% of trainee solicitors in commercial law firms are recruited from 2 https://research.legalservicesboard.org.uk/wp-content/media/final-small-business-report-feb2018.pdf (accessed 16 october 2020). https://research.legalservicesboard.org.uk/wp-content/media/final-small-business-report-feb-2018.pdf https://research.legalservicesboard.org.uk/wp-content/media/final-small-business-report-feb-2018.pdf practice report 42 russell group universities3 with most of those trainees coming from middle class backgrounds4. almost 70% of graduate employers see relevant work-experience as an essential part of a graduate job application5. in addition, a group of students and staff began delivering will-writing sessions in a local training prison in 2019, and there are clear potential links between will-writing, financial planning and taxation matters. within the business school at uclan, the law and taxation modules offered have adopted an ephebagogic philosophy (developing students as emerging adults) but, within an accounting curriculum geared to professional exemptions, have struggled to incorporate the exposure to the real-world that this requires.6 business schools fall well behind their law school colleagues in offering clinical opportunities to their students and in providing pro bono services for those in need of them. an opportunity arose to begin addressing this missing element in students’ learning via the creation of a low-income tax clinic. this was a partnership between uclan’s business school, lancaster university law school and the national charity, taxaid. the clinic completed its 10-week pilot stage in march 2020 just days before university campuses moved to online delivery and remote working where possible. although 3 http://www.chambersstudent.co.uk/where-to-start/newsletter/law-firms-preferred-universities accessed 16 october 2020 4https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/434791/a_qualitativ e_evaluation_of_non-educational_barriers_to_the_elite_professions.pdf accessed 15 october 2020. 5 https://www.ucas.com/connect/blogs/work-experience-important accessed 15 october 2020. 6 lucy blackburn, 'ephebagogy and clinical legal education' [2020] 27(2) international journal of clinical legal education <https://www.northumbriajournals.co.uk/index.php/ijcle/article/view/962> accessed 29 october 2020 http://www.chambersstudent.co.uk/where-to-start/newsletter/law-firms-preferred-universities https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/434791/a_qualitative_evaluation_of_non-educational_barriers_to_the_elite_professions.pdf https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/434791/a_qualitative_evaluation_of_non-educational_barriers_to_the_elite_professions.pdf https://www.ucas.com/connect/blogs/work-experience-important practice report 43 short, the pilot was sufficient to demonstrate that there was a demand for tax advice that uclan business students could fulfil7. prison research at uclan interdisciplinary prison research is a key strength at uclan, including demonstrable strong links with local criminal justice agencies and institutions, including prisons, and a strong record of conducting research in prison settings and working with a range of professionals in consultative roles. the cross-faculty criminal justice partnership includes a specific prisons strand and thus students involved in delivering the proposed clinic will be supported by staff with extensive practical experience and a high level of expertise in working in prison settings.8 why set up a business law and tax clinic in a prison? there are both pragmatic and theoretical justifications for developing and delivering a prison-based business law and tax clinic. indeed, tax clinics are offered in prisons by 7 amy lawton and david massey, 'out and about north west tax clinic and pro bono tax advice' [2020] 186(4765) taxation <https://www.taxation.co.uk/articles/north-west-tax-clinic-and-pro-bonotax-advice> accessed 29 october 2020 amy lawton and david massey, 'opening our doors' [2020] october 2020 tax adviser <https://www.taxadvisermagazine.com/edition/5756> accessed 29 october 2020 8 for the purposes of this article, the term ‘prison’ will be used in its broadest sense, as the location of the detention of some of those people who are awaiting trial or sentence, and the location of the detention of those offenders who receive custodial sentences including imprisonment (for adults aged 21+) and young offenders (under 21). this broad definition, therefore, includes establishments which are not technically ‘prisons’ as they are, for example, ‘young offender institutions’ for those aged under 21. practice report 44 a number of us law schools, including harvard, fordham and several others. universities in the uk often deliver programmes within prisons, one of the most wellknown being the range of “learning together” programmes which to date have involved over 600 students9. alongside this there are free legal and advice services, some of which utilise volunteers including students. these often focus on prisoner welfare, family contact, family disputes and planning for release, including issues of housing and welfare benefits. at first glance, it may not be apparent that there is an unmet need for prisoners to have access to advice about business law and taxation. however, as a consequence of the publicity for the tax clinic the staff involved were approached (through twitter) by a social enterprise and asked whether students might also assist prisoners to resolve their tax issues with her majesty’s revenue and customs (hmrc). it became clear that the tax difficulties facing prisoners mirrored those faced by the tax clinic’s low-income clients, in particular the challenges of getting up-to-date with outstanding tax returns. this unmet need is exacerbated by the prison setting. the pilot study had already identified digital and telephonic poverty and exclusion as a difficulty for many of the tax clinic clients. hmrc closed the last of its local enquiry centres in 2014, replacing these initially with telephone helplines. more recently hmrc has been moving to the 9 see natalie gray, jennifer ward and jenny fogarty, (2019) ‘transformative learning through university and prison partnerships: reflections from ‘learning together’ pedagogical practice’. journal of prison education and re-entry, 6 (1). pp. 7-24. http://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/view/publications/journal_of_prison_education_and_reentry.html practice report 45 use of online services as the preferred medium for interaction with its customers. this poses particular problems for prisoners, who have limited and controlled access to telephones and very restricted and limited internet access. whilst it is usually the case that prisoners are denied internet access, there may be occasions where prisoners are given limited access to selected websites via ‘locked down’ terminals and laptops. there is no automatic sharing of information between hm prison and probation service (hmpps) and hmrc, and thus hmrc do not know that another arm of government holds the individual as a prisoner. for prisoners who are self-employed prior to their sentence, a custodial sentence can lead to the cessation of trading, but hmrc will continue to send demands for tax returns and payments to old addresses, unaware that the individual is incarcerated. the minimum penalty for being a year late with a tax return is £1,600 even if no tax is due. a shock can await a newly released prisoner, once hmrc have a new address to which to send demands which may stretch back years. penological research has highlighted many aspects of the challenges faced by prisoners on release.10 prisons offer vocational training in a range of skills, but exprisoners often find that their criminal history is a barrier to employment. the challenges of finding employment are being exacerbated by the impacts of covid-19, and governmental and public health responses to control the spread of the virus. 10 eldon maguire and peter, raynor, ‘preparing prisoners for release: current and recurrent challenges’ in pamela ugwudike, hannah graham, fergus mcneill, peter raynor, faye s. taxman, chris trotter (eds) the routledge companion to rehabilitative work in criminal justice (routledge, 2020), pp. 520–532. practice report 46 although the precise impacts of covid-19 and the first uk-wide lockdown are as yet unknown, and indeed there may be further local, regional and national lockdowns11, it is clear that the uk is in a period of economic recession, and at the time of writing unemployment is rising and many businesses are either ceasing to trade, restructuring including staff redundancies, or ceasing recruitment to new posts. this makes accessing employment even more challenging for people leaving prison. with this in mind, self-employment may offer the only feasible route to non-criminal economic engagement, and indeed the vocational skills opportunities offered in men’s prisons include a range of skills which would lend themselves to self-employment after release, such as skills as car mechanics, and in building and related trades. indeed, the desire to become self-employed or set up a business after release was highlighted by the forward trust in august 2020, in response to data released in july that showed 88% of offenders released from custody between march and june who were available to work were unemployed.12 that said, even if the desire is there, ex-prisoners may not have the basic awareness or knowledge of relevant legal and taxation requirements to feel confident in going ahead to ‘go it alone’ or set up small businesses after release. grosholz et al. highlight that the current literature indicates there is little research on the effect of entrepreneurial training on the behaviour and identity of those who have been 11 this article was written before the second national lock-down in england in november 2020 12 community performance quarterly release to march 2020, ministry of justice, july 2020. see www.forwardtrust.co.uk accessed 1 september 2020. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/community-performance-quarterly-update-to-march-2020 http://www.forwardtrust.co.uk/ practice report 47 incarcerated.13 this project enables students to be involved in a project which could have real impact in an emerging field of entrepreneurship research, as well as on cle research. more broadly, the research on desistance from offending, community reintegration and resettlement after release, stresses the significance of strong family and community relationships in preventing reoffending in the future. this project could have long term individual and societal benefits in helping convicted offenders move on from prison to become economically independent. it is important to set out from the outset that although this in-prison clinic is being developed for delivery in a men’s prison, in the future we would like to explore the needs of women prisoners in women’s prisons. research with women prisoners has demonstrated long-running concerns about employment after release, especially as women ex-prisoners have a high unemployment rate, and existing prison educational and vocational programmes often focus on skills which would translate well to selfemployment and the creation of small businesses, as exemplified in the hair and beauty training salon at hmp styal.14 13 jessica m. grosholz, jean d. kabongo, michael h. morris, ashley wichern (2020) ‘entrepreneurship education in the transformation of incarcerated individuals: a review of the literature and future research directions’, international journal of offender therapy and comparative criminology 64(15) pp. 1551-1570. 14 prison reform trust & working chance (2020) improving employment opportunities for women with criminal convictions, london (prison reform trust 2020). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0306624x20928020 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0306624x20928020 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0306624x20928020 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0306624x20928020 practice report 48 cle as social justice from a more theoretical perspective, although cle was being discussed in the 1930s15, the cle movement began in earnest in post-1968 europe and was grounded in social reform. at that time, basic legal services were available to just a few and revealed the major inequality of access to justice for the vast majority. 16 the provision of free legal advice to those in need is one of the central themes of cle, as one of the main ideological aims of cle is the commitment to educating lawyers for social justice.17 pro bono legal advice has been around in many guises for many years. a law clinic, in whatever format or guise, will introduce students to the local community. with cle projects, students are placed in situations outside of their perceived comfort zone and are given the opportunity to interact and empathise with a diverse range of people from a diverse range of backgrounds.18 cle is often associated with the provision of legal aid to the poor, marginalised and disadvantaged in society.19 however, in the purest form of the pro bono clinic, its 15 jerome frank ‘why not a clinical lawyer school? [1933] 81, university of pennsylvania law review 907, 915 16 jeff giddings, roger burridge, shelly am gavigan and catherine f klein, ‘the first wave of modern clinical legal education: the united states, britain, canada and australia’ in frank s bloch (ed), the global clinical movement: educating lawyers for social justice (oxford university press, 2011), 3 17this is the central theme of bloch in frank s. bloch (ed), the global clinical movement: educating lawyers for social justice (oxford university press, 2011). 18 lucy blackburn, ‘ephebagogy and clinical legal education’, int’l j clinical legal educ (2020), 135 154, 152 19 frank s. bloch & mary anne noone ‘legal aid origins of clinical legal education’ in frank s bloch (ed), the global clinical movement: educating lawyers for social justice (oxford university press, 2011) 153 practice report 49 principal purpose is to deliver legal services to those who could not otherwise afford them, to right the wrongs that would otherwise go without redress. it may raise students’ consciousness of inequality and injustice and provide the academic with the means of salvaging his conscience.20 at the heart of any cle programme, whether it be a credit bearing module or extracurricular volunteering, running alongside the deep learning experience, will be the promotion of access to justice. in the 1960’s the anti-poverty and civil rights campaigns in the united states saw law clinics develop, helped by the backing of many charities.21 in the uk, many law clinics have helped to ‘plug the gap’ in legal services which resulted in the cuts to legal aid following the introduction of the legal aid, sentencing and punishment of offenders act 2012 (laspo).22 globally, a number of projects are assisting the social justice/access to justice agenda within university law clinics.23 these can range from refugee law clinics in the central european and baltic states,24 women’s law clinics in nigeria,25 to the 20 max weaver, ‘clinical legal education – competing perspectives’ (1983) 17 law teacher 1, 4 21 hugh brayne, nigel duncan & richard grimes, clinical legal education: active learning in your law school (blackstone press limited) 1998, 11 22 there are fascinating arguments about whether law clinics should be addressing this gap in the legal services market, but these are not relevant to this brief report. 23 ‘social justice through access to justice is aimed at educating the neglected members of a community whiles addressing their legal problems. ibijoke patricia byron, ‘between social justice and clinical legal education: a case study of the women’s law clinic, faculty of law, university of ibadan, nigeria’, int’l j. clinical legal educ 20 at 567 24 stephan anagnost, ‘promoting refugee law as a means of challenging the status quo at university level education in europe: the role of the refugee law clinic’ int’l j. clinical legal educ, [2014] 38 25 byron above practice report 50 internationally renowned innocence project.26 examples in the uk include the community legal outreach collaboration keele (clock), which is an ‘innovative multi-agency initiative driven by legal academics, in collaboration with the legal profession, court and charitable sector’27 and also the work with the third sector that has been conducted by the university of cardiff law clinics.28 students who may have just left home for the first time are put into direct contact with issues that may never have affected their community.29 anagnost argues that cle “encourages good humanitarian attitudes plus the combination of theory and practice”.30 even though she writes in the context of cle in nigeria, byron’s writings on the link between social justice and legal education are relevant to domestic cle. within byron’s writings she refers to voyvodic and medcalf and their assertion that when a social justice mission is established within a guided practice setting, the students are 26 ‘the innocence project, founded in 1992 exonerates wrongly convicted persons through dna testing and works to reform the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice.’ whilst it is not wholly a clinical law programme, of the 56 us based organisations within the network 26 are located within universities. www.innocenceproject.org 27 for more information see jane krishnadas, ‘clock ‘the community legal companion; as an agent of change: a transformative methodology’’ in re-imagining clinical legal education. linden thomas, steven vaughan, bharat malkani and theresa lynch (eds) (hart publishing, 2018) 28 see jason tucker, ‘thirdsectorfunded clinical legal education in the united kingdom: a reflection and proposal for future partnerships’ in in re-imagining clinical legal education. linden thomas, steven vaughan, bharat malkani and theresa lynch (eds) (hart publishing, 2018) 29 seear et al argue that cle ‘ provides a unique opportunity for students to deeply engage with emotions, in part because emotions are experienced as a regular feature of clinics’: kate seear, lisa bliss, paula galowitz & catherine f. klein ‘ exploring the role of emotions in clinical legal education: inquiry and results from an international workshop for legal educators’. the law teacher, 53: 4 [2019], 487-499, 489 30 stephan anagnost, ‘promoting refugee law as a means of challenging the status quo at university level education in europe: the role of the refugee law clinic’, int’l j. clinical legal educ, 38 [2002) 41 practice report 51 provided with a “key linkage” between their legal education and also the long-term engagement with the advancement of social justice.31 there are therefore strong social justice arguments for cle projects to engage with prisons and prisoners. in england & wales the prison population is the highest in europe, and, as in many countries, particularly the us, there has been a shift over the last two decades towards increasing use of imprisonment and the imposition of longer sentences than previously, which exceed sentences for comparable offences in many other jurisdictions. at the moment, the biggest prison-building programme in england and wales since the 19th century is underway, and this inexorable ‘prison boom’ shows no signs of abating despite governmental stated aspirations to limit the use of short prison sentences. that said, prisons and prisoners are often invisible in our society and among our students unless and until imprisonment is experienced within their own family, kin and friendship groups, or until they encounter prison issues as part of penology and criminal justice modules.32 some students, of course, are former prisoners themselves, or have long experience of imprisonment affecting family members, but for many this kind of clinic activity would offer them their first opportunity to work within a closed setting, and could challenge their pre-existing views of prisons, prisoners and ex-prisoners. a growing body of work acknowledges 31 byron, p.564 32 helen codd, in the shadow of prison: families, imprisonment and criminal justice, (willan, 2008). practice report 52 the importance of empathy in ethical leadership and recognises the importance of presenting students with opportunities to see life through the eyes of others. developing the business law and tax clinic during the pandemic even without the covid pandemic, setting up an in-prison clinic for students poses a wide and varied range of challenges. prisons vary widely not only in their security categorisations, but also in terms of management attitudes to interaction with students, and also the constraints of staffing available to oversee such interactions and ensure safety and security for all involved. uclan is exceptionally well-situated for prison work. in addition the prisons in the north west range from hmp kirkham and hmp thorn cross (which are category d open prisons) to busy and overcrowded city-centre local prisons (hmp preston and hmp manchester) and prisons for those serving longer sentences including hmp garth and hmp wymott, which are on adjoining sites. this is helpful in terms of taking the project forward, because although some of these prisons are in semi-rural areas, they are all relatively accessible in comparison with prisons in other parts of the uk, such as hmp haverigg in cumbria and hmp dartmoor. this project also benefits from existing working relationships between staff on the team and prisons, and informal discussions indicated that the initiative would be likely to be welcomed by a number of prisons, so approval in principle was not regarded as problematic. practice report 53 the impact of the pandemic however, particular questions and issues have arisen in the context of the impact of covid-19 on prison regimes, including access and visits, which were halted as a consequence of the lockdown and are now very limited33. covid-focused scrutiny inspections of establishments, the reports of which are published by hm inspectorate of prisons, highlight very limited and restricted opportunities for contact not only between prisoners but also between prisoners and their friends, families and outside organisations. it is also important to recognise that immediately prior to the development of the pandemic in the uk early in 2020, there were emerging limitations on face-to-face contact between university students and prisoners, following a review of such contacts which followed the terror attack at a learning together event at fishmonger’s hall in november 2019. as in many aspects of university activities, the obvious response would be to deliver a fully online programme for all participants. the precise nuances of this mode of operation are heavily regulated, however, by restricted prison internet access and security rules, combined with prison it infrastructural issues. discussions are underway with the staff of the social enterprise, which already has staff based in prisons, and thus even if students are not approved for face-to-face contact with prisoners via the internet, with appropriate clearance 33 kay, chris (2020): covid-19 in custody: responding to pandemics in prisons in england and wales. british journal of community justice,. https://hdl.handle.net/2134/12624596.v1 accessed 14 september 2020. https://hdl.handle.net/2134/12624596.v1 practice report 54 students may be able to assist in providing advice via the social enterprise staff as intermediaries. practical challenges in advance of launching the clinic, students within the business school have been tasked with addressing the challenges that both the covid-19 restrictions and the general digital restrictions have posed for the social enterprise and the prisoners and ex-prisoners that they work with. for level 5 coursework they are currently exploring, for example: • how to translate online materials into paper formats – where there is no option to click through a link for further information; • how to use language and images that are most effective at communicating to those without strong literacy and numeracy skills; • ways either to work with hmrc’s online systems or to challenge the authorities to change them. it was planned initially that the clinic would operate in pilot form from january to may 2021, although this has been delayed due to the pandemic. a virtual clinic model has been devised which will depend on close collaboration between the social enterprise organisation working in the prison and student volunteers. the business law clinic had to move swiftly to virtual meetings in march 2020 and thus provided practice report 55 an inadvertent pilot for some aspects of the prison-centred advice clinic. the social enterprise will identify business start-up project work for their clients which will be completed by small interdisciplinary student teams. students will be supported by academics across the business school, school of justice and criminal justice partnership. thus, even if the face-to-face client experience may be missing for some time yet, there are still many opportunities to give students the chance to work on real life problems and to begin thinking in a client-focussed way. this model also gives the students the opportunity to work with the not-for-profit sector, something that is different to the usual commercial opportunities that students are offered. the project will allow the learner to explore unfamiliar settings and interactions. from a user point of view, the multidisciplinary approach, including law-focused, taxationfocused and business-focused students means that the offering is an enhanced, multiperspective and holistic wraparound programme which offers more joined-up support to people wanting to establish their own businesses after release than a singledisciplinary project could provide. it is envisaged that the clinic will continue to offer ‘through the gate’ support after release as well as pre-release, so as to enable new entrepreneurs and business owners to develop the appropriate skills, awareness, experience and knowledge to make a success of their business after release. online technology, including websites and apps, is attractive for the delivery of clinic programmes generally for a number of reasons, including convenience. that said, internet access in prisons has historically been very limited, as has (legal) possession practice report 56 of mobile phones. there has been a scheme enabling family members to send emails to prisoners for some years, but this would only be useful in limited aspects of providing advice, such as in relation to sending documents. similarly, prisoners themselves may need support in accessing and using online technologies, as especially if they have served long sentences, they may not have any relevant skills in using mobile or it technologies. in many ways, it would seem easier to run an in-prison clinic face-to-face rather than try to negotiate the manifold challenges of enabling prisoners to access the internet, although broadening prisoners’ internet access is a matter of ongoing policy debate. however, the pandemic prompted attempts at radical change in many establishments, including the distribution of ‘locked down’ mobile phones to prisoners, allowing access only to certain approved telephone numbers, and the introduction of internet-based purple visits for family contact. the purple visits secure video calling platform offers what their provider refers to on their website as “a feature-rich video calling solution specially designed for use within secure establishments’”34 the platform offers military-grade encryption and claims to offer a reliable, simple-to-use and cost-effective means of allowing prisoners and their families to remain in contact. as a consequence of the pandemic, most prisons in the uk have introduced purple visits, which are available to prisoners aged 18+, and offer a 30-minute visit once a month. the exact process for setting up the visit varies from prison to prison, some allowing a choice of pre-booked visit times. 34 see www.purplevisits.com practice report 57 the experience of introducing this platform for visits has prompted mixed reactions. many prisons are viewing the process as a positive development, especially in facilitating contact between prisoners and family members who would not able to travel to the prison for a face-to-face visit in non-pandemic times. however, emerging anecdotal evidence reveals that the experiences of users themselves to date have been more mixed.35 these video calls rely on those outside the prison having access to hardware on which they can install the app, and also the ability, skills and capacity to use it. the early months of usage have seen ongoing technical problems, including calls disconnecting and cutting out frequently, much to the frustration of the prisoners and family members themselves. this platform could, in theory, offer a viable way forward for offering clinic appointments, subject to improvements in the infrastructure and the approval of prison management. however, a key issue with purple visits is one of cost. while these ‘visits’ are being offered free of charge at present as an alternative to face-to-face visits which may not be permitted during the pandemic, hmpps was already exploring the potential for video-calling prior to 2020, when there were discussions around a proposed charge for such ‘visits’ of £8-10 per session. when we discuss clinical education clinics, these are relatively low-cost, as students are volunteers and whilst there may be transport and consumables costs, these are not likely to be high. 35 personal communications, ‘lessons from the lockdown’ online seminar, university of south wales, 17th september 2020. recording is available at https://criminology.research.southwales.ac.uk/news/2020/video-lessons-lockdown-prisoner-andfamily-connections-future/ https://checkpoint.url-protection.com/v1/url?o=https%3a//eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/%3furl%3dhttps%253a%252f%252fcriminology.research.southwales.ac.uk%252fnews%252f2020%252fvideo-lessons-lockdown-prisoner-and-family-connections-future%252f%26amp%3bdata%3d02%257c01%257cmike.maguire%2540southwales.ac.uk%257c023948fe2d244de0797708d85e13bea8%257ce5aafe7c971b4ab7b039141ad36acec0%257c0%257c0%257c637362786179303585%26amp%3bsdata%3drrpwffc7b6c%252fqoyaijy%252bkkhzhrg0mmuyoxeryxrrobe%253d%26amp%3breserved%3d0&g=mmmzmddinzq5njdhmjrinq==&h=mtq0zmu3mmnhzdcxogmxota1nzyyzjqwzti2ywzlzmnhodmwzmmzzdvmzdrimzbmmdhmnda5mzgzzguxnmmzyg==&p=y3axztp1y2xhbmxpdmu6y2hly2twb2luddpvzmzpy2uznjvfzw1hawxzx2vtywlsomq3ogjiyznknzq4nzk1mthjmdu0mmuymdhkyzvjodvhonyx https://checkpoint.url-protection.com/v1/url?o=https%3a//eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/%3furl%3dhttps%253a%252f%252fcriminology.research.southwales.ac.uk%252fnews%252f2020%252fvideo-lessons-lockdown-prisoner-and-family-connections-future%252f%26amp%3bdata%3d02%257c01%257cmike.maguire%2540southwales.ac.uk%257c023948fe2d244de0797708d85e13bea8%257ce5aafe7c971b4ab7b039141ad36acec0%257c0%257c0%257c637362786179303585%26amp%3bsdata%3drrpwffc7b6c%252fqoyaijy%252bkkhzhrg0mmuyoxeryxrrobe%253d%26amp%3breserved%3d0&g=mmmzmddinzq5njdhmjrinq==&h=mtq0zmu3mmnhzdcxogmxota1nzyyzjqwzti2ywzlzmnhodmwzmmzzdvmzdrimzbmmdhmnda5mzgzzguxnmmzyg==&p=y3axztp1y2xhbmxpdmu6y2hly2twb2luddpvzmzpy2uznjvfzw1hawxzx2vtywlsomq3ogjiyznknzq4nzk1mthjmdu0mmuymdhkyzvjodvhonyx practice report 58 however, purple visits as a means of delivering the clinic programme will need to be funded, and prisoners and their families may not have the financial resources to support this. going forward, we are exploring the potential for professional sponsorship of these sessions, perhaps via partnerships with local firms and businesses, and also looking for funding from several sources, including those offering financial support for ex-prisoners and those leaving custody. the costs may not be high in relative terms, but as purple visits are not free of charge, if we seek to run the prison clinic via this platform then even if this is feasible, the calls will need to be funded. a related issue is one of oversight and staffing within the prison. for example, prisons have experienced unprecedented cuts in staffing numbers in recent years, and in many institutions, this lack of staff has led to lower levels of access to educational and recreational opportunities as there are no staff available to supervise prisoners’ movement. ironically, the covid situation means that over the next months and year, as the consequences of both the covid epidemic and brexit emerge, more and more prisoners and ex-prisoners may need tax and business advice, but the combination of pre-covid funding cuts and the challenges of coping with covid itself in a closed setting may mean that prison management and staff have to put all their energy and resources into the core business of keeping prisons and prisoners safe and well, with little flexibility as to the introduction of new programmes. that said, one of the advantages of this programme, if we are able to negotiate a platform and process for delivering it in-prison, is that it will offer students practice report 59 opportunities to gain clinical experience at a time when face-to-face working in many situations is impossible, especially in areas experiencing high numbers of virus cases. conclusion at the time of writing the clinic is very much ‘work in progress’, subject to unpredictable changes in government guidance, changes in prison management, priorities and regimes, and also subject to changes in decision making at the university institutional level. the rationale for going forward and delivering a clinic remains clear, and there are clear potential positive impacts for students, prisoners and exprisoners. the precise shape, structure and delivery method is still undergoing development. evidence-based evaluation of the impacts and outcomes of the programme will be integral to the design and delivery, and thus in due course we look forward to being able to look back and reflect on the final project. the need is still there, and our commitment is still there, but if covid-19 has taught us all only one lesson, it is that change is constant and that, in clinical education like many things, a flexible and change-responsive approach is essential. references anagnost, s. ‘promoting refugee law as a means of challenging the status quo at university level education in europe: the role of the refugee law clinic’ int’l j. clinical legal educ, 38 (2002) 41 practice report 60 blackburn, l. 'ephebagogy and clinical legal education' [2020] 27(2) international journal of clinical legal education 152 <https://www.northumbriajournals.co.uk/index.php/ijcle/article/view/962> accessed 29 october 2020 bloch, f.s. & noone, m.a. ‘legal aid origins of clinical legal education’ in frank s bloch (ed), the global clinical movement: educating lawyers for social justice (oxford university press, 2011) 153 brayne,h. duncan, n. & grimes, r. clinical legal education: active learning in your law school (blackstone press limited, 1998), 11 byron, i.p. ‘between social justice and clinical legal education: a case study of the women’s law clinic, faculty of law, university of ibadan, nigeria’ int’l j. clinical legal educ 20 at 567 codd, h. ‘in the shadow of prison: families, imprisonment and criminal justice’ (willan, 2008). community performance quarterly release to march 2020, (ministry of justice, july 2020): .www.forwardtrust.co.uk accessed 1 september 2020. frank, j. ‘why not a clinical lawyer school? [1933] 81, university of pennsylvania law review 907, 915 giddings, j., burridge, r., gavigan, s. and klein, c. ‘the first wave of modern clinical legal education: the united states, britain, canada and australia’ in frank s bloch (ed), the global clinical movement: educating lawyers for social justice (oxford university press, 2011), 3 gray, n. ward, j. and fogarty,j. [2019] ‘transformative learning through university and prison partnerships: reflections from ‘learning together’ pedagogical practice’. journal of prison education and re-entry, 6 (1). pp. 7-24. grosholz,j., kabongo,j., morris, m.,& wichern, a. [2020] entrepreneurship education in the transformation of incarcerated individuals: a review of the literature and future research directions, international journal of offender therapy and comparative criminology 64(15) pp. 1551-1570. kay, c. (2020): covid-19 in custody: responding to pandemics in prisons in england and wales. british journal of community justice [2020] https://hdl.handle.net/2134/12624596.v1 accessed 14 september 2020. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/community-performance-quarterly-update-to-march-2020 https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/community-performance-quarterly-update-to-march-2020 http://www.forwardtrust.co.uk/ http://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/view/publications/journal_of_prison_education_and_reentry.html https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0306624x20928020 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0306624x20928020 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0306624x20928020 https://hdl.handle.net/2134/12624596.v1 practice report 61 krishnadas, j. (2018) ‘clock: 'the community legal companion' as an agent of change: a transformative methodology’ in re-imagining clinical legal education. thomas, l., vaughan, s., malkani, b. and lynch, t. (eds) hart publishing 2018 lawton, a, and massey, d., 'out and about north west tax clinic and pro bono tax advice' [2020a] 186(4765) taxation <https://www.taxation.co.uk/articles/northwest-tax-clinic-and-pro-bono-tax-advice> accessed 29 october 2020 lawton, a. and massey,d. 'opening our doors' [2020b] october 2020 tax adviser <https://www.taxadvisermagazine.com/edition/5756> accessed 29 october 2020 maguire, e. and raynor, p. ‘preparing prisoners for release: current and recurrent challenges’ in pamela ugwudike, hannah graham, fergus mcneill, peter raynor, faye s. taxman, chris trotter (eds) the routledge companion to rehabilitative work in criminal justice (routledge, 2020), pp. 520–532. prison reform trust & working chance, improving employment opportunities for women with criminal convictions, (prison reform trust, 2020_ seear,k. bliss, l., galowitz, p. & klein, c. ‘ exploring the role of emotions in clinical legal education: inquiry and results from an international workshop for legal educators. the law teacher, 53: 4 (2019), 487-499, 489 tucker, j. (2018) thirdsector-funded clinical legal education in the united kingdom: a reflection and proposal for future partnerships in re-imagining clinical legal education. thomas, l., vaughan, s., malkani, b. and lynch, t. (eds) hart publishing. weaver,m. ‘clinical legal education – competing perspectives’ (1983) 17 law teacher 1, 4 37 student in the seats, teacher in the streets: evaluating the impacts of law students becoming “street law” teachers brandon golob1 abstract the need for public legal education is at an all-time high. from constitutional law issues raised by the 2020 united states presidential election to increased media coverage of police brutality, there are numerous examples of why it is crucial to teach practical law to non-lawyers. street law programs, administered by law students to teenagers, are a prominent type of public legal education. despite the urgent importance of street law programs, there is limited research on their pedagogical effectiveness, or how they affect those who administer them. this project helps to close that gap through its multimethod research on the course instructors. in addition to completing this program evaluation, the project also (1) develops a theoretical framework that will enable law school administrators and scholars from a variety of disciplines to understand how law students are impacted by street law programs, and (2) lays the foundation for future assessments of street law and other public law education programs. the importance of 1 assistant professor of teaching in criminology, law and society at the university of california, irvine. i can be reached here. i would like to thank dr. sandra ball-rokeach, dr. alison trope, commissioner laura cohen, dr. katherine elder, and skyler courter for their editorial, methodological, and moral support with this project. i would also like to thank all the street law faculty, alumni, and students who participated in my research. https://faculty.sites.uci.edu/golob/ 38 understanding the impacts of these programs, which the results of this study show to be overwhelmingly positive, cannot be overstated because they have broad potential to affect law students’ transition to practice and society at large. keywords: public legal education, law school, program evaluation, street law, self-efficacy introduction in 1972, a small group of law students and professors from georgetown university law center (gulc) piloted a clinical legal education program called “street law.” based in two district of columbia public high schools, the purpose of the program was to educate these teenagers about laws and legal systems that impact their daily lives. due to the success of gulc’s program, a national organisation began to form. formalised in 1975, the national institute for citizen education in the law spread the news of the gulc program’s successes and sought to help launch similar programs across the nation (alexander, 1993). over the last half century, street law has grown substantially: there are currently more than 120 iterations of this program at law schools in the united states and beyond (arbetman, 2018). however, despite the growth of such programs, there has been limited research on them (arbetman, 2018; arthurs, 2015; o’brien, 1977; pinder, 1988; roe, 2012). moreover, research that focuses on the teenagers’ learning outcomes 39 (arthurs, 2015) does not account for a crucial aspect of the street law programs that distinguishes them from other public legal education programs – namely, that they are also part of law students’ training and education. this project helps to close that gap through its multimethod research on the course instructors: law students. the focus of this project is on how their participation in street law can impact their law school experience, transition to practice, and subsequent careers. specifically, it measures how street law impacts law students’: (1) approaches to learning, and (2) self-efficacy for a variety of lawyering skills. background program evaluation of street law street law programs are a type of public legal education programs, institutionalised in law schools and administered to teenagers. some scholarly assessments of these programs have been undertaken (arbetman, 2018; arthurs, 2015 macdowell, 2008; montana, 2009; o’brien, 1977; pinder, 1988; roe, 2012), but they are largely descriptive and lack common approaches to program evaluation. moreover, although some programs have set up internal mechanisms for evaluation on a non-empirical level, most of them have not done this. for example, the gulc program has evaluated its effectiveness by asking law students who completed the course to journal about their 40 experiences, and some of the law students claimed that high school students were highly involved and receptive to the legal concepts taught (pinder, 1988). ucla law’s program follows a similar practice, requiring law students to submit bi-weekly journals chronicling their experiences teaching in k-12 schools throughout los angeles (tolbert, 2018). law student instructors at first blush, it makes sense to focus research on the teenagers’ learning outcomes; after all, they are the population that is being served. however, one who dives beneath the surface of analysis discovers that from a higher education perspective, street law programs are also intended to benefit the law students who participate in them. some street law literature touches on this point (kovach, 1998; macdowell, 2008; montana, 2009; o’brien, 1977; pinder, 1988; roe, 2012), but does not empirically assess the impacts on law students. other evaluations analyse programs that train street law teachers before they enter the classroom, but do not look at the effects on law students after they have taught (arthurs et al., 2017). moreover, it is important to note that street law programs are not administered in a standardised way. a review of street law programs across the nation reveals several 41 structural, curricular, and population differences.2 thus, this dearth of rigorous evaluation can perhaps be attributed to the fact that evaluation of street law may seem unduly complex. however, regardless of the countless differences, there is one constant of all street law programs: law student instructors. thus, this project capitalises on that similarity by conducting a program evaluation that analyses how street law programs function in the higher education of law students. self-efficacy in educational contexts in 1977, social psychologist albert bandura developed the construct of self-efficacy as a clinical tool. simply put, “perceived self-efficacy refers to beliefs in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the course of action required to produce given attainments” (bandura, 1997, p. 3). such beliefs are critically important because peoples’ beliefs in their abilities to achieve certain actions can have widespread and lasting impacts on their aspirations, motivations, performance, and so forth (bandura, 1997; bouffard-bouchard, 1990; zimmerman, 2000). this project focuses on the theoretical and methodological application of the construct in the education field. specific to the education context, self-efficacy has been shown to impact students’ interests and goals, choices for majors and other activities, persistence in the face of 2 a review of numerous street law programs’ syllabi and course descriptions (in addition to conversations with street law directors and students from across the nation) revealed the varied nature of street law curriculum. 42 adversity, level of effort exerted, and ultimately, their overall academic achievement (bandura, 1997; lent et al., 2008; multon, brown, & lent, 1991; pajares, 1996; schunk, 1995). in short, students with higher self-efficacy achieve at a higher level (lent, brown, & larkin, 1984; schunk, 1991). it follows, then, that since self-efficacy has such a large impact on student achievement, education scholars have taken great interest in determining the sources of students’ self-efficacy beliefs (hampton, 1998; matsui, t., matsui, k., & ohnishi, 1990; usher & pajares, 1998). self-efficacy in law school although the self-efficacy construct has been applied in a myriad of educational contexts (rosen, glennie, dalton, lennon, & bozick, 2010; usher & pajares, 2008), there is a paucity of literature exploring how the construct of self-efficacy may predict achievement outcomes for law students (christensen, 2009; diaz, glass, arnkoff, & tanofsky-kraff, 2001; mckinney, 2002; palmer, 2015). bearing in mind the lack of rigorously methodological instruments for measuring the self-efficacy of law students, there is much room for improved scholarship in this context. returning to bandura’s (1977) seminal work on self-efficacy and behavior change, he cites an individual’s personal mastery as the most important influence on self-efficacy. thus, this project measures personal mastery as the first dependent variable of interest. 43 many scholars have explored the connection between students’ self-efficacy and academic achievement in a variety of contexts (multon, brown, & lent, 1991; pajares, 1996; schunk, 1984). most germane to this project, some scholars have even studied how the pedagogical structure of law schools need to be reformed to improve law students’ self-efficacy (palmer, 2015; schwartz, 2003). a pervasive criticism of the pedagogical structure of law schools is that it tends to emphasise performance-oriented learning instead of mastery-oriented learning (christensen, 2009; fines, 1996; palmer, 2015; schwartz, 2003). performance orientation means focusing on competition and comparison to others, while mastery orientation means focusing on learning and selfimprovement. however, despite the fact that law school curriculum conditions students to be performance-oriented, previous research has shown that the most successful law students are those who are mastery-oriented learners (christensen, 2009). since street law programs that are built into the law school curriculum do not follow the traditional, curved grading system and allow students the opportunity to collaborate and learn from one another, they may be a critical breeding ground for developing mastery-oriented goals. therefore, it is important to determine whether these programs empower students to approach learning from a more mastery-oriented (versus performance-oriented) perspective: rq1: does participation in street law impact law students’ mastery-oriented goals? rq2: does participation in street law impact law students’ performance-oriented goals? 44 even beyond academic success, developing mastery-oriented goals has also been shown to help increase a student’s self-efficacy (dweck & leggett, 1988; palmer, 2015). one skill set that is particularly important for law students to believe is within their capacity is communicating legal concepts to non-lawyers; after all, effective client communication is the cornerstone of many legal industries (cunningham, 1998). foundational literature on street law programs claims that these programs help law students cultivate this skill set because the programs train their students how to communicate complex legal concepts to people not familiar with the legal language – a necessary skill for those who aspire to advocate effectively (roe, 2012; pinder, 1988). however, there is only anecdotal evidence (i.e., law student journals collected by certain law schools and course objectives listed in street law syllabi) in support of this contention. thus, this project translates such anecdotal evidence into empirical data by measuring whether participation in street law impacts law students’ self-efficacy for communicating material to non-lawyers (see figure 1 below): rq3: does participation in street law impact law students’ self-efficacy for communicating legal material to non-lawyer audiences? 45 figure 1 program evaluation research design however, translating legal material for non-lawyers is merely one of many competencies that law students are supposed to develop during their legal education. scholars have identified numerous technical skills that are critical for being a lawyer (binder, 2003; boccaccini, boothby, & brodsky, 2002; maughan & webb, 2005; shultz & zedeck, 2011), and a review of street law syllabi reveals that the development of many of these skills are often the pedagogical objectives of street law programs. since attempting to measure all the technical skills that are important to lawyering would be unduly burdensome for this project, the focus is placed on one that appears frequently across the literature and is clearly executed in the street law context: public speaking. thus, this project also measures whether participation in street law impacts law students’ self-efficacy for this skill: 46 rq4: does participation in street law impact law students’ self-efficacy for public speaking? lastly, it is crucial to acknowledge that scholars have long argued that lawyering effectiveness depends on more than technical competence such as translation of complex legal material and public speaking. rather, they have found that lawyers who blend technical competence with soft skills (e.g., people skills) are the most effective (araujo, 1999; barkai & fine, 1982; smith, 2015; sternlight & robbennolt, 2007). therefore, this project also measures whether participation in street law impacts law students’ selfefficacy for soft skills such as developing positive client-relationships: rq5: does participation in street law impact law students’ self-efficacy for developing lawyer-client relationships? granted, measuring some of the most crucial soft skills for lawyers, such as empathy (barkai & fine, 1982; sternlight & robbennolt, 2007), is complex and beyond the scope of this project. moreover, what specifically constitutes a soft skill is debatable. thus, the researcher took an inductive approach to this question and relied on interviews, a focus group, and a waiting room survey to assess the soft skills that street law participants and alumni contend they develop: rq6: does participation in street law impact law students’ self-efficacy for developing a variety of soft skills? 47 method participants survey street law inc., the national organisation, keeps a database of active street law programs. this database was used for participant recruitment via email. since it was not possible for the researcher to gain direct access to street law instructors in these programs (i.e., the database only lists street law program names), the researcher requested that the faculty or student director of each program distribute the survey to the instructors. this also maintained the anonymity of survey respondents. ultimately, 49 law students completed both the pre-survey and post-survey. thirty-seven of the respondents were street law participants (treatment group), while 12 respondents comprised the comparison group. in total, respondents represented 10 law schools from across the nation: 48 table 1. street law programs where respondents completed pre-/post-survey in addition to representing different law schools, the respondents’ demographic backgrounds varied. in terms of gender identity for the treatment group, 62.2% (n = 23) selected female, 35.1% (n = 13) selected male, a 1.3% (n = 1) selected genderqueer/gender non-conforming. as for the comparison group, 75% (n = 9) selected female, while 25% (n = 3) selected male. in the treatment group, 73% (n = 27) selected white (six of which selected hispanic or latino), 2.7% selected (n = 1) selected asian, 2.7% (n = 1) selected black or african american, 2.7% (n = 1) selected american indian or alaska native, and 18.9% (n = 7) selected other. as for the comparison group, 75% (n = 9) selected white, law school number of respondents creighton law school 7 lsu paul m. hebert law center 2 mitchell hamline law school 3 university of minnesota law school 12 university of st. thomas law school 3 rutgers school of law camden 4 seattle university school of school of law 3 southwestern law school 7 ucla school of law 4 vanderbilt university law school 4 49 8.3% selected (n = 1) selected asian, and 16.7% (n = 2) selected other.3 the mean age for the treatment group was 25.4 years old (with a range of 16 years), while the mean age for the comparison group was 25.5 years old (with a range of 7 years). interviews following collection of survey data, the researcher conducted seven semi-structured interviews with respondents who completed the pre-/post-survey. five of these were indepth interviews with street law alumni and two were interviews with law students from the comparison group. interviews were conducted with individuals who were still enrolled in law school. these respondents were selected because one of the primary purposes of the interviews was to assess more immediate impacts of street law participation on individuals continuing to work on their law degree. these interviews can be contrasted with the focus group, which selected law school alumni as participants to assess the long-term impacts of participation in street law. in order to represent all of the law schools that participated in this study, one student from each of the 10 law schools that had respondents for both the pre-/post-survey was invited for a follow-up interview. the participants were also selected because their demographic backgrounds varied. 42.9% (n = 3) selected female, 42.9% (n = 3), selected male, and 14.3% (n = 1) selected 3 this lack of racial and ethnic diversity is reflective of the legal profession as a whole. according to bureau of labor statistics (2020), 83.5% of all people employed in legal occupations identify as white. 50 genderqueer/gender non-conforming. in terms of racial and ethnic identity, 85.7% (n = 6) selected white (one of which selected hispanic or latino) and 14.3% (n = 1) selected other. the mean age was 26 years old, with a range of eight years. lastly, the participants were a nearly even split in their year in law school: 42.9% (n = 3) were first-year law students when they completed the survey, while 57.1% (n = 4) were second-year law students when they completed the survey. it is important to note that all respondents showed a measurable difference in their pre-/post-survey responses and participated in the interview approximately one year after the survey. this timeline was used so that interview data could reflect the respondents’ development as law students since first participating in the study. focus group a focus group was conducted with nine alumni of the southwestern law school street law clinic. the survey and follow-up interviews focused on currently enrolled law students, while the primary purpose of the focus group was to analyse potential longterm impacts of participation in street law. the recruited participants help reflect the history of the clinic because their program completion dates span over a decade. in terms of gender identity, 66.7% (n = 6) selected female and 33.7% (n = 3) selected male. in terms of racial and ethnic identity, 44.4% (n = 4) selected white (2 of which selected hispanic or 51 latino), 22.2% (n = 2) selected black or african american, 22.2% (n = 2) selected asian, and 11.1% (n = 1) selected other. the mean age was 34.9 years old, with a range of 12 years. lastly, the participants represented a wide array of careers: 22.2% (n = 2) work in the private sector; 22.2% (n = 2) work for the government; 22.2% (n = 2) work for nonprofit organisations; 33.3% (n = 3) work in higher education and administration. procedures quantitative data analysis the survey included: (1) a questionnaire asking law students about their achievement goals (adapted from elliot and mcgregor, 2001) and (2) a questionnaire measuring law students’ self-efficacy for several crucial lawyering skills, such as communicating legal material to non-lawyers (which follows bandura’s (2006) guidelines for constructing selfefficacy scales). these surveys were given twice: (1) at the beginning of the semester, before law students had street law teaching experience, and (2) after the law students finished teaching at their respective sites. this pre-test/post-test was also administered to comparison groups who were not participating in the street law program. in total, there were five dependent variables of interest measured by the survey, corresponding to the first five research questions: (1) mastery-oriented goals; (2) performance-oriented goals; (3) self-efficacy for communicating legal material to non 52 lawyers; (4) self-efficacy for public speaking; (5) self-efficacy for developing lawyer-client relations. dependent variables (1) and (2) were measured by responses to the achievement goal questionnaire. dependent variables (3), (4), and (5) were measured by responses to the self-efficacy questionnaire. results of the survey were analysed using paired samples t-tests to assess mean differences between pre-/post-survey responses for each dependent variable of interest. paired samples t-tests were conducted on: (1) the treatment group to assess mean differences from pre-test to post-test, and (2) the comparison group to assess mean differences between pre-test to post-test. mean differences between the treatment group and comparison group were then compared to see which group had the greater change score. independent samples t-tests were also conducted to check if the change scores of the treatment group versus comparison group were significant. all alpha levels were set at p < .10 due to the relatively small sample size. qualitative data analysis interviews. semi-structured interviews were conducted with recent street law alumni instructors who completed the pre-/post-survey. the interview protocol built upon questions asked in the survey and took into account additional skills that make lawyers effective (adapted from shultz & zedeck, 2011). the interviews were conducted virtually 53 by the researcher. each interview was approximately 45 minutes and was transcribed from a recording afterwards. focus group. the focus group protocol followed a similar format to the interview one but also included questions about alumni’s post-law school experiences. directly prior to participating in the focus group, participants completed a waiting room survey. the purpose of this waiting room survey was twofold: (1) to allow participants (especially those who had completed street law several years prior) the opportunity to begin remembering and reflecting on their street law experiences; and (2) to serve as a check against groupthink, which may occur during focus groups (macdougall & baum, 1997). thus, the waiting room survey included some similar questions to those asked during the focus group (e.g., what skills did you develop through your work with the street law clinic?) to check for consistency. results mastery-oriented versus performance-oriented to address the first two research questions (rq1: does participation in street law impact law students’ mastery-oriented goals? and rq2: does participation in street law impact law students’ performance-oriented goals?), results of the survey were analysed using paired t 54 tests to assess mean differences between pre-/post-survey responses for the dependent variables of interest. these variables were: (1) mastery-oriented goals (rq1; measured by a composite variable created from the six mastery-oriented items in the achievement goal questionnaire); (2) performance-oriented goals (rq1; measured by a composite variable created from the six performance-oriented items in the achievement goal questionnaire). the results of these tests, for both the treatment group (street law students) and comparison group (non-street law students) were not significant. granted, this binary framework that defines law students as either mastery-oriented or performance-oriented may be limited for measuring how street law impacts their approach to legal education. in fact, interviews with street law alumni still in law school and street law alumni at various stages of their careers revealed that program participation affected the way they learn in complex, difficult to measure ways. thus, a general inductive approach was taken to condense raw data from these interviews and allow for new themes that describe the ways law students learn to emerge. throughout these conversations about learning, four subthemes emerged about how street law participation can reshape law students’ approaches to learning: (1) street law improves law students’ retention of legal material; (2) street law provides law students with practical lawyering experiences; (3) street law reminds law students that learning is enjoyable; and (4) street law helps law students redefine success in academic and professional environments. 55 retention of legal material several individual interviewees and focus group members contended that participation in street law helped them retain legal material. specifically, they contrasted their experiences with street law against other law school experiences and classes to explain why mastering material was necessary in street law. for example, one law student stated that prior to street law, she “was not retaining information. it was not learning. it was just like memorizing for the exam and then it was out the window.” however, “once street law came along…it was very apparent that explaining to someone that is not in law school…was much better and i retain things better than if i studied with my law school buddies.” arguably most importantly, she concluded this point by stating “so that’s what i do now. … that’s something i got from street law ‘cause i don’t think i would have tried that otherwise” (southwestern law student, personal communication, march 18, 2018). thus, street law helped this student discover a method for mastering law school material (i.e., teaching the concepts to a non-lawyer), which no other law school class or opportunity would have provided. law school alumni confirmed this point by current students that most classes are about “just keeping [information] in my brain for that few months and then spit[ting] it out on the test.” conversely, “street law was more consuming the material, feeling it” (southwestern law 2011 alumnus, personal communication, february 12, 2018). in short, street law was continually described as a 56 singular space in the law school environment – a space where the importance of mastering material, in lieu of simply learning it to perform well on an exam, became clear. practical lawyering experiences related to retention, street law participants emphasised that having opportunities to apply the material they learn in practical contexts motivates them to master the legal concepts. again, alumni focused on how street law is different from other experiences and classes in law school because it provides “that practical lens to look at things through” (southwestern law 2013 alumnus, personal communication, february 12, 2018). this practical component came from being able to share what one learns in law school outside that academic environment: in street law it really was more practical. you know, things that make sense in the real world that you’re going to use and that you can teach to other people. i don’t think i’ve ever had the opportunity to teach what i’ve learned in my other classes to anyone. (southwestern law 2011, personal communication, february 12, 2018) some alumni extended this point by connecting street law experiences to their current careers. according to one alumnus who practices as a constitutional lawyer, “doing street law helped me see ‘oh, i’m gonna learn constitutional law really well so that i could later advocate for my client’” (southwestern law 2008 alumnus, personal 57 communication, february 12, 2018). of particular note is this alumnus’ comment as to how street law made her want to learn the material from other law school classes (i.e., constitutional law). importantly, the goal for learning was not performance-oriented (i.e., to do well on an exam), but rather, mastery-oriented (i.e., learn that material really well in order to be able to retain it and advocate for future clients). a ucla law student made explicit this connection between participation in street law and decreased concern with performance in individual classes: there’s like this practicality that comes from street law that you don’t get through any of law school… it really doesn’t matter if you got an a in contracts, like can you figure out…when you’re reading a contract [if it sounds] right… is your client gonna understand why their firing was [or was not] chill? can you help them figure that out?… (ucla school of law student, personal communication, march 16, 2018) however, although street law helped students see the importance of thinking beyond grades, that did not mean their academic performance suffered. in fact, many law school alumni contended that they believe street law had a positive impact on their performance. according to one alumnus during the focus group, who several other participants agreed with, when “i think about looking at my gpa, before street law and after street law, it kind of went up a bit. because now i see, ‘well ok this is where all this 58 is going’…and i really loved it” (southwestern law 2013 alumnus, personal communication, february 12, 2018). learning is enjoyable law students across the nation stressed that participating in street law helped them rediscover what they like about learning in general, and specifically in the law school context. one seattle university law student explained how “a lot of times [in law school] you’re just focusing on what’s important to like learn for the course” but “street law makes you think a little bit more like what’s interesting to you” as an individual. this student argued that this self-discovery process is wrapped up in the act of teaching: when you have to actually sit down and think to yourself, “okay, well what do i find really interesting about the law? what would i want to share with somebody else? what do i think that they have to know to be a good citizen?” when you start asking yourself those questions, i guess you start reaffirming to yourself what you find interesting in the law. (seattle university school of law student, personal communication, march 16, 2018) students also emphasised that street law offered a refuge from the typical, performanceoriented approach to learning in law school. as one university of minnesota law student stated, the “first year of law school is very competitive” but street law was different 59 “because we were working with a team. we got a partner. we were all working towards the same goal. it’s fun talking with students, it’s fun helping clients” (university of minnesota law school student, personal communication, march 13, 2018). a law student at mitchell hamline took this point a step further, stating that it is not only first year that is competitive, but that legal education in general forces students to constantly compare themselves to their colleagues: when you interact with youth it reminds you how fun it is to learn, especially when something is new. like it’s important to be a civically engaged person and feel like someone who has efficacy. so, i think interacting with people who get genuinely excited about it helps remind me like “oh yeah, you also fundamentally are like that and it’s unfortunate that you’re being compared,” but that’s what you are doing for three years. (mitchell hamline school of law student, personal communication, march 16, 2018) thus, the law school environment often breeds a competitive environment that stifles students’ enjoyment for learning (dolovich, 1998). street law, on the other hand, is seen as an antithesis of this performance-obsessed approach to learning and can renew student interest in legal material. 60 redefine success related to decreasing students’ performance-oriented approach to learning, street law alumni asserted that their participation in the program helped them redefine what success in law school meant for them. as one law student said, “i think the first year coming into law school, i was completely obsessed with [performance]. my goal was to be like top ten percent” but “come street law, it was the whole teaching students thing that changed it for me.” while her original goal was to focus on class performance, “street law put that pause for me or slowed me down if you will… it just kind of made me reflect on what it is that i really want to do.” ultimately, her new definition of success is “end[ing] up somewhere where i really want to be rather than having that thought that i did before like ‘oh i just want to make money and not be happy’” (southwestern law student, personal communication, march 18, 2018). other street law alumni echoed this point about changing their notions of success, but were more explicit about how their experiences as teachers is what moved them away from a performance-oriented approach to learning. several interviewees mentioned that it was the act of “failing” in front of their students (e.g., having a lesson that did not engage students) that made them redefine success. as one alumni described it, the law school “system is set up in a way that you are seeking the a by somebody else,” but street law was different because you do not get assessed by some objective measure. rather, as this interviewee said, each new street law teaching session created a “challenge for me to try and figure out what success will 61 mean in this scenario.” in short, “the experience of failure helps you redefine success” because it forces you to “find what your own a looks like” (southwestern law 2017 alumnus, personal communication, february 12, 2018). self-efficacy to address research questions three, four, and five (which all tied to self-efficacy for technical lawyering skills), results of the survey were analysed using paired t-tests to assess mean differences between pre-/post-survey responses for the dependent variables of interest. these variables were: (1) communicating legal material to non-lawyers (rq3; measured by items 1, 5); (2) public speaking (rq4; measured by items 3, 8); (3) developing lawyer-client relationships (rq5; measured by items 2, 4, 6 7, 9, 10).4 the results of these tests, for both the treatment group (street law students) and comparison group (nonstreet law students) are reported below: 4 the dependent variable of developing lawyer-client relationships was measured through more items than the other self-efficacy variables were. this is because lawyer-client relationships are multifaceted and can thus be analysed several ways. see rq5 results below for further explanation. 62 table 2 paired samples t-tests for treatment group’s self-efficacy variables variable mean standard deviation t df sig. (2-tailed) item 1: explain legal concept to non-lawyer -.51 1.17 -2.67 36 .011** item 2: develop positive relationship with clients -.24 1.34 -1.10 36 .277 item 3: speak to small group of non-lawyers -.27 1.09 -.15 36 .881 item 4: think on feet while communicating with clients .08 1.14 .43 36 .668 item 5: teach non-lawyers about their rights -.30 1.27 -1.43 36 .162 item 6: adapt to an unexpected occurrence with clients .00 1.45 .00 36 1.000 item 7: develop positive relationship with difficult clients -.38 1.36 -1.70 36 .100* item 8: speak to larger group of non-lawyers -.17 1.32 -.76 35 .454 item 9: describe your role as lawyer/advocate to clients -.54 1.68 -1.96 36 .058* item 10: continue to work with clients after disruptive experience -.16 1.37 -.72 36 .474 *p < .10, **p < .05 63 table 3 paired samples t-tests for comparison group’s self-efficacy variables variable mean standard deviation t df sig. (2-tailed) item 1: explain legal concept to non-lawyer .083 1.38 -.21 11 .838 item 2: develop positive relationship with clients -.25 1.55 -.56 11 .586 item 3: speak to small group of non-lawyers -.33 1.61 -.72 11 .489 item 4: think on feet while communicating with clients -.33 2.10 -.55 11 .594 item 5: teach non-lawyers about their rights -.08 1.56 -.19 11 .857 item 6: adapt to an unexpected occurrence with clients .17 1.64 .35 11 .732 item 7: develop positive relationship with difficult clients -.33 1.37 -.84 11 .417 item 8: speak to larger group of non-lawyers -1.08 2.31 -1.62 11 .133 item 9: describe your role as lawyer/advocate to clients -.67 1.72 -1.34 11 .207 item 10: continue to work with clients after disruptive experience -.58 1.51 -1.34 11 .206 *p < .10, **p < .05 64 the comparison group did not show a significant increase for any of the items. however, the treatment group did show a significant increase for items 1, 7, 10, which measure the following dependent variables of interest: (1) communicating legal materials to nonlawyers (item 1), and (2) developing lawyer-client relationships (items 7, 10). these survey results are discussed in further detail below, along with qualitative data results. communicating legal material to non-lawyers to address the third research question (does participation in street law impact law students’ self-efficacy for communicating legal material to non-lawyer audiences?), results of the survey were analysed using a paired t-test to assess mean differences between pre-/post-survey responses for the dependent variable of communicating legal material to non-lawyers. to measure this dependent variable, respondents were asked: “how confident are you that you can explain a legal concept to a non-lawyer, regardless of their familiarity with the topic?” (item 1).5 there was a significant increase in this confidence level for the law students after participation in street law (m = 7.84; sd = 1.39) when compared with before they taught (m = 7.32; sd = 1.31); t(36) = 2.67; p = .011). conversely, there was not a significant increase in the confidence level for the law students who did not participate 5 respondents were also asked, “how confident are you that you can teach non-lawyers about their rights, regardless of their familiarity with those rights?” (item 5). although results for this item were not significant (see table 2), street law participants showed a nominal average increase in confidence for this skill between pre-test (m = 7.59; sd = 1.59) and post-test (m = 7.89; sd = 1.35). 65 in street law at the post-test (m = 8.33; sd = 1.30) compared with the pre-test (m = 8.42; sd = 1.56); t(11) = .209; p = .838). thus, street law students showed an increase in confidence for explaining a legal concept to non-lawyers after teaching their classes, while the comparison group did not show a positive change during the same time period. consistent with these results, street law alumni that were interviewed individually and in a focus group setting cited communicating legal material to non-lawyers as the skill they most developed through participation in street law. during interviews, several individuals contrasted street law with traditional law school experiences to describe how the law school setting rarely gives you the opportunity to learn how to explain legal material to non-lawyers. as one seattle university school of law student explained, when you just use the concepts in school with other lawyers, you know law students and lawyers, you kind of take for granted certain pieces of these concepts and [in street law] you have to actually break them down and pull them apart to see how the best way to explain it is. i think that kind of made me feel more confident in taking some of these law school concepts or legal concepts and breaking those down a little bit in more simple terms. (seattle university school of law student, personal communication, march 16, 2018) law school alumni contended that this ability to speak to lawyers and non-lawyers differently is integral to professional success. one 2011 alumnus of the southwestern 66 street law clinic explained how at her current job as an employment defense attorney, the firm has all these “brilliant attorneys but… no one’s gonna understand what they’re saying unless you’re an attorney.” this made her reflect on the benefits of her street law experiences, which “helped [her] learn how to kind of talk to lay people or children about law and try to explain it to them” (southwestern law alumnus, personal communication, february 12, 2018). although the respondents utilised different language, this core theme of learning how to communicate “in more simple terms” with non-lawyers arose consistently throughout interviews. time and again, interviewees contended that street law taught them how to: (1) “tone things down” (southwestern law student, personal communication, march 18, 2018); “just boil it down to a couple key points that they can take back and remember and like make useful at some point” (ucla school of law student, personal communication, march 16, 2018); “get right to the point” by thinking “what do these people care about, and how can i make it as clear as possible” (university of minnesota law school student, personal communication, march 13, 2018). public speaking to address the fourth research question (does participation in street law impact law students’ self-efficacy for public speaking?), results of the survey were analysed using a 67 paired t-test to assess mean differences between pre-/post-survey responses for the dependent variable of public speaking. to measure this dependent variable, respondents were asked: “how confident are you that you can speak to a small group of non-lawyers (5-10 people)?” (item 3), and “how confident are you that you can speak to a larger group of non-lawyers (more than 10 people)?” (item 8). although the results were not significant (see table 2 above), street law participants did show a nominal average increase in confidence for public speaking. this increase can be seen between pre-test (m = 8.35; sd = 1.34) and post-test (m = 8.38; sd = 1.34) for confidence speaking in front of small groups, as well as between pre-test (m = 7.89; sd = 1.41) and post-test (m = 8.06; sd = 1.59) for confidence speaking in front of larger groups. granted, closed-ended questions on a survey may not be the ideal item format for measuring respondents’ confidence for a complex skill like public speaking. in fact, when street law alumni were asked the open-ended question of “what skills did you develop through your work with the street law clinic?” in a waiting room survey, half (n = 4) of respondents specifically identified public speaking/oral presentation. moreover, during the focus group, several alumni expanded upon how street law was their primary opportunity for developing public speaking skills during their legal training. according to a 2007 alumnus of the southwestern street law clinic, “street law was sort of the first segue for me where i felt like i can be a confident speaker and i can communicate an idea and people will listen to me. so that really helped [my] confidence” (southwestern law 68 alumnus, personal communication, february 12, 2018). this contention that street law was the foundational space for becoming a more confident public speaker was echoed by not only alumni, but also current law students across the nation. one student pointed out that street law helped him “improve [his] public speaking skills and there’s not a huge opportunity to do that in law school” (university of minnesota law school student, personal communication, march 13, 2018). through interviews with both law school alumni and law students, it was clear that their increased confidence in public speaking had application beyond the street law program. two distinct contexts arose where street law alumni frequently apply their public speaking skills: (1) in other law school classrooms, and (2) in professional settings. in terms of context one, law school classes are often driven by student participation (madison iii, 2007). thus, developing the ability to speak confidently in front of your colleagues is a necessary part of integrating into the law school environment. law students at several schools cited street law as the reason they feel comfortable voicing their opinions in other classes as well. one student mentioned how before street law “[i] rarely if ever voluntarily raised my hand” in class (mitchell hamline school of law student, personal communication, march 16, 2018), while another explicitly stated that because of street law “i feel a lot more confident just like speaking about whatever topic we’re talking about in class” (ucla school of law student, personal communication, march 16, 2018). 69 in terms of context two, law school alumni expressed how they continue to use the public speaking/oral presentation skills that they developed in street law in their current careers. importantly, the alumni interviewed represented a wide range of careers, including the private sector, the government, and nonprofit organisations. thus, public speaking skills were described as critical for a variety of professional fields. an alumnus of the southwestern street law clinic, who works for the office of the los angeles county counsel, explained how she still uses skills she developed during street law: i work with a lot of non-lawyers and … i use those skills for presenting big projects, and [explaining] what the purpose is and what the goal is, and keeping these folks all engaged. you know i use those skills now and i’m sure i would have gotten there eventually but i think that [street law] really forced me to do it and i don’t know if i would have been forced to do it until i took on this job essentially. (southwestern law 2008 alumnus, personal communication, february 12, 2018) developing lawyer-client relationships to address the fifth research question (does participation in street law impact law students’ self-efficacy for developing lawyer-client relationships?), results of the survey were analysed using a paired t-test to assess mean differences between pre-/post-survey responses for the dependent variable of developing lawyer-client relationships. to measure this 70 dependent variable, respondents were asked: “how confident are you that you can describe your role as an advocate/lawyer to clients?” (item 9) and “how confident are you that you can develop a positive relationship with the most difficult clients?” (item 7).6 in terms of describing their role, there was a significant increase in this confidence level for the law students after participation in street law (m = 8.35; sd = 1.32) when compared with before they taught (m = 7.81; sd = 1.54); t(36) = 1.96; p = .058). conversely, there was not a significant increase in the confidence level for the law students who did not participate in street law at the post-test (m = 8.50; sd = 1.51) compared with the pretest (m = 7.83; sd = 1.85); t(11) = 1.34; p = .207). similarly, in terms of developing a positive relationship, there was a significant increase in this confidence level for the law students after participation in street law (m = 8.14; sd = 1.64) when compared with before they taught (m = 7.76; sd = 1.52); t(36) = 1.69; p = .100). conversely, there was not a significant increase in the confidence level for the law students who did not participate in street law at the post-test (m = 8.33; sd = 1.44) compared with the pre-test (m = 8.00; sd = 1.65); t(11) = 0.842; p = .417). thus, street law students showed an increase in confidence for developing lawyer-client relationships 6 respondents were also asked, “how confident are you that you can teach non-lawyers about their rights, regardless of their familiarity with those rights?” (item 5). although results for this item were not significant (see table 2), street law participants showed a nominal average increase in confidence for this skill between pre-test (m = 7.59; sd = 1.59) and post-test (m = 7.89; sd = 1.35). additional items showed no relevant results. 71 after teaching their classes, while the comparison group did not show a significant change during the same time period. consistent with, and expanding upon, these results, street law alumni interviewed individually and in a focus group setting highlighted how participating in street law increased their confidence for developing lawyer-client relationships. in fact, one interviewee even directly asserted before the focus group began that street law is where she “learned how to connect with my clients [that she has] now” (southwestern law 2014 alumnus, waiting room survey, february 12, 2018). throughout these interviews, three key subthemes that emerged were: (1) learning how to engage street law teenagers in the classroom is a skill that directly translates to engaging clients; (2) street law trains law students to bridge the professional divide between them and non-lawyers; (3) street law prepares law students to interact with diverse client populations. directly translates to engaging clients. in terms of subtheme one, a law school alumnus who works as an employment defense attorney explained the connection between engaging street law teenagers and engaging clients: so in street law, first of all you gotta get the kid engaged. you got to get them to like pay attention to you and then once you get them to pay attention you have to feed them the information in a way they’re gonna understand. similarly, with your 72 client, you have to get them to understand the information or you’re gonna go nowhere. (southwestern law 2011 alumnus, personal communication, february 12, 2018) numerous focus group participants echoed this sentiment, arguing that they were constantly figuring out “how we were going to keep the kids engaged” (southwestern law 2008 alumnus, personal communication, february 12, 2018) and how to “really engage and talk with them…and i think that’s like probably one of the best skills you can get” (southwestern law 2017 alumnus, personal communication, february 12, 2018). in short, law school alumni expressed a clear connection between the skills they developed to engage street law teenagers and the skills they currently use to engage clients. bridge the professional divide. in terms of subtheme two, law students from a variety of schools noted that street law was critical in helping them bridge the professional divide between them and non-lawyers. a ucla law student explained how she had trouble connecting with her street law teenagers at first, but through the program, she learned to “knock off most of the formalism and just be like a normal person who’s helping [them] learn about the law” (ucla school of law student, personal communication, march 16, 2018). similarly, a mitchell hamline law student explained how legal concepts and terminology are often “a little bit pretentious” and she needed to 73 deformalise the conversations in order to “feel more comfortable” working with students and clients. for example, during one lecture on pro se legal representation, students remarked, “that’s just made up language to say that you represent yourself” and she used this as an opportunity to have socioeconomic “class conversations…about the law” (mitchell hamline school of law student, personal communication, march 16, 2018). as one seattle university law student stated so simply, street law taught him how to not only “talk about the law stuff” but also how to “make small talk and just be friendly” with non-lawyers (seattle university school of law student, personal communication, march 16, 2018). diverse client populations. in terms of subtheme three, law students who participated in street law noted how the program was a unique opportunity to interact with diverse populations. as one interviewee made explicit, street law trained him “how to approach dealing with diverse populations” that are “different than law school [populations]” (university of minnesota law school student, personal communication, march 13, 2018). this exposure to different populations is important because as this interviewee suggested, his law school colleagues are not demographically diverse – a point that is in line with the fact that the legal profession has a lack of racial and ethnic diversity (see footnote 2). thus, without programs such as street law, law students would be more limited in their opportunities to discuss legal concepts with a diversity of populations. 74 some street law alumni were more specific about the benefits of teaching to diverse populations. for example, one interviewee explained that having “a pretty diverse class” that was “not shy about getting into some political discussions” helped him learn how to “wade through those different issues [and] different viewpoints.” he ultimately concluded that it made him more confident about his future interactions with clients because “if you can manage that with like ten different people and different mindsets than it’s a little easier when you have maybe a smaller group in front of you” or even a “one-on-one client meeting” (seattle university school of law student, personal communication, march 16, 2018). lastly, alumni credited street law with not only giving them the opportunity to interact with diverse populations, but also teaching them to pay attention to the differences within these populations. as one interviewee explained, participating in street law “provided nuance to the community which there always was and i just didn’t know... and [it showed] how important it is to get the diverse perspectives of a group that you might lump together” (mitchell hamline school of law student, personal communication, march 16, 2018). developing soft skills to address the sixth research question (does participation in street law impact law students’ self-efficacy for developing a variety of soft skills?), i took an inductive approach that relied 75 on (1) semi-structured interviews with law students from across the nation, and (2) a focus group and waiting room survey with street law alumni. the most commonly identified soft skills that emerged were: (1) able to see the world through the eyes of others; (2) community involvement and service; (3) listening. able to see the world through the eyes of others. shultz and zedeck (2011) identify wanting to understand other people’s views and experiences as a central factor for effective lawyering. throughout my interviews with street law alumni, this is the soft skill that they mentioned most frequently when discussing how the program impacted them. as one 2007 alumnus of southwestern law explained, street law “was so eyeopening to me – how little i know and how little i can appreciate about other people’s experiences… and so it made me much more empathetic and it’s forced me to look at life with eyes wide open” (southwestern law 2007 alumnus, personal communication, february 12, 2018). others categorised this quality as “empathy,” but expressed a similar sentiment. another street law alumni from southwestern, who participated in the program a decade after the previous interviewee, stated that street law is a reminder that when interacting with non-lawyers of any age, “what you need to be is human. so i think one of the qualities teaching brings back to you is empathy and building empathy. something that the world 76 seems to be lacking nowadays” (southwestern law 2017 alumnus, personal communication, february 12, 2018). importantly, alumni also explained how they have applied this skill that they learned in street law to their current careers. according to one alumni who works for the office of the los angeles county counsel, street law “helped me realize on a very granular level the needs of this underserved population” (southwestern law 2008 alumnus, waiting room survey, february 12, 2018): i grew up knowing that i had rights. i grew up knowing that i could challenge the system right. and so much of this juvenile community, they didn’t realize that… forwarding into what i do now, [street law] really helped me to see both sides. i’m very kind of centrist viewpoints on a lot of things and…learning the granular aspects of what this population does know makes me rethink the decisions that i make currently because i work with a [similar] underserved population. (southwestern law 2008 alumnus, personal communication, february 12, 2018) community involvement and service. shultz and zedeck (2011) also discuss applying one’s legal training and skills to community issues as another critical lawyering effectiveness factor. with regards to this factor, street law is an important program because it gives law students an opportunity to begin using their legal skills to benefit their local communities. several interviewees highlighted how being involved with street 77 law was a meaningful way to bridge the academy-community divide. as one law student, who worked in after-school programming prior to entering the legal academy, expressed, “when i heard about street law, at that point i was like feeling really irrelevant in the ivory tower. i was missing having that day-to-day interaction with youth.” she went on to explain how participating in street law was the perfect balance between an activity that was “self-interested” but also an opportunity “to feel like i was doing something” for others (mitchell hamline school of law student, personal communication, march 16, 2018). however, even beyond the initial opportunity to connect with local communities that street law creates, numerous street law alumni contended that the program made them want to serve their communities in other ways both during law school and after graduation. a university of minnesota street law student contended that “street law definitely made me continue to care about those issues and continue to care about people who need access to the legal system that, you know, may not readily have it as easily as others.” in short, “it made me want to continue to do pro bono work for sure in some capacity… in law school and then afterwards as well” (university of minnesota law school student, personal communication, march 13, 2018). of particular note is that even for students who intended to pursue jobs in the private sector, street law cultivated in them a desire to engage in pro bono and public service work whenever possible. some of the law students expressed a desire to continue working with a population similar to the youth they served through street law. as one 78 ucla law student who has committed to work at a private firm after graduation explained, “i could definitely see myself wanting to work with that particular community again which i hadn’t expected… kids in school are an important point that we’re missing in the legal profession. we don’t work with them and maybe we should” (ucla school of law student, personal communication, march 16, 2018). law school alumni who currently work in a variety of legal careers echoed the perspective that street law developed their desire, as well as their ability, to apply their legal skills to community issues. as one alumnus who works with underserved populations reflected, “street law, you know, reminded me of like what my little, you know, five minutes did with this kid” before ultimately concluding that “it makes me want to continue to give back to this population” (southwestern law 2008 alumnus, personal communication, february 12, 2018). however, even those alumni whose careers are in the private sector and do not directly relate to any public service work, still felt that their professional choices have been shaped by street law. according to one alumnus who runs his own estate planning and personal injury firm, “i always give back no matter what… i always want to have that one person who i can help… and for me that’s just kind of something that i picked up from street law” (southwestern law 2013 alumnus, personal communication, february 12, 2018). perhaps one alumnus said it best when he simply remarked that street law makes it so you are “always looking for a way that you can help other people” (southwestern law 2010 alumnus, personal communication, 79 february 12, 2018), or in the words of a law student, “street law just makes me want to help out” (seattle university school of law student, personal communication, march 16, 2018). listening. shultz and zedeck (2011) also emphasise that effective lawyers have the ability to correctly perceive what others are saying, which requires active listening. street law alumni emphasised that in order to become successful teachers they had to listen to their students’ opinions and experiences, and incorporate those into their pedagogy. as a seattle university law student explained, he learned through street law to “try not to lecture for too long” and instead build in time for students to “tell me about themselves in a way that was connected to the material. just because i felt like in that way they were able to tell a little bit about their own personal life and personal experience” (seattle university school of law student, personal communication, march 16, 2018). for many alumni, they have translated this experience of “getting them involved in the conversation” to their current work with clients by “talking with them, instead of talking at them” (southwestern law 2011 alumnus, personal communication, february 12, 2018). one alumnus noted how time is limited during client meetings, but “you’re gonna listen to them” if you want to “build a relationship” (southwestern law 2008 alumnus, personal communication, february 12, 2018). 80 thus, alumni established a clear connection between the importance of listening and developing positive relationships with students and clients alike. most poignantly, an interviewee extended this point about relationship-building by asserting that the byproduct is a mutually beneficial relationship through which both parties learn: the question [each class] was like, “what do i have to offer that is different from just repeating what you already know?” i think that part of the learning is that you are as much a student as they are, and it’s like a two-way process where you teach and you’re getting a learning experience also unique for yourself. (southwestern law 2017 alumnus, personal communication, february 12, 2018) notably, this interviewee made an effort to emphasise that this two-way process of being both a teacher and student is not limited to the classroom setting. rather, it is “something that if you can really grasp…you can take it anywhere” (southwestern law 2017 alumnus, personal communication, february 12, 2018). discussion programs that improve a law students’ self-efficacy are a crucial part of higher education. in addition to the ways that self-efficacy may impact a law students’ academic performance and transition to practice, a law student instructor’s self-efficacy in teaching in street law programs will also likely impact student outcomes in the classrooms in 81 which those law students teach. after all, education research has demonstrated extensively that a teacher’s level of self-efficacy is related to student outcomes, such as achievement and motivation (armor et al., 1976; ashton & webb, 1986; protheroe, 2008; tschannen-moran, hoy, a.w., & hoy, w.k., 1998). thus, developing an understanding of street law instructors’ self-efficacy is a necessary first step for assessing the broader impacts of street law programs. although this project serves as the premier rigorous analysis of street law programs’ instructors, it is not without its limitations. for example, there were several other variables (e.g., whether a full-time faculty member directs the street law program) that were collected in the survey to test for potential moderating or mediating effects on the dependent variables of interest. the small sample size precludes being able to make any concrete conclusions about significance at this point, but exploratory analysis reveals that a number of these variables may impact the effectiveness of street law programs. for example, consider the following preliminary data comparing participants in street law programs with a faculty advisor (n = 21) versus those without a faculty advisor (n = 14). street law participants with a faculty advisor showed a higher average change score7 for several items of interest: 7 paired samples t-tests to assess mean differences between pre-/post-survey responses were computed for both conditions. the reported means represent the average change between pre-survey and postsurvey for all respondents in each condition. 82 table 4 change scores on self-efficacy variables by faculty advisor condition variable directed by faculty member? mean standard deviation item 2: develop positive relationship with clients yes no .33 .07 1.15 1.38 item 3: speak to small group of non-lawyers yes no .10 -.14 .95 1.35 item 5: teach non-lawyers about their rights yes no .52 .14 1.40 .95 item 7: develop positive relationship with difficult clients yes no .62 .00 1.36 1.41 item 10: continue to work with clients after disruptive experience yes no .29 -.14 1.19 1.61 in short, street law participants in a program with a faculty director reported a greater increase of confidence for several skills between pre-test and post-test. thus, further research should explore the potential benefits of having a faculty director for street law programs. in fact, other scholars have already begun to argue that “any law school that currently has a student-run or voluntary street law program should seriously consider making it part of its credit-bearing curriculum to ensure that it is effective in its mission and provides a rigorous academic experience” (montana, 2009). moreover, building 83 street law into the curriculum may alter law students’ professional trajectory. as argued by law professor sharon dolovich, “the law school course catalogue is not just the place where students look to decide what to study next semester”; rather, “[i]t is where future lawyers are exposed to the range of possible practice areas, where they discover interests they did not know they had, and where they begin to imagine their professional lives” (2012, p. 218). as an alumnus aptly stated, participating in a street law class during law school showed me that there are lots of cool and alternative ways to use your j.d., and you don’t just have to go straight to some firm in la and be miserable. it was definitely one of the classes that helped me take a less streamlined approach to my career and what it means to be a lawyer. (ucla law alumni, personal communication, february 23, 2018) expanding the types of careers law students envision has great value, especially when street law instructors could also become a crucial resource for society. as evidenced by the results to rq6 (does participation in street law impact law students’ self-efficacy for developing a variety of soft skills?), street law often builds a connection between future lawyers and members of the community. thus, investment in public interest programs such as street law is not only a valuable pedagogical decision but could also lead to a cornucopia of socio-cultural benefits that research projects such as this one only begin to unveil. 84 program evaluation literature consistently recogniszes that real-world constraints limit evaluation efforts (berk & rossi, 1999; fisher, laing, stoeckel, & townsend, 1991; valente, 2002). in other words, any study design will face administrative, fiscal, political, practical, etc. constraints. thus, the goal is to design and execute the best evaluation possible given the restraints. my program evaluation sought to do just that; these initial findings will serve as the basis for further program evaluations of street law and other public law education programs by me, and ideally other scholars as well. but, as we must remember, there is no fixed recipe. prescriptions for ‘successful’ evaluations are, in practice, prescriptions for failure. the techniques that evaluations may bring to bear are only tools, and even the very best of tools does not ensure a worthy product. just as for any craft, there is no substitute for intelligence, experience, perseverance, and a touch of whimsy. (berk & rossi, 1999, p. 107) ultimately, although street law is a relatively nascent part of the legal academy, it is a prominent public law education program that serves a potentially crucial role in helping law students prepare to practice. however, evaluations of iterations of this program have employed varied and inconsistent metrics, thereby leaving us with limited understanding about their effectiveness. this project marks the first multimethod empirical, standardised program evaluation of street law instructors from law schools across the nation. in addition to completing this program evaluation, the project also (1) 85 develops a theoretical framework that will enable law school administrators and scholars from a variety of disciplines to understand how law students are impacted by street law programs, and (2) lays the foundation for future assessments of street law and other public law education programs. such assessments should be undertaken with rigor because these programs have broad potential to affect law students’ transition to practice and society at large. 86 references alexander, m. c. (1993). law-related education: hope for today's students. ohio nul rev., 20, 57. araujo, r. j. (1999). the lawyer's duty to promote the common good: the virtuous law student and teacher. s. tex. l. rev., 40, 83. arbetman, l. (2018). street law, inc.: context, history, and future. international journal of public law, 2(1), 3-27. armor, d., conry-oseguera, p., cox, m., king, n., mcdonnell, l., pascal, a., pauly, e., & zellman, g. (1976). analysis of the school preferred reading program in selected los angeles minority schools. the rand corporation. arthurs, s. g. (2015). street law: creating tomorrow's citizens today. lewis & clark l. rev., 19, 925. arthurs, s., cooperman, m., gallagher, j., grealy, f., lunney, j., marrs, r., & roe, r. (2017). from zero to 60: building belief, capacity and community in street law instructors in one weekend. international journal of clinical legal education, 24(2), 118-241. ashton, p. t., & webb, r. b. (1986). making a difference: teachers' sense of efficacy and student achievement. longman publishing group. 87 bandura, a. (1977). self-efficacy: toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. psychological review, 84(2), 191-215. bandura, a. (1997). self-efficacy: the exercise of control. new york: freeman. bandura, a. (2006). guide for constructing self-efficacy scales. self-efficacy beliefs of adolescents, 5, 307-337. barkai, j. l., & fine, v. o. (1982). empathy training for lawyers and law students. sw. ul rev., 13, 505. berk, r. a., & rossi, p. h. (1999). thinking about program evaluation. sage. binder, d. a., & bergman, p. (2003). taking lawyering skills training seriously. clinical l. rev., 10, 191. boccaccini, m. t., boothby, j. l., & brodsky, s. l. (2002). client-relations skills in effective lawyering: attitudes of criminal defense attorneys and experienced clients. law & psychol. rev., 26, 97. bouffard-bouchard, t. (1990). influence of self-efficacy on performance in a cognitive task. the journal of social psychology, 130(3), 353-363. 88 bureau of labor statistics (2020). labor force statistics from the current population survey. retrieved from https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm christensen, l. m. (2009). enhancing law school success: a study of goal orientations, academic achievement and the declining self-efficacy of our law students. law & psychol. rev., 33, 57. cunningham, c. d. (1998). evaluating effective lawyer-client communication: an international project moving from research to reform. fordham l. rev., 67, 1959. diaz, r. j., glass, c. r., arnkoff, d. b., & tanofsky-kraff, m. (2001). cognition, anxiety, and prediction of performance in 1st-year law students. journal of educational psychology, 93(2), 420. dolovich, s. (1998). making docile lawyers: an essay on the pacification of law students. harv. l. rev., 111, 2027-2041. dolovich, s. (2012). teaching prison law. journal of legal education, 62, 218. dweck, c. s., & leggett, e. l. (1988). a social-cognitive approach to motivation and personality. psychological review, 95(2), 256. elliot, a. j., & mcgregor, h. a. (2001). a 2× 2 achievement goal framework. journal of personality and social psychology, 80(3), 501. 89 fines, b. g. (1996). competition and the curve. umkc l. rev., 65, 879. fisher, a. a., laing, j. e., stoeckel, j. e., & townsend, j. w. (1991). handbook for family planning operations research design. new york, ny: population council. hampton, n. z. (1998). sources of academic self-efficacy scale: an assessment tool for rehabilitation counselors. rehabilitation counseling bulletin. kovach, k. k. (1998). the lawyer as teacher: the role of education in lawyering. clinical l. rev., 4, 359. lent, r. w., brown, s. d., & larkin, k. c. (1984). relation of self-efficacy expectations to academic achievement and persistence. journal of counseling psychology, 31(3), 356. lent, r. w., sheu, h. b., singley, d., schmidt, j. a., schmidt, l. c., & gloster, c. s. (2008). longitudinal relations of self-efficacy to outcome expectations, interests, and major choice goals in engineering students. journal of vocational behavior, 73(2), 328-335. macdougall, c., & baum, f. (1997). the devil's advocate: a strategy to avoid groupthink and stimulate discussion in focus groups. qualitative health research, 7(4), 532-541. macdowell, e. l. (2008). law on the street: legal narrative and the street law classroom. rutgers race & l. rev., 9, 285. madison iii, b. v. (2007). the elephant in law school classrooms: overuse of the socratic method as an obstacle to teaching modern law students. u. det. mercy l. rev., 85, 293. 90 maughan, c., & webb, j. (2005). lawyering skills and the legal process. cambridge university press. matsui, t., matsui, k., & ohnishi, r. (1990). mechanisms underlying math self-efficacy learning of college students. journal of vocational behavior, 37(2), 225-238. mckinney, r. a. (2002). depression and anxiety in law students: are we part of the problem and can we be part of the solution. legal writing: j. legal writing inst., 8, 229. montana, p. g. (2009). lessons from the carnegie and best practices reports: a look at st. john's university school of law's street law program as a model for teaching professional skills. tm cooley j. prac. & clinical l., 11, 97. multon, k. d., brown, s. d., & lent, r. w. (1991). relation of self-efficacy beliefs to academic outcomes: a meta-analytic investigation. journal of counseling psychology, 38(1), 30. o'brien, e. l., & arbetman, l. p. (1977). new clinical curriculum: teaching practical law to high school students and inmates, a. j. legal educ., 29, 568. pajares, f. (1996). self-efficacy beliefs in academic settings. review of educational research, 66(4), 543-578. 91 palmer, j. s. (2015). millennials are coming: improving self-efficacy in law students through universal design in learning, the. clev. st. l. rev., 63, 675. pinder, k. a. (1998). street law: twenty-five years and counting. jl & educ., 27, 211. protheroe, n. (2008). teacher efficacy: what is it and does it matter?. principal, 87(5), 42-45. roe, r. (2012). street law clinics at georgetown university law center, washington, d.c., and others. the education pipeline to the professions: programs that work to increase diversity. sarah e. redfield (ed.). carolina academic press. 135-144. rosen, j. a., glennie, e. j., dalton, b. w., lennon, j. m., & bozick, r. n. (2010). noncognitive skills in the classroom: new perspectives on educational research. rti international. triangle park, nc. schunk, d. h. (1984). self-efficacy and classroom learning. psychology in the schools, 22(2), 208-223. schunk, d. h. (1991). self-efficacy and academic motivation. educational psychologist, 26(3-4), 207-231. schunk, d. h. (1995). self-efficacy and education and instruction. in j. e. maddux (ed.), self-efficacy, adaptation, and adjustment: theory, research, and application (pp. 281-303). new york: plenum. 92 schwartz, m. h. (2003). teaching law students to be self-regulated learners. l. rev. msu-dcl, 447. smith, r. h. (2015). from students to colleagues: how the legal writing classroom can create conscientious and empathetic practitioners. legal writing institute, 10-12. sternlight, j. r., & robbennolt, j. (2007). good lawyers should be good psychologists: insights for interviewing and counseling clients. ohio st. j. on disp. resol., 23, 437 tolbert, anthony. (2018). street law -youth & education [syllabus]. los angeles, ca: ucla school of law. tschannen-moran, m., hoy, a. w., & hoy, w. k. (1998). teacher efficacy: its meaning and measure. review of educational research, 68(2), 202-248. usher, e. l., & pajares, f. (2008). sources of self-efficacy in school: critical review of the literature and future directions. review of educational research, 78(4), 751-796. valente, t. w. (2002). evaluating health promotion programs. oxford, england: oxford university press. 93 zimmerman, b. j. (2000). self-efficacy: an essential motive to learn. contemporary educational psychology, 25(1), 82-91. practice report 83 classroom to cyberspace: preserving street law’s interactive and student-centered focus during distance learning amy l wallace1 i. introduction street law is a legal education methodology designed to increase civic engagement, further advocacy and analytical skills, and develop practical legal knowledge in nonlawyers. using interactive and student-centered teaching strategies, these programs have been proven to be an effective method to teach critical thinking skills in high school students.2 when street law was founded at georgetown university law center in 1972, the law students wanted the lessons to be relevant and relatable for their high school students, and, in a pioneering effort they also wanted the lessons to be responsive, engaging, and fun.3 georgetown’s emeritus street law professor richard roe explains: 1 amy l. wallace is an adjunct professor of law at new york law school. wallace founded and teaches the street law experiential course at nyls. she is a graduate of the university of toronto (b.a. in political science), georgetown university law center (j.d.), and lehman college (m. ed. – new york city teaching fellows program). she consults for street law, inc., a non-profit focused on law-related education based outside of washington, d.c. at street law, inc. she helped design the chslsj summer law program and continues to serve as the legal director of that program. she also supports all new law-school-based street law programs in the united states. 2 sean arthurs, street law: creating tomorrow’s citizens today, 19 (4) lewis & clark l. rev. 925, 961 (2015). 3 lee arbetman, street law, inc.: context, history and future, 2(1) int’l j. of pub. legal educ. 3 (2018). practice report 84 the hallmark street law methodology of highly participatory, interactive, and engaging activity-based instruction, where the learning is accomplished largely through the cognitive, expressive, and reflective work of the learners themselves in substantively rich, thoughtfully structured lessons, draws from both the hands-on model of clinical legal education as well as the best practices for effective teaching and learning generally.4 the three basic components of a successful street law program are practical content, interactive skills-based teaching strategies, and community involvement. the subject matter covered in street law programs around the world differs dramatically. that the topics are important and relevant to the students is key. from the start street law lessons have been student-centered. a common catchphrase for street law instructors is “talk less, teach more” meaning the high school students should be the ones talking, debating, advocating, arguing, negotiating, and crafting solutions. when schools around the world switched to remote learning, street law programs struggled to re-imagine their interactive curriculum in a virtual setting. decades of practical, in-person street law pedagogy was instantly upended. professors and law student leaders wanted to continue to deliver legal instruction to non-lawyers but street law practitioners knew that it was not just what was being taught but how. this paper and subsequent research is designed to investigate whether it is possible to preserve the engaging street law methodology in a remote learning environment. 4 richard roe, law school-high school, in the education pipeline to the professions, programs that work to increase diversity 136 (sarah e. redfield ed., 2012). practice report 85 this paper includes: a background on the new york law school (nyls) street law program and the relationship with its partner high school, the charter high school for law and social justice (chslsj); a description of the nyls street law experience during emergency remote teaching in spring and summer 2020; a discussion of best practices developed through remote teaching; analysis of the implementation of those best practices in fall 2020; and conclusions and plans for further study. ii. background the nyls street law program was established in the fall 2017. the program is modelled after the original georgetown university law center clinic. the course is faculty taught and offered for credit in both the fall and spring semesters. between eight and ten law students participate in street law at nyls each semester. the law students attend seminars twice per week for three weeks before they start teaching. once they start at their teaching site, the law students attend seminars each tuesday where they review the substantive legal topic being addressed that week. the law students then work in pairs to prepare a lesson on wednesday. we meet each thursday to review the lesson and prepare the law students to teach on friday. the law students team-teach four or five classes at chslsj located in the bronx, new york. the high school was founded by an education law professor at nyls and the practice report 86 schools continue to have a strong partnership.5 the law students typically teach criminal law in the fall semester, and criminal procedure in the spring. each semester concludes with a final project – a mock trial in the fall and oral arguments for a moot court in the spring, both held at nyls. in addition to the credit-bearing course, nyls law students are hired as instructors for the chslsj summer law program each year. the summer law program is usually a three-week, twelve-day intensive program for all incoming ninth grade students at chslsj. the instructors teach a range of subjects including an introduction to law, criminal law, contracts, and constitutional law. the second week of the program concludes with a mock senate hearing and the third week focuses entirely on mock trial. both the summer law program and the street law course had run successfully for years when covid-19 completely disrupted life in new york city and around the world. iii. remote teaching spring 2020 in march 2020, the number of covid-19 infections exploded in new york city. on march 1, 2020, new york city only had one documented case of covid-19 and on 5 amy wallace, a law-themed charter high school born at new york law school remains indelibly linked, 4(1) int’l j. of pub. legal educ. (2020). practice report 87 march 20, 2020, there were almost 3000 documented cases.6 new york law school closed its campus on march 4, 2020 due to possible exposure to the virus by a law student. clinical and experiential faculty struggled to safely reconstruct practical legal programs that involved direct contact with clients. street law students were understandably concerned by the exposure to the virus in the crowded hallways and classrooms at chslsj. in addition, teaching in the bronx involves a long commute on public transit for most of the law students. they left for spring break anxious but expecting to return to in-person teaching at the end of the holiday. on sunday march 15, 2020 the new york city board of education moved all city schools to remote learning.7 the nyls law students were scheduled to teach on that friday march 20, 2020. as administrators at the high school scrambled to prepare remote lessons and materials to cover all courses, we tried to recreate our street law program in a virtual setting. the law students and i agreed that regardless of the circumstances, we could not stop teaching because the program is so important for the skill building and civic engagement of our high school students. at the outset the duration of the quarantine was unclear. we ignorantly thought that if the city shut down completely for two weeks that we might be able to return to 6new york covid map and case count, new york times (oct. 1, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/new-york-coronavirus-cases.html. 7 eliza shapiro, new york city public schools to close to slow spread of coronavirus, new york times (mar. 15, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/15/nyregion/nyc-schools-closed.html. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/new-york-coronavirus-cases.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/15/nyregion/nyc-schools-closed.html practice report 88 normal. it quickly became clear that we would all be working and learning remotely for an extended period. because the street law program is founded on interactive, student-centered, skill building lessons, we were initially adamant that our virtual lessons be synchronous. we believed that the high school students needed to be able to work in groups and interact with their law students and each other. after discussions with chslsj, it became clear that due to inequities in access to technology and internet service, that synchronous lessons were impossible. we had to readjust our thinking to what was possible. it was decided that street law in some form would be beneficial to the high school students and law students. we had just started teaching the final moot court unit. the law students had to teach the substantive law of the right against unlawful searches and seizures, how to write case comparisons, and how to formulate arguments for a moot court, all without any live instruction. prior to the shutdown, the law students were team-teaching four separate classes at chslsj. although the law students all teach the same topic each week, teams create their own lesson plans and use different teaching methods to facilitate each class. in quarantine, the school asked us to produce one asynchronous lesson per week, which was assigned to all four street law classes. because we wanted the high school students to continue to see and hear their instructors, we decided to record short videos to accompany worksheets which were uploaded to google classroom. the law students did an incredible job putting together short informative videos which included the content the high school students practice report 89 needed to complete the virtual assignments, and also conveyed warmth and support that the students needed at such a confusing and stressful time.8 training the law students presented new challenges as well. typically, we discuss each topic at the beginning of the week and then the law students prepare their own lessons. suddenly, ten law students had to produce one asynchronous lesson. i decided to leave the law students in their original pairings. each pair prepared a proposal detailing how they would teach the subject that week. they each circulated their proposal and were also required to comment on the other proposals for our weekly seminar. in class we discussed the strengths and weaknesses of each proposal and as a group chose one pair’s plan to develop into the official lesson for the week. that pair then completed the lesson and recorded the video. the teamwork displayed was remarkable. without my direction, the law students seamlessly chose a different pair’s proposal each week so that everyone felt included in the asynchronous process. initially, i worried that the law students would be frustrated preparing a lesson proposal that was ultimately not chosen. i emphasized that street law is intended to benefit both the high school students and the law students and that researching and preparing lessons continued to be valuable practice for them regardless of whether the group ultimately opted for their proposal. using this model, the law students continued to learn substantive legal topics and practiced 8 stories of teaching, learning, and advocacy in the digital environment, new york law school news (apr. 6, 2020), https://news.nyls.edu/stories-of-teaching-learning-and-advocacy-in-the-digitalenvironment/. https://news.nyls.edu/stories-of-teaching-learning-and-advocacy-in-the-digital-environment/ https://news.nyls.edu/stories-of-teaching-learning-and-advocacy-in-the-digital-environment/ practice report 90 deconstructing the material for non-lawyers. our asynchronous lessons were not an equal substitute for the engaging in-person lessons the law students had been facilitating pre-covid, but the activities continued to foster the critical thinking and advocacy skills that the high-schoolers had been working on all semester. it was difficult to assess the efficacy of our remote lessons. we delivered the lessons each week and the school uploaded them for the students, but, consistent with our pre-covid arrangement, the cooperating classroom teacher graded the students’ work. she reassured us that the students were completing their assignments, but it was not until the high school students submitted their final moot court arguments that we confirmed that our lessons had been successful. amazingly the students produced thoughtful, well-constructed arguments. the law students had managed to teach the entire unit with videos and virtual assignments. i am extremely proud of the hard work and resilience of both the law students9 and the high school students. summer 2020 when we started planning for the 2020 summer law program, the school decided that they wanted to offer the program synchronously. typically, the program runs from nine to twelve each morning, four days a week, for three weeks. three straight hours on zoom for thirteen and fourteen-year olds was an untenable idea. i suggested we divide the time into manageable chunks for the ninth graders. the students would 9 huge thank you to my dedicated and unflappable spring 2020 nyls law students: hayden boudreaux, edward colligan, andrew frenkel, lara giray, victor hernandez, logan matura, michael moore, reshma ramrup, zaine shetayh, and lauren stolz. practice report 91 start the day with a thirty-minute zoom. they would then have a thirty-minute break where they would be responsible for an independent assignment uploaded to their google classroom. they would return for a final thirty-minute zoom. all of the lessons and materials that had been used during the four previous summer programs had to be rewritten for remote learning. i reviewed each of the lessons and reconceptualized them for a virtual learning environment. to address the global turmoil impacting our high school students, i wrote two new lessons to be included in the summer curriculum. the first lesson revamps the classic “no vehicles in the park” lesson10. the lesson traditionally asks students to examine scenarios to determine whether they violate a town’s vague vehicular traffic law. the purpose of the lesson is to highlight and contrast the concepts of “letter of the law” and “legislative intent.” the revised lesson includes photos of covid-19 social distancing laws mandating “no vehicles at the beach.” the second new lesson addresses first amendment protections for freedom of speech and the nationwide black lives matter protests against police brutality. we hoped the new lessons would help to engage the students in a virtual environment where external factors often make it challenging for students to focus. 10 this classic united states law school lesson asks students to review a number of scenarios to determine whether they have violated a town’s “no vehicles in the park” law. the scenarios can include “vehicles” like: a stroller, a wheelchair, an ambulance, a motorized bicycle, or a stationary tank monument. the purpose of the lesson is to introduce the concept of legislative intent and the importance of drafting precise legislation. practice report 92 the two nyls law student instructors hired to teach the summer law program accepted positions in february when the extent and duration of the lockdown were unimaginable. when told they would be teaching remotely, they were incredibly adaptable and easily made the transition. the three-day instructor training was conducted entirely online and included the usual review of the legal topics and lessons. the training also included hours of zoom practice. despite having spent half a semester attending classes on zoom, the instructors quickly learned that teaching on zoom was much more difficult. fortunately, we were able to secure additional law student volunteers to help support the main instructors. summer law program classes began in mid-july. during the first couple of days, the high school students were very reluctant to participate. attendance in both sections was low.11 the charter school requires the students to have cameras on, in part to confirm each student’s identity. the cameras on requirement did affect the strength of some students’ zoom connections at times. one of the first lessons that really engaged the students was the covid activity. we were unsure whether the students would be fatigued with thinking about the pandemic and discussing how the shutdown was affecting everyone’s lives. we were happy to discover they wanted to explore these issues. because the social distancing legislative intent behind the “no vehicles at the beach” law was omnipresent for the students, they did an exceptional job differentiating that intent from the plain language of the regulation. 11 attendance is a perpetual problem for the summer law program, so it is unclear whether the move to distance learning affected attendance in this case. practice report 93 because attendance in each of the two sections was low, about four days into the program, i suggested we combine the classes. i thought that more students together would mean more opinions and viewpoints to consider. my suggestion had the exact opposite effect and at the request of the instructors, we split them back into their original classes the next day. the high school students were more engaged and participatory in smaller, more intimate groups. during the break between zooms each day, the law students suggested but did not require that the high school students remain logged into the zoom. they were told to turn off their cameras and mute themselves while they completed the independent assignment and took a break. at the time, the intention was to ensure the students returned for the second half of class, but the downtime in the middle of the day instead became a moment of community building. students would reach out to the law students for individual assistance with assignments and also just to talk about college, law school, and careers. before the start of the summer program, we had managed our expectations about the development of community at a remote summer law program. collegiality is typically a huge part of the summer program since the high school students come to chslsj from many different middle schools around new york city. it is the first opportunity they have to interact with each other and the first time they are introduced to the law curriculum and the law students. that community building happened this summer is miraculous and the result of phenomenal nyls practice report 94 law student instructors and volunteer assistants12. we would have preferred stronger attendance, and class participation constantly required patience and perseverance from the law students, but nonetheless, the summer was a success. the high school students had engaging discussions and thoughtfully addressed current events. the charter school even decided to implement our thirty-minutes-on, thirty-minutes -off, thirty-minutes-on model for all of their subjects for the fall semester. iv. best practices the camaraderie of the legal profession was apparent during the switch to remote teaching. faculty throughout our law school and around the country were sharing ideas and offering assistance. new york law school provided countless professional development opportunities including access to a seven-session, ten-hour course on remote legal instruction.13 between collaboration, professional instruction, and our experiences teaching both asynchronous and synchronous street law classes, i have assembled our best practices. they can be divided into two broad categories: class structure; and class content. class structure 12 thank you to the amazing nyls summer law program law students: natasha “delali” madison (instructor), filomena stabile (instructor), taylor barje (volunteer assistant), caitlyn kelly (volunteer assistant), and mariella rutigliano (volunteer assistant). 13 preparing for the future of legal instruction – online teaching tips & techniques, the center for computer-assisted legal instruction, (june 9-30, 2020), www.cali.org. http://www.cali.org/ practice report 95 the decision about whether to teach synchronously or asynchronously will likely be made entirely by or at least in collaboration with the teaching site. initially we could not imagine a productive, student-centered, asynchronous street law program. our experience in the spring semester taught us that even using videos and worksheets, worthwhile skill-building street law work can happen asynchronously. remote learning will be, in most circumstances, a temporary measure. although synchronous classes do provide greater opportunity for interactivity both between the students themselves and the students and the instructors, asynchronous instruction is better than stopping street law classes completely. we also learned to consider adding asynchronous components to a synchronous class. as will be discussed later, interactive activities on zoom are very time-consuming therefore including an asynchronous pre-recorded video, which covers any brief lecture portion of the lesson, frees up the synchronous time to devote entirely to interactive elements. another advantage is students can watch the video at a time when they are most able to learn. when we taught synchronously over the summer, students would unmute themselves to participate and there was often a remarkable amount of background noise in their home. enabling those students to watch the video at a quiet time in their home, or when there aren’t competing demands on their internet and technology might be beneficial for many communities. students can also watch a video multiple times if they are struggling with a concept. instructors are typically meeting with their classes less frequently with the new remote schedules. asynchronous elements such as videos or even discussion board type activities can practice report 96 bridge longer periods between meetings. posting interesting articles or political cartoons on a platform like google classroom and asking students to comment is a way to keep them involved and thinking about street law. it also enables them to interact more with their peers, which is something many students are missing in this remote environment. the length of the class is also something that will likely be determined by the school. the nyls law students are teaching in 110-minute blocks this fall. the experts at the workshops i attended stated that forty-five minutes is the longest we should expect our students to be able to focus on a zoom or synchronous class. in addition, lessons where students are active participants rather than passive listeners contribute to greater student attentiveness, engagement, and information retention. the teaching site may also dictate class size. generally, an ideal class size for an inperson street law class is eighteen to twenty-five students. after teaching our synchronous classes this summer, we determined that closer to fifteen may be ideal on zoom. whether it was a general lack of engagement or performance anxiety, which can be magnified on zoom because a speaker can see everyone staring at them, the students were more reluctant to contribute in the remote classroom. this problem was amplified during the summer program when i combined the classes. the students contributed in their breakout rooms but were hesitant to share out in the main group. together with class size is the question of the ideal number of instructors. in a regular semester the nyls law students teach in pairs. in fact, having more than two facilitators can sometimes be distracting in an in-person classroom. this was not practice report 97 true over the summer. we had at least three facilitators in each class and in the fall we will have teams of four or five for each class. having a facilitator for each breakout room is crucial for remote learning. in a classroom, the instructor can look around the room and see a group that is confused or off-task. in a virtual classroom, that isn’t possible so having facilitators in each breakout room to guide and answer questions is very important. upon entering breakout rooms at the start of the summer law program, we often found the high school students sitting in silence with everyone muted. sometimes they were confused about the breakout assignment but were unsure how to return to the main zoom to ask for assistance. once facilitators were present in each room, the students were very productive and engaged. there is a great deal of technology available to assist with virtual learning. the most important lesson we learned was to keep the technology as simple as possible. many of the high school students were joining the class zoom on their phone or did not have access to reliable internet. most street law programs are directed at underserved communities where these technological inequities can be the most severe. the students struggle to run multiple programs at the same time. a platform that enables the instructors to teach synchronously (if possible) and a web-based learning platform like google classroom are the basic requirements. for the summer program we used zoom and google classroom. the charter school had been using google classroom throughout the spring semester, so the students were familiar with the technology. whatever platforms and technology are chosen should be used consistently. students should not be trying to learn about a variety of new programs in addition to learning practice report 98 the legal topics. the charter school has several class sets of the street law textbook so they are planning to arrange for parent pick up of the textbooks to ease the technological burden. we will then design lessons that rely on the textbook as much as possible. the new york city department of education distributed hundreds of thousands of ipads14 and many internet service providers in the united states offered free internet service for students. in addition, chslsj provided mobile hot spots and ipads to students. the unequal access to technology is a huge issue for distance learning. we are fortunate that this issue was taken seriously by the new york city department of education and chslsj. class content assessing student comprehension can be more challenging in a remote teaching environment. during in-person teaching, instructors can scan the room and notice students who aren’t completing the assignment or participating in their group discussion. in addition, when students are together, they can ask their neighbor if they missed an instruction or zoned out temporarily. none of this can happen in a virtual space. we concluded that checking for understanding needed to be a central component of all virtual lessons. asking “does anyone have any questions” was never an effective tool to measure the comprehension of teenagers and it works even less well remotely. it is more effort and can be intimidating for students to unmute 14 luis, diaz, nyc working with apple to supply 300,000 ipads to our students for distance learning, new yorkeled magazine (mar. 16, 2020), https://www.newyorkled.com/nyc-working-withapple-to-supply-300000-ipads-to-our-students-for-distance-learning/. practice report 99 themselves and ask a question in front of the whole class compared to privately asking a circulating instructor in an in-person classroom. we have emphasized asking the high school students to restate the instructions in their own words each time we give them a task. it may seem cumbersome, but it frequently highlights that many of the students are not clear on their assignment. the law students have also added more scaffolding questions to their lessons. for example, asking students what they think is the most interesting part of an article they are reading aloud, or the most challenging part of a scenario they are analyzing in groups. the law students need to ask questions where the feedback will tell them whether the high school students are prepared for the next assignment. we have had to manage our expectations in terms of what we will accomplish in our classes. one of the most important lessons we learned during the summer program was how much less we could accomplish teaching virtually. everything we planned to do took almost twice as long as it would take in the classroom. during the first few days of the summer law program we were so far behind schedule that we were taking the zoom break when the students were supposed to be returning from break for the second zoom. i started cutting things out of the lessons because we did not want the high school students to be on the zooms for that long. especially when using interactive techniques, all of the procedural elements take time that we never had to spend in the classroom. sharing screens, putting students into breakout rooms, repeating instructions, and waiting for students to access the documents on their google classroom are all very time consuming. add to those delays that student practice report 100 participation requires more prompts from the instructors than would typically be required to foster discussion in an in-person class. street law programs are about skill-building not coverage and i remind my students that we are not teaching a bar exam prep course. it is more important that the high school students have a thoughtful, analytical discussion of two scenarios than rushing them through a surface discussion of five. we decided to be incredibly thoughtful about the topics we chose to cover because we accepted we would teach less than previous semesters. carefully crafted lesson objectives are critical in this remote environment. the law students need to think about what they want their students to be able to do by the end of class, how the students are going to learn and practice those things, and how we are going to measure those objectives. interactivity is a hallmark of street law pedagogy. we know it is crucial that whenever possible we incorporate engaging elements into the lessons. we introduced photographs and images into our lessons for the summer program. the visuals definitely captivated the students and increased participation. being on zoom can be tiresome, even when discussing relevant topics and the use of photographs added an additional layer of interest. the students responded very well to the visuals included in the “no vehicles at the beach” lesson. practice report 101 polls can also be a useful addition to a lesson. there are many poll programs available that have a large variety of options. we use the basic poll feature contained within zoom, so our high school students do not have to access another platform. student participation in the polls used in our classes was almost one hundred percent. students who refused to contribute to discussions would participate in a poll. clicking on a poll response is a very small demand of a student. however, using a poll can have a disproportionately positive effect on class participation. the students unwittingly become invested in the topic. they vote in the poll and therefore commit to an answer. we noticed they are more willing to contribute verbally after they participate in a poll. our first amendment and protest lesson starts with a series of images and a simultaneous poll, which asks students whether the image depicts “speech”. the students were very engaged during this lesson and carefully analyzed figure 1 'park closed to vehicles' sign figure 2 'beach closed to all vehicles' sign practice report 102 what types of speech should be protected by the constitution. we chose images of people of color exercising their rights to free speech to reflect the community where the law students teach. we want the high school students to easily visualize themselves speaking out against injustice and engaging in their community. figure 3 young people holding protest signs which read #metoo figure 4 image of a protester with a t-shirt that reads 'i can't breathe' practice report 103 it is very helpful to be able to write a poll in advance, using the template provided by zoom, and upload it into the meeting set-up. it also alleviates some of the expected stress and nervousness at the start of the class. the final best practice relates to the use of media in a virtual classroom. richard mayer is a renowned psychology professor and an expert on how people learn. he has focused his research on how media can be used most effectively in teaching. he suggests that images can be very helpful when used together with narration15. however, he contends that when unnecessary on-screen text is added to images, it is difficult for the brain to listen to the words being spoken, look at the image being displayed, and read the text on the screen. using this rule, we include little or no words on any slides that we use except the words actually contained within the image. mayer also argues that people learn better from narration and pictures than narration alone but only if the media is actually contributing to or clarifying what you want the students to be learning16. in the remote environment, many instructors are seeking out video clips and other media to make virtual lessons more interesting to the students. our conclusion is to choose the media thoughtfully and think about whether it is actually contributing to what we want the students to learn. 15 richard e. mayer, multimedia learning, 3rd ed. 186 (2021). 16 richard e. mayer, multimedia learning, 3rd ed. 117 (2021). practice report 104 v. implementation in august 2020, the fall semester of street law began. nine students went through three weeks of training before teaching their virtual classes for the first time in midseptember. we have used all our best practices in the preparation for this fully remote semester of street law. the law students teach 110-minute blocks broken into a fortyminute zoom, thirty-minute independent assignment, and a forty-minute zoom. the law students design lessons that cover the same amount of material as they would previously teach in the average one hour in-person class. the lessons are highly interactive and student-centered. although we typically teach criminal law in the fall semester, the school noticed the level of engagement with the first amendment and freedom of speech lesson during the summer law program and requested that we teach constitutional law instead. we have focused on contemporary issues including a lesson on school board censorship of library books to coincide with banned books week.17 the students really respond to lessons that focus on issues that directly impact them. the law students are divided into one team of four instructors and one team of five. in a typical semester, the classroom teacher meets with each of her classes three times per week. the new virtual schedule means she meets with each class only once per week and only two of her classes meet on fridays when the law students are 17 banned books week in the united states is a week devoted to the freedom to read. it began as a result of an increasing number of challenges to books in the 1980s. today the week is a celebration of reading generally and particularly those books that faced the greatest number of challenges that year. practice report 105 scheduled to teach. the larger teams are working well because there is always a law student present in each breakout room to encourage discussion and keep students on task. it also allows the law students to manage the zoom functions together. each team prepares an extremely thorough lesson plan detailing which team member is responsible for which task at every stage of the lesson. this rigorous planning and organization, although time consuming, is critical to the success and flow of a remote lesson. one of the unforeseen effects of teams in place of pairs is the law students have been reluctant to share their experiences in seminar each week. when divided into their team breakout rooms, they are ready to unpack the successes and struggles of each class but in the main group they are quiet. this is not an issue i have encountered before. typically, the pairs readily share their weekly experiences with the whole group. i will be working on strategies to encourage more enthusiastic debriefing with the whole class. the law students have taught for six weeks and the lessons have been very successful. the high school students are engaged in the lessons and they have wonderful insights to contribute to class discussions. the classroom teacher is present on each zoom, which is very helpful. she attends to issues like insisting on cameras being on and students being attentive. while we have had students zooming from their beds or otherwise laying down and not in an appropriate learning environment, generally the students have been focused and participatory. in the second week, a high school student asked to speak to the law students during the break and she asked very practice report 106 thoughtful questions about college, law school, and how to avoid a legal career where she would be sitting at her desk all day. community is already beginning to form18. vi. conclusions and further study interactive, student-centered street law lessons are possible in a virtual setting. the planning and problem-solving involved in creating engaging remote lessons is far greater than for an in-person classroom. there are more considerations and circumstances that must be factored into lesson preparation. virtual lessons will never equal in-person interaction and community building, but they can be an effective temporary solution until we can all safely return to classrooms. few law schools in the united states continued to teach street law when schools closed in spring 2020. however, many law schools are planning to run virtual street law programs for fall 2020 and spring 2021. i intend to reach out to the professors and law students who attended the street law, inc. webinar on teaching remotely19 as the second part of this paper. part two will analyze the virtual programs implemented by these law schools including an examination of which best practices they incorporated and whether any of those suggestions contributed to the successful implementation of a remote street law program. 18 thank you to my wonderful nyls fall 2020 law students: thomas blau, benjamin brookhim, lauren cannan, noel flugel, amanda schribman, christie soule, christopher suris, tiffany williams, and madison woods. 19 amy wallace, tips and best practices for conducting a street law program online, street law, inc., aug. 28, 2020. reviewed article 6 taking clinical legal education online: songs of innocence and experience hugh mcfaul, liz hardie, francine ryan, keren lloyd bright and neil graffin 1 abstract in common with the wider higher education sector, clinical legal education practitioners are facing the challenge of how to adapt their teaching practices to accommodate the restrictions imposed by governmental responses to the covid-19 pandemic. facilitating distance learning via online technologies has unsurprisingly become an area of increasing interest in the hope that it may offer a potential solution to the problem of how to continue teaching undergraduates in a socially distanced environment. this paper seeks to provide clinical legal education practitioners with evidence-based insights into the challenges and opportunities afforded by using digital technologies to deliver clinical legal education. it adopts a case study approach by reflecting on the open justice centre’s four-year experience of experimenting with online technologies to provide meaningful and socially useful legal pro bono projects for students 1 authors are members of the open university law school and can be contact at openjustice@open.ac.uk mailto:open-justice@open.ac.uk mailto:open-justice@open.ac.uk reviewed article 7 studying a credit bearing undergraduate law module. it will analyse how a number of different types of pro bono activity were translated into an online environment, identify common obstacles and posit possible solutions. in doing so, this paper aims to provide a timely contribution to the literature on clinical legal education and offer a means to support colleagues in law schools in the uk and internationally, who are grappling with the challenges presented by taking clinical legal education online. introduction ‘i wish that i knew what i know now, when i was younger.’2 digital technologies have facilitated a rapid growth in opportunities for online learning. this has led to higher education institutions assimilating this technology into their teaching approaches in a variety of ways. some providers have specialised in online learning as the main method of delivery, such as uk based institutions like the open university and arden university. other more traditional providers have embraced these technologies to augment existing provision via lecture capture, virtual learning environments or by using online platforms to make some of their courses available to distance learners. a third group have launched collaborative new ventures to offer free learning via massive open online courses (moocs) which aim to disseminate degree level content to a global audience and create new revenue 2 ‘ooh la la’ ronnie wood, the faces. warner brothers 1973. reviewed article 8 streams in the process. this activity has generated an equivalent growth in academic research into the effectiveness of online methods for delivering higher education programmes, or augmenting programmes delivered in more traditional settings. however, until the shutdown of higher education institutions resulting from the global response to the covid-19 pandemic, the interest in online methods for delivering degree level programmes was something of a niche interest for most educators working in the sector. for the most part, the main method of delivery was still via face to face lectures, seminars and tutorials, and discourse regarding the challenges and opportunities of majority online delivery may have been viewed as a distraction from the core business of teaching and learning. the extent of the impact of social distancing on higher education was illustrated by the much-discussed announcement that an institution as apparently impervious to educational crosswinds as the university of cambridge had committed to delivering all lectures online for the 2020/21 academic year (bbc, 2020) . all of this has put online delivery front and centre in the planning for the coming academic year, as universities try to work out how to provide the best educational experience possible for their students who, in the uk at least, will still be asked to pay tuition fees at pre pandemic rates. this context presents particular challenges for academics working in law schools delivering clinical legal education programmes. these programmes tend to facilitate experiential learning by providing real world, or simulated, professional legal projects which engage members of the public (bloch, 2010; giddings, 2013; maharg, 2016; jones reviewed article 9 et al., 2017). typically this could include a face to face legal advice clinic, internship opportunities with legal advice charities or by delivering legal education workshops in schools, none of which are instantly replicable using online methods. as a result, research into the use of online methods has yet to make a significant impact on clinical legal education as it has, until now, not been a priority for the majority of those who are working in this field. however this has begun to change, as clinical legal education practitioners have started to experiment with online methods, either for institutionally specific reasons, or as a way of engaging with the wider disruptive impact of digital technology on the legal profession, which is already having an impact on the legal marketplace (mcginnis & pearce, 2014). such studies can be arranged into three thematic areas. firstly, those which consider how clinical approaches in general could embrace the opportunities provided by online methods (horrigan, 2019; jones et al., 2017; mccrimmon et al., 2016), secondly, how the traditional legal advice clinic might be transposed to a virtual environment (ryan, 2019; thanaraj and sales, 2015) and thirdly, how bespoke applications of technology, such as smart phone apps, might have particular affordances for supporting or extending existing clinical activity ( mcfaul and fitzgerald, 2019, ryan and mcfaul, 2020). this paper aims to make a timely contribution to this developing literature by providing an evidence-based discussion of the challenges and opportunities afforded by using digital technologies to deliver clinical legal education. it adopts a case study approach by reflecting on the open justice centre’s four-year experience of reviewed article 10 experimenting with online technologies to provide meaningful and socially useful legal pro bono projects for students studying a credit bearing undergraduate law module at a distance. part i will provide an overview of the context in which the online clinical projects were developed. part ii will provide a detailed account by project leads of five of our projects and a discussion of the emerging themes will be provided in part iii. part i: contexts the open justice centre was established in 2016 with the aim of utilising digital technologies to provide opportunities for open university law students to benefit from the experiential learning that participation in pro bono legal activities can provide. the context within which ou law students study precluded the traditional face to face model of clinical legal education. with over 7,000 students, the ou law school is the largest provider of open access undergraduate legal education in europe and law students are largely based across the four uk nations. unlike most higher education providers, students can begin studying their law degree without having gained any prior qualifications and the majority study on a part time basis. the challenge was to develop pro bono activities that could be accessed remotely but which did not dilute the essence of the clinical experience that students at ‘brick’ universities are able to access through traditional clinical programmes. reviewed article 11 our solution was to develop justice in action, a 30-credit level 6 module on the undergraduate law degree. the module is delivered online in two phases, phase i begins by introducing the overarching themes of social justice, professional identity and professional ethics before developing transferable skills of legal research, writing, oral advocacy and online collaboration. innovative applications of technology, including bespoke smartphone based virtual reality, are embedded into both the teaching and practical phases of the module. there is a specific focus on how technology is transforming the delivery of legal services and developing the skills and competencies required for professional practice. phase ii involves students collaborating online to support the delivery of a range of pro bono projects. these projects fit into three broad categories. firstly, bespoke online projects run entirely online, such as the online advice clinic, secondly, projects which are prepared and supported online but delivered in face to face settings, such as prison workshops and thirdly, projects which are run in conjunctions with external partners, such as legal charities. phase iii requires students to produce an assessed reflection on their participation, drawing on the themes introduced in phase i. beginning with 100 students in 2017, we anticipate 180 students will study the module in the 2020 academic year with approximately half as many again taking part in projects on an extracurricular basis. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/bjet.12850 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/bjet.12850 reviewed article 12 space does not permit a full treatment of all our online activities, so part ii will provide a detailed description of a representative sample of some of our key projects. these will include those which have developed as online only projects, with either live or simulated clients, and a project which uses online methods to support, prepare and supervise students to deliver offline projects in prison settings. part ii: the projects open justice law clinic: online legal advice the open justice law clinic3 utilises clio, a web conferencing platform and a cloudbased case management system, to deliver online legal advice. 4 free access to clio is made available to universities through its academic access programme and facilitates the provision of legal advice to members of the public anywhere in the united kingdom.5 clients access the law clinic via a website where they complete an online form outlining their legal issue. enquiries are sent to the clinic mailbox where they are triaged to determine their suitability for the clinic. the client is either allocated to a firm of law students or signposted to other sources of help. once the case has been accepted the client receives a notification to set up a clio connect account. all client interaction takes place within the case management system. clients upload 3 https://www.open.ac.uk/open-justice/legal-advice 4 https://www.clio.com/uk/ 5 https://www.clio.com/uk/academic-access/ https://www.open.ac.uk/open-justice/legal-advice https://www.clio.com/uk/ https://www.clio.com/uk/academic-access/ reviewed article 13 documents relating to their case and interact with students and supervising solicitors via secure messaging. the students meet the client to conduct a factfinding interview which takes place in adobeconnect, a web conferencing platform. students research the legal issues and then using document and communication templates prepare a letter of advice. the students’ work is supervised by qualified solicitors and the advice is reviewed before being distributed to clients. since its inception in october 2017, 115 clients have received legal advice and an additional 200 clients have been signposted to other agencies for help. the clinic advises on a range of legal issues including employment, contract, data protection, consumer law and small claims. most clients find the law clinic via a search engine and we have not yet had to proactively generate client queries. from the perspective of the client, there are clear advantages to offering a university law clinic via an online platform. there are many reasons why it is not possible for some clients to attend face to face law clinics. a virtual law clinic is a flexible model because there are no physical or geographical barriers to participation; students can advise anyone with an internet connection. the impact of legal aid cuts has meant legal advice deserts exist in many places (amnesty international, 2016). a virtual law clinic has the potential to reach communities where the provision of legal advice has disappeared, although it is recognised that pro bono legal services are not a replacement for legal aid. a virtual law clinic provides a solution for some but not all people there are clients who do not have access to technology or the confidence to use reviewed article 14 a remote service. the literature demonstrates that the proliferation of technology is not without risk many as tools are not designed to support the needs of users and there is concern that many people face digital exclusion (hagen, 2018; sanderfur, 2019). in our experience, there are some areas of legal work and some clients where advice in person is the preferred option, so while a virtual law clinic is not a replacement for face to face advice, it can work to enhance the provision of legal support. from the student perspective, the flexibility provided by a digital platform removes geographical barriers to participation but also provides direct experience of how digital technologies are transforming the delivery of legal services. indeed, there is a growing expectation that students will have developed the skills to work in a changing legal profession (the law society, 2020). however, the benefits for students of participating in a virtual law clinic should not be reduced only to a discussion of job-related skills (nicholas, 2018). given the deficit in the provision of legal advice, technology has the potential to be leveraged to address issues of access to justice (mcginnis & pearce, 2014) and the flexibility offered by digital platforms raises the prospect of university law clinics collaborating in ways that are not possible using face to face clinics. this could potentially include students from different institutions working together on cases, or the pooling of supervision expertise to allow the coverage of a wider range of legal issues for example. reviewed article 15 digital justice: smartphone applications and chatbots to disseminate legal information the open justice centre initiated the digital justice project in 2019 as a means of exposing law students to a cross disciplinary pro bono project aimed at using smartphone technology to disseminate public legal information (mcfaul et al., 2020). the provision of accessible sources of information is recognised as a key component for addressing unmet legal need (pleasence and balmer, 2014) and some university law schools in the uk and beyond have begun to experiment with this technology (ireland et al., 2020; lupica et al., 2017). the creation of smart phone apps and chat bots presents an opportunity to develop and provide legal information that can be targeted at specific audiences. our digital justice project aims to allow students to experience the challenge of exploiting technology to provide legal help, to be able to identify useful legal services that can be delivered through legal tech and design and build legal tech that enables self-help in an agreed area of law. in the first iteration of the project ten students were selected for the project after a competitive application process. students worked in two groups, each with a brief to develop a smartphone app to disseminate information on employment law. the project adopted scrum methodology to facilitate team collaboration during a four stage design process, each lasting four weeks. the teams were supervised by a computing academic and law academic and met online at the start and end of each phase to review and agree the tasks for the next phase. stage 1 was the inspiration stage where students were immersed in an unfamiliar environment, introduced to reviewed article 16 technology tools, new people and an area of law. in stage 2, students started to synthesise to find meaning in what they had gathered and started to build the foundations for a workable legal tech solution. in stage 3 students were encouraged to experiment, they generated ideas and prototyped their designs. in the final phase they refined the design by focusing on how it would work with users and reflecting on the process they had undertaken.6 students felt that the project provided an exciting opportunity to develop their technology skills which they saw as having increasing relevance to law: ‘it feels like there is going to be a lot of development in legal tech and so it seemed like a really relevant thing to get experience in.’ the project allowed students to develop transferable skills: ‘maybe i can, you know… make apps myself to help people or my career prospects, but also for my own personal use.’ in the second iteration of the project, fifteen law students in three teams created and designed a chat bot app to provide legal information on an area of family law. to develop the project, we have invested in commercial software to allow our students to use a no-coding platform to create chat bots. chat bots are conversational workflows that use ai technology built into the software to mimic human conversations. josef provides a platform to build bots, the platform is straightforward and easy to use requiring a minimal amount of training. the bots can be linked to 6 a full technical report on the computing architecture and design process has been published (byrne 2019). reviewed article 17 external websites and can populate and format legal documents. the feedback from students was that ‘the project had extremely high value as it has application to the real world’ and it was ‘really interesting, enjoyable, challenging and stimulating, i really enjoyed the fusion of tech and law.’ one of the challenges is facilitating team collaboration at a distance. the level of commitment from students varies and this can have a negative impact on team dynamics (shirley and cockburn, 2009). a significant commitment in academic time and investment is required to support legal tech projects but students benefit from having opportunities to engage in real world experiences and there are opportunities for law schools to partner with legal charities and organisations to further develop these projects (mcfaul et al., 2020). there is growing interest in incorporating legal tech into the curriculum, law schools are starting to come together to explore the pedagogical benefits and challenges. online public legal education as a distance learning university, we are aware that some of our students may not be able to participate in face to face public legal education events such as is commonly undertaken in street law workshops in schools and other community settings. as such, we developed opportunities for students to engage in public legal education reviewed article 18 online. this has mostly taken place through the medium of open justice week7, which has run for three last three years. in addition to open justice week, students have also worked with the young citizens8 charity in updating, refreshing, and adding content to their smart law materials, which are made available to primary and secondary educators as part of the young citizen’s programme of support for citizenship-based education. for open justice week, students have been invited to contribute to providing materials that aim to promote public legal education and information through a variety of formats including, for example, online lectures on adobe connect, factsheets, or guidance documents. in the first iteration of the project students worked in groups to a simulated brief produced by the open justice centre. however, recognising the value of real client contact to cle pedagogy, in the second and third years, students were briefed by external organisations. for example, they were asked to research and produce information and guidance on employment rights for nonunionised workers, for the inverclyde advice and employment centre. in addition to this, each individual student on this project was asked by the open justice team to provide an additional factsheet on an issue pertaining to employment law. all materials pertaining to open justice week were published on an open university owned and controlled externally facing website, during the week the event was held. 7 https://www.open.ac.uk/open-justice/events/open-justice-week 8 https://www.youngcitizens.org/ https://www.open.ac.uk/open-justice/events/open-justice-week https://www.youngcitizens.org/ reviewed article 19 the event was publicised by the open justice team through our social media channels, and students were encouraged to also share the responsibility of promoting the event through their own channels. the strength of this project is that it gave students unable to take other opportunities the chance to contribute to public legal education. there has been some excellent work produced by students during the last three years, and substantial efforts made by many students. its weakness is that it was perceived to be the ‘easy’ option by students, and subsequently this was reflected in some of the work produced, which has not been up to standard. issues around collaboration persist, and several students have allowed others within their groups to carry the burden of most of the work. additionally, although students can contribute to real-life briefs, because they do not have a connection with the client – it is mediated through the open justice centre – they do not obtain the benefits of working directly with members of other organisations. the physical distance between client and student can lead to the dilution of the professional connection between the two. consequently, students may treat their tasks just like another assignment, without regarding its product as something designed to be used by an external organisation. this can mean that the instilling of values in our students can be less effective. in particular, students may not have the same regard to ethics of professionalism that might be obtained through other projects. reviewed article 20 policy clinic – research as advocacy whilst many students volunteering for pro bono work welcome the opportunity to work directly with members of the public, some students prefer the additional flexibility offered by engaging in advocacy via research-based tasks. students often reach the end of their law degree having defined their task as grasping and applying current law and resist considering, foreseeing, or working towards different legal rules and practices in the future (o’connell and difonzo, 2006). following an introduction to the policy clinic at northumbria university law school, we introduced an online policy clinic in 2019 where students work in small groups to carry out deskbased research, with the aim to influence policy and/or law reform. we considered a number of different models of clinic including an approach similar to whittier law school legal policy clinic, where students choose their own project (patton 2014). however, we wanted students to have an experience of working for a client and so students in the clinic researched an area of law on behalf of a charity or other organisation to provide analysis and evidence to influence policy and initiate law reform. the students worked in small groups and collaborated online on the research, analysis and report writing using a range of technological tools to support them. students could therefore work on the project flexibly to suit their circumstances, whilst regular online meetings facilitated discussions to progress the project. reviewed article 21 in its first iteration students in the policy clinic worked on a brief provided by justright scotland9, a human rights charity. justright scotland engage in policy work on behalf of survivors of female genital mutilation (fgm) and women at risk of fgm to improve protection and support. the charity requested support for their response to the scottish parliament consultation on fgm arising out the introduction of the fgm protection (scotland) bill in 2019. students were asked to produce a report on the draft bill and to provide policy recommendations to strengthen and improve protection in scotland for victims of fgm. the students were supported by two academics experienced in policy and advocacy work, one from the charitable sector and the other in the public sector. the students therefore benefitted from the advice and experience of those working in diverse policy arenas. following an online briefing from a director of the charity, students carried out initial training on conducting legal research, carrying out literature reviews and collaborative working. they then carried out desk-based research into the issues including comparisons with protections provided by other countries. following the research stage, the students analysed their research and finally produced a report of their findings for the client. the project was clearly structured, and students were only permitted to move from one stage to the next following supervision with an academic. this allowed us to provide additional support and guidance where needed to ensure the students’ final report was of a high standard and useful for the client. 9 https://www.justrightscotland.org.uk/ https://www.justrightscotland.org.uk/ reviewed article 22 however, this approach did require a higher time commitment from academic staff than we originally anticipated. one aspect we did not anticipate was that the students’ research skills were not always sufficient for what they were asked to do. students were proficient in more traditional legal research and sometimes struggled to find the information required to analyse the current law. we needed to provide additional support and training during the project. therefore, we intend to include additional training on research in advance of students starting their project in a planned way. we were concerned in the development stage of the project about the ethical and data protection implications of students carrying out empirical research. due to university processes, it would be difficult to obtain ethics consent within the timescales the clinic operates. we therefore decided to only permit desk-based research using existing secondary sources. due to the nature of the brief provided by the client, this did not prevent the students from completing their task. however, this is something that will need to be kept under review each year. the main issue we had in the clinic was a breakdown in the students’ relationships which led to difficulties in collaboration. this is something that occurs both face to face and online, but can be exacerbated online due to the lack of visual cues (long et al 2013). with careful management by clinic staff, students were encouraged to work independently on specified areas and with support they re-built their working relationship and produced the final report together collaboratively. reviewed article 23 online mediation – utilising simulations the online mediation clinic started in 2018 and has trained 31 students in professional standard online mediation skills. the civil mediation council (n.d) defines mediation as “a process where an impartial person (the mediator) helps two or more people, or groups of people, to discuss and resolve disputes.” important features of mediation include the fact it is voluntary, confidential and the process is under the control of the parties (waters, 2014 p92). students attended four online training sessions run by two trained mediators, one a family law mediator and one an employment judicial mediator. the training did not focus on one particular style of mediation and covered the different mediation models and generic mediation skills. students learned about the mediation process, the difference between effective online and face to face mediation and mediation skills. outside the sessions, students worked in small groups, collaborating online using a variety of synchronous and asynchronous tools. they practiced the skills taught in the training sessions using scenarios provided by the mediators, alongside completing additional reading and activities. this training process took place over three months. students then took part in a practice mediation session where they alternated between playing the part of the mediator and client. there was a final simulated mediation session where students mediated a dispute with actors playing the part of the clients. students felt confident to mediate these final sessions themselves due to the progressive development of their understanding and skills in the training, as one reviewed article 24 student commented: ‘the mediation training was brilliant and gave me the skills to competently mediate a dispute between two fictional clients.’ the combination of theoretical and practical training enables the students to obtain all of the benefits outlined by mekel-meadons (1993); a better understanding of how the legal system operates, experiential learning, better lawyering skills and a better understanding of the role of values and ethics. they understand the place of mediation within the civil justice system. their transferable skills are developed including communication skills, conflict resolution and online skills. students also appreciate that resolving disputes through the courts may not always provide clients with the opportunity to gain a just or desired outcome; ‘i have learnt that what could be seen as the traditional route through the legal process, is not obtainable or viable for all situations, therefore, mediation as a form of adr (alternative dispute resolution) can be a route to obtain social justice.’ the online nature of this project has made it accessible to a wide range of students, including those who would be unable to participate face to face due to their personal circumstances. both the training and mediation sessions have been effective in the online environment and students’ general online skills have improved as they have explicitly considered the implications of operating in an online, as compared to face to face, environment. there are two things we would have liked to have known before starting. firstly, some students had difficulties relating mediation to wider themes such as social reviewed article 25 justice, professional identity and professional ethics. students became very focused on skills development and struggled to connect their experiences to their wider learning or the legal system. as the project has developed, we have become much more explicit in highlighting for students the links to these themes, particularly professional ethics. secondly, at the start of the project we invested a lot of time trying to locate a partner to allow students the opportunity to mediate disputes between real clients. we were unsuccessful in this; we did not want to work with vulnerable clients as we were concerned that they may lack the means or confidence to access an online mediation service. we were also constrained in when we could offer this service due to extensive training period before students could act as mediators. we therefore used simulated mediations instead. whilst this was disappointing for us as educators, student feedback consistently welcomed the simulated nature of the mediation as it gave them confidence and security. we still hope to develop the project to be able to offer services to members of the public, but would retain the simulated mediation sessions as a valuable learning experience for our students. public legal education in prisons: providing online support for face to face pro bono activities since 2017, the open university law school through its open justice centre has run pro bono public legal education projects in eleven prisons across england and wales. over ninety law students and seven tutors have taken part. the value to law students of undertaking pro bono public legal education in terms of developing their legal reviewed article 26 research, writing, presentation and professional skills has been well documented (draslarova, 2019; mcquoid mason, 2008; montana, 2009). our prison projects are particularly challenging within the context of the open university as most students have never met each other, or their tutors, face to face. invariably, the first time they meet is outside the prison gate. while the projects are delivered face to face within prisons, the preparation for each visit and the debrief afterwards are conducted entirely online. it is fair to say that we underestimated the challenges in working with time-poor students at a distance (and we also underestimated the challenges of working within the prison environment). the online support for students consequently includes the building of effective working relationships between students and between them and their tutors, as well as the substantive work of preparing appropriate law resources for prisoners. a summary of the process is provided below: 1. online briefing session for law students before the first of three prison visits, students are required to attend an online briefing or to listen to its recording. aspects covered include security issues and the professional responsibilities of law students. 2. online open university safeguarding training reviewed article 27 students are required to undertake short online safeguarding training courses provided by the university. these are concerned with safeguarding issues with respect to the prisoners. 3. online meetings the tutor appointed to support the students on each prison project meets them regularly for planning purposes before each prison visit and afterwards for a debrief via the adobe connect platform. most students are quite reticent in an online environment if they have not met each other or their tutor. they prefer not to use their microphones and instead ask questions via the chat box. understandably, the students are more relaxed in the online environment once they have met each other face to face on the first prison visit. 4. online forums each prison project has its own online forum for the tutor and their students. it is used to prepare for each prison visit by sharing, critiquing and re-drafting the learning resources developed by the students. most students are initially apprehensive about the process, but appreciate its effectiveness after the first prison visit. 5. whatsapp we now encourage students in each prison project to set up a whatsapp group. this development was needed to accelerate the building of good working relationships, to improve informal group communication and to provide peer support. most of our reviewed article 28 students work and otherwise have extensive commitments: whatsapp is an easy and immediate means for them to communicate. we also needed a more effective way of liaising with the group on the day of each prison visit to keep everyone abreast of arrival times, travel delays and a place to meet. most of the prison projects have been in partnership with st giles trust10. the charity selects and trains prisoners to act as peer advisors to their fellow prisoners. together, the law students and peer advisors identify areas of legal need in the prison, which the students then research and develop suitable learning materials to help address that need. subjects covered have included indeterminate sentences, release on temporary licence and restraining orders. the peer advisors are then able to disseminate this knowledge to other prisoners. in another prison, the dissemination of general legal information takes place over prison radio. most students on the prison projects report finding their experiences transformative. it makes them reflect deeply on the criminal justice system and the punitive and rehabilitative functions of prisons. they are often intrigued that the stereotypical picture they had of prisons and prisoners is confounded by the reality they encounter. a few change their career direction to becoming lawyers specialising in criminal law, others volunteer with prison education departments or with charities working in prisons. for many, it is the most worthwhile and impactful thing they do on their law 10 st giles trust is a charity which provides help and support for the vulnerable and disadvantaged in prison and community settings. https://www.stgilestrust.org.uk/ reviewed article 29 degree: ‘i believe that this programme with st giles will probably be one of the most powerful learning experiences which i will have on my journey into "law".’ part iii learning from experience our experience of taking cle online, outlined above, has been fundamentally positive. it has allowed distance learning students to participate in pro bono legal projects that would be otherwise closed off to them. this has been to their benefit, evidenced by both the high pass and completion rates on the module but also from their feedback on how the experience has informed their professional and personal outlook. such experiences are no doubt familiar to clinical educators in other law schools. however, the task of taking clinical legal education online does have inherent challenges that have become apparent to us during our four year experiment and which echo issues raised in the developing literature in this field (mccrimmon et al., 2016; horrigan, 2019). we have identified three key themes that summarise the range of issues we wish we had been fully aware of before commencing our experiment; collaboration, quality and congruence. each will be discussed in turn below. collaboration all of the online open justice projects involve students working collaboratively in small groups. collaborative working can be difficult for students whether online or face to face; students simply may not get along or there may be differing expectations, reviewed article 30 motivations and engagement (muirhead, 2001; bugden, 2018). however, there are additional challenges in the online sphere. if students have not met, it can be harder to build trust, and co-operation (bauman, 1993). online small group work may result in the use of stronger, more inflammatory communication (siegal et al 1986; o’sullivan and flanagan, 2003). in a virtual environment you can miss non-verbal clues and there can be delays in communications and miscommunications, such as students making assumptions about remote team members’ motivations and contributions and being less able to see things from their colleague’s point of view (long et al 2013). students can have different schedules, even different time zones, and this can make it harder to build rapport and teamwork. in order to overcome these challenges, we worked to build our students’ capacity to collaborate virtually and we used a range of online collaboration tools and strategies to support this. we carefully scaffolded learning about and participation in collaboration to develop our students’ ability to work in online teams. at the start of their project we provided training and guidance on team development. for example, we used scenarios to encourage students to work through how they would problem solve collaboration issues. students were asked to agree and write a team agreement on how they will collaborate together. this included assigning roles and responsibilities, agreeing communication methods and deciding how they will resolve disputes. the team agreement had to be submitted as part of the first assignment but was not given a mark. instead students were assessed on an individual reflection on reviewed article 31 the process of drafting the team agreement. this ensured the assignment was worth enough credit to commit students to its completion, but not so much so that the students were overly committed to the final grade (long et al 2013). following the first assignment students started work on their project and there were online small group meetings with their tutor, where effective online collaboration was modelled by the tutor. students were encouraged to gradually take over responsibility for the running of the online small group meetings and the management of the group work, using the skills and techniques they had learnt and observed from their tutor. two months into the project there was a further assignment where students were asked to reflect on their skills development, including collaborative working. students were asked to identify where their skills have strengthened and how they will address remaining weaknesses. this allowed the tutor to assess collaboration within each small group and to identify any issues which needed addressing. students continued to meet and collaborate independently, with regular progress meetings with their tutor where any issues could be addressed. this scaffolded approach recognises that students may not have the necessary skills to work in an online environment and encourages them to acquire these skills in a supported way, following which students work independently in their small groups. online collaboration is not an innate skill and students need significant advice and guidance on how to collaborate, particularly in the online environment (susamn and majchrak 2003, shirley 2009, long et al 2013, bugden et al 2018). reviewed article 32 however, it is the argument in this paper that investment made in developing these skills is worthwhile, both in terms of the success of the online projects, but also in terms of students’ development. collaborative skills are a highly sought after graduate skill, for both legal and nonlegal careers (eisner, 2010). online group work offers advantages for both students and law schools. it can be more accessible for students, particularly for those who have difficulties attending face to face events. it is more flexible for students due to the mixture of synchronous and asynchronous opportunities to work together. this allows students a greater opportunity to engage as they work around their working or caring commitments. online collaboration skills are also a desirable employability skill as the ability to collaborate virtually improves teamwork skills in the co-located environment (ubell 2010). for law schools, it can offer a flexible and attractive way to work with external partners; partners do not need to travel to a campus to meet students and the time commitment and associated costs are therefore reduced. quality ensuring the quality of the clinical practice for both the student and the client in an online environment has been an issue that has been particularly challenging. this involves several related issues. supervising students at a distance in all online projects requires careful management and planning and also sufficient investment in qualified staff with the right combination of legal and pedagogical skills. it takes thought and planning to devise teaching materials that can effectively train students in the practicereviewed article 33 based research and clinical processes required to produce work of sufficient quality. this is particularly the case where students are involved in creating materials for public consumption. the processes around quality assurance in the advice clinic setting, where work is signed off by a qualified lawyer, is of equal importance in other public facing projects and the ability to monitor the processes and outputs around student work needs careful thought and planning. we have given a lot of thought to considering whether our assessment regime can help support the quality of student outputs by directly assessing their work on the projects. given the variety of projects, the reliance on group work and dispersed nature of the cohort, we have yet to devise a model of assessment that would achieve this. instead, we rely on the assessment of students via a 3,000 word critical reflection, an approach adopted by other online clinical programmes (mccrimmon et al., 2016). congruence our experience has also highlighted the need to facilitate projects which are congruent with professional standard legal work but also congruent with the capacity of students to participate properly in them. our aim was to construct projects which gave students the experience and insights that professional standard pro bono activities can provide. in our experience, this can best be achieved by giving students as much exposure to real clients as possible (ryan, 2019; mcfaul et al, 2020). we have achieved this in many, but not all our projects. our mediation and digital justice projects have relied on simulated briefs, but our aim is to develop suitable partnership reviewed article 34 arrangements to provide the opportunity for students to gain client facing experience and to use their skills for the direct benefit of members of the public. our successes in providing students with exposure to clients have often been the result of either bespoke uses of technology, such as the online advice clinic, or a result of partnership relationships with external agencies. however, providing this level of experience for students working online has to be balanced with an awareness and appreciation of the ability of students to participate in the projects offered whilst balancing their other commitments. the first iteration of our online clinical legal education module made it mandatory for students to participate in two pro bono projects. this proved to be an unrealistic level of expectation for our learners and we had underestimated the time and energy required for them to work collaboratively on demanding client facing projects. as a result, we had to modify the requirement to one mandatory project and offer participation in an additional project on an extra-curricular basis. we have found that this has had significant benefits for the level and quality of student participation and the importance of not overloading students is a finding that is supported by other authors (horrigan, 2019). conclusion this paper has reviewed the experience of the open justice centre’s four-year adventure in taking clinical legal education online. we have argued that it is possible reviewed article 35 to provide meaningful and engaging clinical legal education activities to students studying at a distance but that there are significant challenges to be negotiated in doing so. key among them is the need to invest time and energy in developing effective working relationships in an online environment, as well as investment in experimenting with appropriate applications of digital technologies. also, investment in relationships with external partners who can help facilitate student exposure to live, rather than simulated clients is important. we have argued that overcoming these challenges will allow students to benefit from the personal and professional development that pro bono legal work can provide. further research and experimentation are required to understand how digital technologies can improve clinical practice for both students and members of the public. a particular focus of this research should be the extent to which the move to online methods during the pandemic will open up new possibilities for enhanced collaboration between university law clinics. it would be a heartening if the social distancing that we have been forced to endure prompts clinical educators to work towards building a flourishing online clinical legal education community. references amnesty international (2016) cuts that hurt: the impact of legal aid cuts in england on access to justice, [online]. available at http://oaresource.library.carleton.ca/aicutsthathurt.pdf (accessed 9 july 2020). bauman, z. (1993) postmodern ethics, oxford: blackwell. reviewed article 36 bbc (2020) ‘cambridge lectures to be online-only in 2020-21’, bbc news, 19th may [online]. available at https://www.bbc.com/news/education-52732814 (accessed 2 july 2020). bugden, l, redmond, p & greaney, j. (2018) ‘online collaboration as a pedagogical approach to learning and teaching undergraduate legal education’ the law teacher, 52:1 85-99 byrne, d. (2019) digital justice project: it aspects. technical report available at: http://ojapp.org.uk/docs/dj2019_technical_note.pdf (accessed 2 july 2020) bloch, f. s. (2010) the global clinical movement: educating lawyers for social justice, oxford university press. civil mediation council (nd) [online]. https://civilmediation.org/for-thepublic/about-mediation/ (accessed 9 july 2020) draslarova, h. ‘street law as a unique learning method: what do students themselves actually find to be its benefits? answers from the czech republic’ (2019) international journal of public legal education, volume 3, number 1 eisner, s. (2010) ‘grave new world? workplace skills for today's college graduates’ american journal of business education vol. 3 pp.27-50 giddings, j. m. (2013) promoting justice through clinical legal education, justice press. hagen, m. (2018) how do we plan for ethics and community in new ai in courts, open law lab. [online] available at: http://www.openlawlab.com/2018/03/07/howdo-we-plan-for-ethics-and-community-with-new-ai-in-courts/ (accessed 25 june 2020) horrigan, b. (2019) ‘designing and implementing an enhanced clinical program in the age of disruption. part two: clinical activities’, international journal of clinical legal education, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 204–230 [online]. doi: 10.19164/ijcle.v27i1.916. ireland, c. & hockley, r. (2020) a call for introducing legaltech in the classroom computer law & security review, vol. 36 long, l. k. and meglich, p. a. (2013) ‘preparing students to collaborate in the virtual work world’, higher education, skills and work-based learning, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 6–16 [online]. doi: 10.1108/20423891311294948. http://www.openlawlab.com/2018/03/07/how-do-we-plan-for-ethics-and-community-with-new-ai-in-courts/ http://www.openlawlab.com/2018/03/07/how-do-we-plan-for-ethics-and-community-with-new-ai-in-courts/ reviewed article 37 lupica, l and tobias, t (2017) the apps for justice project: employing design thinking to narrow the access to justice gap, fordham urb. law review, pp. 1364 – 1392 maharg, p. (2016) transforming legal education: learning and teaching the law in the early twenty-first century, routledge. mccrimmon, l., vickers, r. and parish, k. (2016) ‘online clinical legal education: challenging the traditional model’, international journal of clinical legal education, vol. 23, p. 33 [online]. doi: 10.19164/ijcle.v23i5.565. mcginnis, j., & pearce, r. (2014) the great disruption: how machine intelligence will transform the role of lawyers in the delivery of legal services, fordham law review, 82:3041 mcquoid mason, d. ‘street law as a clinical program: the south african experience with particular reference to the university of kwazulu-natal’ (2008) griffith law review, taylor & francis menkel-meadow, c. (1993) ‘to solve problems, not make them: integrating adr in the law school curriculum’ smu law review, 1993-06-22, vol.46 (5), p.1995 montana, p.g. (2009) ‘lessons from the carnegie and best practices reports: a look at st. john’s university school of law’s street law program as a model for teaching legal skills’ st. john’s legal studies research paper, no. 08-0157, 2008, pp 1–45 muirhead, b. (2001) ‘interactivity research studies’ educational technology and society 4(3) 108-112 patton, w.w. (2014) ‘getting back to the sandbox: designing a legal policy clinic’ international journal of clinical legal education, 2014-07-09, vol.16, p.96 nicholas, j. (2018) marketable selves: making sense of employability as a liberal arts undergraduate, journal of vocational behaviour, vol. 109, p. 1-13. o’connell, m.e. and difonzno, j.h. (2006). the family law education reform project: final report. family court review, vol. 44(4), 524 o’sullivan, p. b. and flanagin, a. j. (2003) ‘reconceptualizing ‘flaming’and other problematic messages’, new media & society, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 69–94. open justice centre (2020) ou law students develop chatbots to support the public with domestic abuse, injunctions and legal aid | open justice [online]. available at reviewed article 38 https://www.open.ac.uk/open-justice/news/ou-law-students-develop-chatbotssupport-public-domestic-abuse-injunctions-and-legal-aid (accessed 9 july 2020). pleasence, p. and balmer, n. j. (2014) ‘how people resolve ‘legal’problems’, london: legal services board. sanderfur, r. (2019) legal tech for non-lawyers: report of the survey of us legal technologies [online] available at: http://www.americanbarfoundation.org/uploads/cms/documents/report_us_digital_l egal_tech_for_nonlawyers.pdf (accessed 4 july 2020) shirley, m., and cockburn, t. (2009) ‘enabling authentic collaborative education in an online environmentthe qut virtual law placement’, 16th world association for cooperative education (wace), vancouver, pp. 1–7 [online]. available at http://www.waceinc.org/papers/vancouver/australia/shirley,%20cockburn.pdf siegal, j., dubrovsky, v., kiesler, s. & mcguire, t.w. (1986) ‘group processes in computer-mediated communication’ organisational behaviour and human decision processes 37(2) 157-187 su, y. (2014) self-directed, genuine graduate attributes: the person-based approach, higher education research and development, vol.33, p.1208-1220. susman, g.i. & majchrzak, a. (2003) ‘research issues in knowledge management and virtual collaboration in new product development; an introductory essay’ journal of engineering technology management vol 20 nos 1-2 pp1 – 5 thanaraj, a. and sales, m. (2015) ‘lawyering in a digital age: a practice report on the design of a virtual law clinic at cumbria’, international journal of clinical legal education, vol. 22, no. 3, pp. 334–361 [online]. doi: 10.19164/ijcle.v22i3.471. the law society (2020) digital futures [online] available at: https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/topics/research/digital-futures (accessed 13 july 2020) ubell, r. (2010) ‘virtual team learning’ t&d vol 65 no 10 pp53-7. [online] https://www.td.org/magazines/td-magazine/virtual-team-learning (accessed 9 july 2020) waters, b (2014) ‘mediation and experiential learning: how a mediation clinic can inform a law-based curriculum’ international journal of clinical legal education, vol.16, p.90 https://www.td.org/magazines/td-magazine/virtual-team-learning [insert law school logo] [insert law school name] streetlaw programme handbook xxxx edition © [insert law school name] [year] 2 the name street law  is registered in the usa by street law inc of washington dc. street law inc is a not-for-profit organisation that promotes legal literacy and human rights. the term streetlaw has been adapted for use in the uk and is used in this context with street law inc’s knowledge. this handbook is based on one originally devised by richard grimes at the (then) college of law, supported by lawworks (formerly the solicitors’ pro bono group). please note: this handbook can be reproduced or amended by your institution providing the above acknowledgement is made. © [insert law school name] [year] 3 contents page 1 welcome to the [law school] programme [ ] 2 about clinical legal education [ ] 2.1 how will i learn from the experience? 2.2 what knowledge and skills will i use? 2.3 what standard will i be expected to achieve? 2.4 how will i know that i am doing things right? 3 the streetlaw clinic [ ] 3.1 streetlaw in action 3.2 taking part 3.3 what are the learning outcomes in a streetlaw clinic? 4 your participation [ ] 4.1 how will streetlaw work? 4.2 typical timetable for a streetlaw group 4.3 what will the issues be and how will they be identified? 4.4 what if the issues raised involve areas of law that i know nothing about? 4.5 what if the issues addressed by, or raised at, the streetlaw sessions are sensitive or controversial? 4.6 what records will i have to keep? 4.7 what about photocopying, processing and printing? 4.8 how will i be contacted? 4.9 what happens if my course work comes into conflict with my pro bono commitments? 4.10 do the law society’s rules of confidentiality apply to my streetlaw work? 4.11 am i allowed to receive any money or other gift from anyone i work with on streetlaw? 4.12 can conflicts of interest arise and if so what do i do? 4.13 what if there are complaints? 5 working with community groups [ ] 6 who are the members of staff on the streetlaw team at (your institution)? [ ] © [insert law school name] [year] 4 a final word [ ] appendix a summary guide to professional practice [ ] appendix b [ ] b-1 acknowledgement of commitment form b-2 practice run-through evaluation form appendix c student self-evaluation form [ ] appendix d audience evaluation form [ ] © [insert law school name] [year] 5 1. welcome to the [law school name] streetlaw programme at [law school name] you may hear about ‘pro bono’ from members of the faculty or other students. it helps to first understand what this term means. why pro bono? we believe that, as lawyers and law students, we have a responsibility to meet the needs of members of the community who require access to legal services. some may pay privately for such help; many may qualify for publicly funded assistance. some, however, rely on the personal commitment of lawyers to ensure that their needs are met regardless of the client’s ability to pay or their personal circumstances. many lawyers meet this professional expectation by giving some of their time to clients and community groups on a voluntary basis. in the last ten years or so, attempts have been made to co-ordinate this activity through the work of charitable organisations such as lawworks and the bar pro bono unit. there are a number of ways that law students can contribute to this pro bono movement and especially through this streetlaw initiative. public service versus educational benefit whilst we are keen to promote services for the public benefit, involving students in pro bono work also provides a powerful boost to legal education. through such hands-on approaches to study you have the opportunity to develop your knowledge, skills and professionalism. however, we must make sure that what we do is professionally acceptable and to that end all students’ work is closely monitored by qualified lawyers or members of the faculty, as appropriate. why streetlaw? access to legal knowledge, however, does not just mean people obtaining legal representation when they are involved in a dispute or complex legal process. in order for people to understand their rights and responsibilities they must be ‘legally literate’. to address this aspect of pro bono work, [law school name] has set up a streetlaw programme. under this scheme students on [insert the courses which are eligible], supported by their tutors, work with schools and community groups to identify legal concerns. the students then research the relevant material and ultimately present their findings to the partner groups in a user-friendly form. through discussion, role-play and other interactive methods, students and the community group members both learn about the law in context. this programme has been successfully implemented by many law schools in prisons, schools and community centres, and with a variety of other interested groups including tenants, claimants, patients, single parents and volunteers with not-for-profit organisations. © [insert law school name] [year] 6 we aim to conform to appropriate legal practice and educational standards and follow, as far as possible, common procedures in all our streetlaw work. this not only helps to maintain quality for the target audience, but also ensures that the student experience is always of equivalent value. [law school name] is delighted to announce that it is working closely with [insert names of any partner organisations e.g. lawworks, supporting law firms/chambers, schools, other community groups] in developing its streetlaw programme. this handbook will guide you through the experience of working and learning on the streetlaw programme. it describes the ground rules of streetlaw and the professional standards applicable, as part of your studies or in your role as tutor. we hope that you will find this handbook useful. you are advised to have it to hand at all times you are involved in our pro bono work. any comments you wish to make on the content of this handbook, or the pro bono programme in general, are welcome. but please note: because the services we offer are for real clients we owe a professional obligation to them. your supervisors and you are responsible for the quality of those services. [we carry professional indemnity insurance in case any of us makes a mistake1.] we must ensure that we do all we can to deliver a professional service. we will do all we can to make sure this happens. you too must play your part: • by following, to the letter, the procedures set out in this handbook; • by turning up, on time, for every meeting – whether that is with your client, your fellow students or your tutor; and • by taking part in the end-of-case evaluation. we take this so seriously that if you do not behave in the appropriate professional manner we reserve the right to remove you from the project. [you would then not qualify for the certificate of participation2.] if there are major failures of professional responsibility, for example failing, without reasonable excuse, to attend a meeting, we may have to inform your personal tutor which might affect any reference he or she may be asked to give. if you stick to the rules we lay down you will be fine. such a stern warning is necessary to make clear the nature and importance of our work. having said that, in our experience, failings on the part of students are very rare. in most instances the student performance is exemplary and both you and we are proud of the service we are able to give. 1 seek confirmation from your law school and its underwriters that this activity is supported and covered. in our experience, only disclosure to insurers is required and when the programme is explained to them they should not be concerned or increase the premium, etc, provided proper supervision is in place and audience expectation is properly managed. 2 only include if you are planning on awarding such a certificate. © [insert law school name] [year] 7 if you feel that you cannot commit to this standard please do not take part in this project. if you do feel able to take part, thank you for joining our team! best wishes and enjoy your involvement. for further information on streetlaw in particular or pro bono work in general please contact: [include names, positions and e-mail addresses] [you may wish to add mobile phone numbers or landlines as well for day to day logistical enquiries once things are up and running] © [insert law school name] [year] 8 2. about clinical legal education clinical legal education is a teaching and learning method where students undertake real (or simulated) legal work under supervision of practising lawyers and then have the opportunity to review critically that experience and reflect on what happened (or didn’t), and why. this work offers the chance to gain further experience of applying legal principles, ‘lawyering’ skills and professional values, in a practical setting. each experience should be followed by in-depth discussion between all those taking part in the project so everyone can learn from what has taken place. this produces a cycle of learning – application, reflection and reapplication. each clinical programme or clinic provides a vehicle for applied study. doctors, nurses, engineers and linguists use this hands-on approach to study, so why not lawyers? we believe that clinical legal education makes sense for everyone concerned. it provides a highly effective teaching methodology. it produces skilled and confident lawyers and can provide an important public service. at the heart of streetlaw is the same opportunity to learn through experience, while helping others. [at present streetlaw will not be integrated into the curriculum but we are certain that all participating students will benefit from taking part, in terms of personal development and employability.] 2.1 how will i learn from the experience? there are three principal ways in which you should learn and benefit from a ‘clinical’ experience: • working on real legal problems with real people; this involves identifying issues, conducting research, solving problems, applying knowledge and skills and communicating the outcome of your work to others. • discussing with student colleagues and tutors; in-built into all clinical programmes should be opportunities to assess what has happened and why. preparatory meetings will be held before you deliver your streetlaw session and you should organise an opportunity to practise it first before a critical audience. there must be regular group meetings during the course of the project in order to reflect on progress and ensure a fair division of labour amongst the team members. • and, evaluating your experiences. whilst discussion forms an important part of your learning, we also ask you to undertake an evaluation of your experience at the end of your case or time doing © [insert law school name] [year] 9 pro bono work with us. this stage is intended to encourage you to reflect on, and learn further from, the overall experience. [it is entirely up to you as to how formal this is but a form of self-evaluation, both in terms of what the students learned and how useful they found the project, will allow all concerned to consider how to improve the project next time around. the following paragraphs are an example of an evaluation format you may wish to adopt.] [although we aim to provide a useful service, the main rationale of clinical education is to aid your learning. self-evaluation is a vital part of this process. we will therefore ask you to do two things after you have worked on your case presentation: first, complete a self-evaluation form. this asks you to think about what you achieved, what you could have done better and what, with the benefit of hindsight, you might have done differently. your tutor will consider this form together with your case file to assess whether you have met the criteria for the award of a certificate of participation. the form will also help the tutor write references for you. and, second, attend a meeting with all the students and tutors concerned, including future participants, to discuss in general terms your involvement and how the project went. learning from the experience of others is as important as reflecting on your own work.] 2.2 what knowledge and skills will i use? to a certain extent, the answer to this will depend on the issue or case you are working on. if, for example, you are working with a client group on problems they are having with their rented flats, you may have to look at a range of laws covering the relationship of landlord and tenant. if, on the other hand, you are making a presentation on prisoners’ rights, you may be dealing with a whole host of laws, not the least being the provisions of the human rights act. if you are delivering a session to secondary school pupils on ‘stop and search’ then the legal research may be more limited. in any event certain key issues will arise regardless of the detail of the project you are working on. you may have to do any or all of the following: • conduct interviews with the target audience to establish the area of need and level at which the session should be pitched; • analyse complex factual situations if responding to particular circumstances shared, for example, by a group of tenants in the same block, or a group of women who have been victims of domestic violence; • conduct legal research; • draft documents such as fact sheets that can be readily understood by your target audience; • solve problems (in a practically appropriate way); • work effectively as a team; • maintain a file; • manage your time; © [insert law school name] [year] 10 • develop your presentation skills (and be an effective advocate). you may soon come to realise that it is not just what the law says that matters (presupposing that you have correctly identified the legal issues and accurately researched the position). the options open to people and the relative merits of particular courses of action (including the cost and risk implications) need to be appreciated and explained. the solution or preferred option may not be based solely on a given client’s legal ‘rights’ or ‘responsibilities’. solutions are what work for the people concerned. but you do need to understand the legal framework to know what is possible. in addition, you should become familiar with the ethical and professional framework relevant to legal practice. 2.3 what standard will i be expected to achieve? we owe a duty to provide a competent and professional service to all groups with whom we work. where we offer a service to the public, supervised by solicitors, we are subject to the professional rules and disciplinary procedures of the law society of england and wales. in our streetlaw programme we owe a duty to the groups we work with to ensure that what we present and discuss is legally and procedurally accurate (as well as being understandable!). all work that you do as a student will therefore be supervised by appropriately qualified staff. depending on the subject matter and depth of content this may mean a faculty member, or a qualified and currently practising external lawyer. we expect high standards of work from everyone involved in our pro bono efforts, but we aim to offer similarly high standards of support and feedback. we also carry professional indemnity insurance to protect everyone concerned, in the unlikely event of things going awry3. 2.4 how will i know that i am doing things right? apart from being closely supervised at all stages of your participation, we believe that you will wish to know whether the work you have produced and your overall contribution has been of a satisfactory standard. the best way to achieve this is through a process of evaluation and feedback, coupled with a consideration of your materials and, if relevant, your file, by the tutor. if you have achieved a satisfactory standard, you will be presented with a certificate at the end of the year to acknowledge your achievement4. the criteria for this will be provided for you separately and in advance of your embarking on your streetlaw project. 3 again – check that this is indeed the case. 4 again, this is an option you may choose to take up. certainly an element of recognition of the students’ efforts is a welcome addition to any scheme and certificates show appreciation from the faculty and that the activity and endeavour is validated by them. © [insert law school name] [year] 11 a guide to professional practice is included in appendix a of the handbook. this should provide you with a framework for client care as well as keeping you on the professional ‘straight and narrow’. © [insert law school name] [year] 12 3. the streetlaw clinic imagine this: you have just had a lecture on the impact of the human rights act. you know all about the european convention the rules concerning torture and degrading treatment, fair trial, privacy, family life. you have even talked about it in a seminar and discussed all those cases from strasbourg. but what do you really know? let’s find out … armed with your lecture notes and a textbook or two, you are off to a local prison. your law school has an arrangement with the education department there and a small group comprising you, your classmates and your tutor, are going to meet 20 inmates working on the education wing. first, you and your colleagues will introduce yourselves. your objective is to explain to the inmates what the human rights act is all about. you will need to make it interesting; after all who wants to be lectured when you can talk with them about real-life experiences? initially it is hard to get everyone’s attention. there is some talking going on in the group. a few people look uninterested. however, after a few awkward moments the session gets underway. the prisoners slowly begin to enjoy the presentation. some begin to ask questions, most of which are very practical and detailed. like students in a tutorial, some participants are more vocal than others. you don’t know the answers to all if any of their questions and cannot be expected to. don’t worry; you explained this to the prisoners at the outset. like all good lawyers, you know where to find out answers! after the session you are off to the library or on the internet, looking up statutes, cases and textbooks. you have meetings with the other students to work on the problems the prisoners have raised. you discuss your findings with the tutor and rest of the group, and decide on what you are going to tell the prisoners and how you are going to go about delivering the information. you have of course begun to realise if you didn’t suspect already that learning by doing is an effective way of studying, and you are now putting theory into practice. to cut a long story short, you might go back to the prison two weeks later and answer the prisoners’ queries. perhaps you get them to act out some of the problems they came up with – a mock trial for example. in the end you feel that you understand the act so much better. the prisoners say that the sessions were really valuable and want you to come back another time. the tutor is really impressed with the quality of your work maybe you write a dissertation based on what you have done and get a distinction for it! members of the prison staff are so pleased that they want the law school to do a short course for prisoners on rights and responsibilities. there is even talk that the prison officers would like a course for themselves. whatever the detail, experience suggests that everyone is likely to be pleased at the outcome. alternatively you may be involved in delivering a single session which forms part of a course of related topics. © [insert law school name] [year] 13 so, what is this initiative all about? primarily, it is to enhance the educational experience of students – giving you a hands-on opportunity to apply the law in a protected environment, supervised by qualified staff. it is also designed to provide a benefit to others. it does not have to be set in a prison. legal literacy or streetlaw programmes have been successfully run in many different community venues – schools, colleges, community centres and with not-for-profit organisations. this approach to teaching and learning has several advantages: • it gives students the opportunity to become actively involved in their learning; • it increases awareness of rights and responsibilities for both students and the targeted community group; • it forges valuable links between the law school and the wider community; • it can provide an opportunity for academics, practitioners, students and members of the local community to work together to increase knowledge and understanding of law and the legal process; and • it complements moves to include citizenship in a wider educational context (for example as part of the national curriculum for 11-16 year olds). 3.1 streetlaw in action such courses already exist in a variety of law schools. in the usa, street law (as it is written there) has been used in a wide range of institutions and has been running for almost 30 years. this, then novel, approach to learning and pro bono involvement originated in georgetown university (washington dc). there, the national institute for citizen education in the law promoted opportunities for raising public awareness of rights and responsibilities – developing curricula, training teachers and producing materials. a key component of this approach puts the law student in the position of teacher, presenting, in user-friendly form, practical law courses in high schools, correctional institutions and community-based settings. street law, inc., also of washington, is now at the forefront of street law work in the usa and in many other countries (see www.streetlaw.org). in south africa, the involvement of law schools in addressing essential human rights issues has been an important dimension in the move towards democratisation. through the national street law programme based in the university of natal (durban), extensive field testing has been carried out and street law is now a common feature in many law schools, whose students present material for example to pupils, prisoners and rural farm workers. streetlaw models have now been running for many years in the uk (after being first established at the college of law in the mid-1990s), with over 40 law schools currently taking part. http://www.streetlaw.org/ © [insert law school name] [year] 14 on one scheme, in an inner city school, 15-year-olds were involved in a role-play of a criminal case and looked at a variety of important issues from arrest through bail applications and trial, to sentencing. the programme was well received, with the pupils saying that they now understood the role of the law and the courts so much better. one or two even said that they had no wish to end up in court themselves unless it was as a lawyer! there are now street law programmes up and running across the globe from the usa to ukraine and from the uk to uzbekistan. with so many places involved there must be something worth doing here! 3.2 taking part streetlaw works because it is a carefully structured methodology. under a streetlaw programme, students have to demonstrate their understanding of concepts by having to present them, at an appropriate level and in a form that can be readily understood, to the other participants. there is perhaps no better test of comprehension than having to explain something to someone else. students meet with the community group in question to confirm topics for study, and then research and prepare for delivery of the material. it is important to work closely with the partner group and make sure that the material covered is relevant to local needs. emphasis throughout is on active participation for both the law students and the group they are working with. depending on resources and individual requirements, courses can range from one-off presentations (for example an outline of the human rights act and its implications) to short courses on housing rights, social security entitlement or consumer law. there is no prescribed target group. streetlaw projects elsewhere have involved:  school pupils;  students on fe courses;  adult prisoners;  young offenders;  tenants' associations;  benefit claimants' groups;  residents in homeless persons’ hostels;  women’s groups;  asylum seekers;  healthcare workers;  staff in youth offending teams; and  many more groups. given the uk government's emphasis on citizenship (part of the national curriculum since 2002), such a development is broadly welcomed by schools and other community-based organisations. so here is your chance to apply your knowledge and perhaps assist others along the way. the value of experiential learning can perhaps best be summed up by one student at the college of law who said: © [insert law school name] [year] 15 this was the best thing i did in my time at law school. problems come to you as real, everyday difficulties – not neatly packaged as ‘contract’ or ‘tort’. i learnt to take the questions apart, to identify the legal issues, research the law and come up with practical solutions. that is what learning should really be all about.5 to summarise, therefore, streetlaw is an educational tool that helps law students and members of the wider community to gain a better understanding of law and the legal system. through an interactive methodology participants have the opportunity to put theory into practice and engage in informed discussion about a range of issues focusing on rights, responsibilities and citizenship. through streetlaw links can be built between law schools, the legal profession, the local community, government and the not-for-profit sector, with the aim of improving the quality of legal education at whatever level the programmes are delivered at. experience at home and abroad suggests that taking part in streetlaw results in an enhancement of knowledge, skills and self-confidence for all participants. in other words, in a well-structured and supervised streetlaw clinic, everyone is a winner. 3.3 what are the learning outcomes in a streetlaw clinic? by the end of your streetlaw experience you (as a law student)6 should: • have a thorough understanding of the law applicable to the subject of your presentation(s); • be able to apply that law to given situations, in a procedurally accurate and practically relevant way; • have developed an appreciation of the fundamental professional and ethical principles of legal practice; • have improved your legal and transferable skills, notably applied research, communication, problem-solving, time management and team work; and • be able to deliver material on rights and responsibilities at the appropriate level for the target audience. 4. your participation 4.1 how will streetlaw work? 5 this section, describing the origins and development of streetlaw, is an updated version of an article originally written by richard grimes (legal education consultant) which appeared in the new law journal, 26 january 2001, p 87. 6 as a law student making a streetlaw presentation, you should set specific learning outcomes for the group you are working with in the streetlaw sessions e.g. school pupils, prisoners or single parents. what should they know at the end of the session that they might not have known at the start? inform the group at the beginning what you’re aiming to get across to them. © [insert law school name] [year] 16 a meeting will be called at the start of the academic year, to which all students (full and part-time) will be invited7. at this meeting, the details of the scheme will be outlined and partner organisations (those we will be working with) will be identified. volunteers will then be asked to apply. [it is anticipated that there will be more volunteers than places as we pilot the scheme in [insert academic year]. if this is the case then we will select by ballot8.] student commitment if selected, you will be required to sign a form (see page [ ]) expressing your commitment to the programme. you will also be given a likely date for the start and finish of your streetlaw involvement. typically this will last around six weeks from the time of the first meeting with your tutor and other member of your project team, and involve you in about 45 hours of work, including presentation time. if for any reason you are unable to make this commitment your place will be offered to someone else. team allocation & timetable once you have confirmed your participation you will be allocated to a team of between four and eight participants and to a tutor who will supervise your preparation and delivery. [the team will contain members drawn from at least two different year groups.] you will be reminded of your participation dates at least a week before the scheduled start and given a timetable for meetings and tasks to be undertaken prior to your final presentation. if for any reason you cannot attend the initial meeting you must inform the administrator or tutor immediately, and we will try (but cannot guarantee) to arrange for you to be allocated to another group meeting at a later date. however we will only do so if you have a good reason for being unable to attend in the first place. please remember that you are expected to conform to professional standards in this regard – and we place great emphasis on punctuality, meeting deadlines and commitment. it is imperative for the target audience, the law school and your own reputation that the system operates effectively. it is our professional responsibility to meet the legitimate expectations of the groups we will be working with. summary of activity in summary, on the streetlaw programme, you will: • discuss the issues to be covered with your group and tutor; • divide the various tasks to be done – research and preparation of materials – amongst the team; 7 clearly you should tailor this for your precise plans. perhaps if you are considering including first years by term two this would be appropriate anyway. 8 you may prefer to select by way of application. © [insert law school name] [year] 17 • meet with the team and tutor to discuss your results; • meet with the group to deliver the session; • identify any further questions the group may have; • [research, prepare and return to deliver your results at a second session9 (for logistical reasons, however, some students may not have the opportunity to visit a second time);] • with the approval of your tutor, refer individual queries to other appropriate sources of help; and • evaluate the experience (see pages 57-59). you may have the opportunity to repeat the experience with another audience group and/or on another subject matter, depending on resources, and depending on the demands of your particular course and the desire to give opportunities to as many students as possible. legal advice the purpose of streetlaw is to improve awareness of rights and responsibilities across a wide range of matters. it is not to give individual advice as such. if a ‘client’ does have personal concerns he or she can be referred to another agency, using established referral procedures, including local advice centres and solicitors. it would therefore be useful if, before the session is delivered, part of the preparation research involved establishing what other local and national support services and information resources exist for those in the audience who may need further assistance in future. 4.2 typical timetable for a streetlaw group for the purposes of this example, let us say that your team is going to work at a local prison or school. the timetable of events will probably look something like this: date objective outcome week 1 remind students of start date – initial meeting with tutor to discuss session. link set up with group that will receive the session. students ready to begin – clear allocation and understanding of tasks. group decides what area of law they would like to learn about. 9 this is a useful option for the programme. you may wish to simply deliver the session as is, but it’s a better service if there is some follow up. in this case it is crucial to make this clear to the students in the first place so that they remain commited beyond the first presentation. it could be that two presentations become the norm, which is fine if everyone knows this from the start. with school presentations this is less likely than with presentations to adults who are more likely to have follow up questions. © [insert law school name] [year] 18 week 2 tutor and team meet for team briefing, to review action plan and arrive at an outline of the session. action plan formed. students ready to research issues and prepare presentation. week 3 meeting to discuss research outcomes and presentation plans. the law being covered is confirmed as being correct by supervisor. at end of meeting students should be in a position to complete preparation of the presentation. weeks 4-5 tutor and team meet for full run-through of session (see evaluation form page [ ]) further amendments identified and presentation amended as required – team ready to present week 6 delivery to target group followed by evaluation meeting (see evaluation form page [ ]) presentation completed and evaluation of performance concluded – file closed10 the exact detail of who does what and when will vary according to the individual circumstances, but [the experience of other law schools/our experience] suggests that the whole process from initial instructions to evaluation should take between 4 and 6 weeks. 4.3 what will the issues be and how will they be identified? however, ultimately the choice comes down to a combination of what the target group needs and wants to learn about and what the students and staff/supervising lawyers are able to provide. for example, we will not be able to deliver a session to asylum seekers on asylum welfare benefits if we do not have access to the 10 amend timetable as fit for structure agreed upon – e.g. if follow up session is planned, or if supervision of the session content is being carried out by a third party, maybe an 8 week programme is more appropriate. © [insert law school name] [year] 19 internal or external expertise required to prepare a properly suypervised lesson plan. in our discussions with a potential audience group, therefore, we will listen to their needs and also give examples of sessions we have already considered or that we understand have been given in the past by other law schools. we can use the student pro bono database held on studentprobono.net to get in contact with other streetlaw programmes at other law schools in order to compare notes on the sessions they have run.11 these could include: tenants’ rights (e.g. deposit protection scheme for student tenants); human rights; police powers/stop and search constitutional law criminal law – crime and punishment consumer law – sale of goods act women’s rights; drugs and the law; sex and the law – including issues of consent; parents, children and the law; employment rights; age of responsibility (e.g. when can you drive, smoke, vote, etc.); and anti-discrimination law. our student coordinators will invite the groups to suggest other areas of interest. armed with this list we will then agree the principal issues of concern for each group, and it is at this stage that you will become involved. you will therefore know in advance what subject matter you will be covering but will also have to take questions from the group as they arise (returning perhaps at a second session to answer those questions). arranging things in this way gives us a structure to work with from the beginning, but also provides us with the flexibility to respond to a particular group’s needs. 4.4 what if the issues raised involve areas of law that i know nothing about? do not worry! in fact it is likely that this will be the case. good lawyers may not know all the answers but they do know where to find them. your tutor will be able to refer you to many useful resources, particularly practitioners’ texts. on top of this, members of our lecturing staff possess a wealth of knowledge and expertise, and your tutor will always be able to guide you to a lecturer who may be able to help you. 11 go to http://www.studentprobono.net/searches/projectsbytype.php and select ‘streetlaw’ from the drop down list of activities. http://www.studentprobono.net/searches/projectsbytype.php © [insert law school name] [year] 20 in terms of accessing practitioner’s research resources, consider making a link with a local firm who may allow you to use their law library, or online resources. the local law society may also be willing to assist. 4.5 what if the issues addressed by, or raised at, the streetlaw sessions are sensitive or controversial? using controversial topics or presentations is not essential or necessarily desirable but this can provide a very useful vehicle as it can interest and motivate participants. if controversy is planned or does arise be aware of some ground rules: 1. recognise the general legitimacy of controversy. this is part of the real world! 2. agree rules with the group so that the issues can be dealt with in an ordered and balanced way, e.g. giving everyone the chance to have his or her say and respecting (even if disagreeing with) their views. 3. focus on the issue and not the individual. 4. as a presenter don’t take sides until the debrief and then justify your own views. 5. be aware that people may find content offensive and explain in advance this possibility, giving people choices on whether to participate. 6. take the session seriously and impress on the group the need for them to do so too. 4.6 what records will i have to keep? we will require each team to keep a file on their project. this will consist of records of the meetings with tutors, research findings and presentation material. record-keeping is an essential part of the work of a solicitor. although the file you will keep is not quite the same as a client’s file in a solicitors’ office, it is important to compile a file in the streetlaw programme. it will help you organise your material. it will also be a valuable tool for learning, especially when you are evaluating the project, and it will provide the basis for tutor feedback. [the file will also be used for assessment purposes. the criteria for assessment (for the award of the certificate of participation and endorsement of your results transcript) will be made available to you12.] your records must be accurate, up-to-date and maintained in a way that anyone picking up the file can readily understand. remember that there may be confidential information on the file – details of the group and their questions. all files must be retained for safe-keeping by the administrator. you may work on the research and presentation anywhere, but you must not reveal any confidential details or remove the file from the law school unless authorised to do so by the supervising tutor. 4.7 what about photocopying, processing and printing? 12 you could delete this section and consider that satisfactory participation in the project alone is sufficient for a certificate. © [insert law school name] [year] 21 a photocopier is available for your use. staff will direct you to this and other facilities e.g. computers and other resource materials13. 4.8 how will i be contacted? our primary method of contact is via the university e-mail system. you must check your e-mail daily to check for any messages from your team, client group or tutors. in addition you must provide: • up-to-date copies of your timetable including the dates and times of any assessments/deadlines; and • term-time and home addresses and, if available, telephone (including any mobile) numbers. you must notify your tutor immediately of any changes to these. you should also make sure that your team members always have an up-to-date contact number and details of when and where they can contact you. reliable communications are the basis of an effective team. 4.9 what happens if my course work comes into conflict with my pro bono commitments? if you are having any difficulties fulfilling your duties under the programme (for example you do not think you will be able to attend a meeting because you have to complete an assessment), you must let your tutor know as soon as possible. we will do whatever we can to help you resolve any such conflicts, but we must stress that we will not be able to obtain any extensions to your course work deadlines. we will try to ensure, but cannot guarantee, that your work on the streetlaw programme will avoid other assessment periods. as a result, inevitably, you may find yourself allocated to a project in the same week as an assessment deadline. if this does happen we would normally expect you to fulfil both responsibilities. if you do not think you will be able to cope with this, then you must consider whether you can participate in streetlaw. we do not want to put anyone off but we are being realistic. this is hard work. we believe it is also a valuable learning experience and a socially-useful exercise. from what we have found from other law schools running this scheme, students, staff and ‘clients’ have reported that it is very worthwhile. remember; whilst we are here to supervise and support you so that you can achieve the standards expected of the profession, pressure will inevitably arise. pressure of work is a fact of life! 13 edit this section as appropriate. © [insert law school name] [year] 22 4.10 do the solicitors regulation authority rules of confidentiality apply to my streetlaw work? in principle, yes. you must be familiar with the solicitors' practice rules and code of conduct on confidentiality. the practice rules are summarised later on in this handbook, but you should also look at the solicitors code of conduct. the best place to find an up to date copy is on the sra website14. the key professional practice issues are summarised in appendix a (pages [ ]). although in our streetlaw programme we are not acting for an individual client, we are still holding ourselves out as a legal service, potentially supervised by practising solicitors. even where we do not (e.g. where a session’s content is supervised by a non-practising academic), the rules should still be complied with as a matter of best practice. we therefore consider that the programme should be subject to the relevant professional practice rules. there is a risk that you breach confidentiality if you discuss the personal details of any case that you encounter during the project, if this would or could lead to any identification of the client or case concerned. this does not mean you cannot discuss the work you have undertaken or what you have learnt from it, but you can only do this where the personal details of a case cannot be identified to people outside of the programme. it is not a breach of confidentiality to discuss details of a case with another streetlaw student or with a tutor. but to avoid the risk of accidentally disclosing information, we recommend that you only discuss the case with your team and tutor, unless you are told otherwise (for example, at the meetings with other streetlaw participants). 4.11 am i allowed to receive any money or other gift from anyone i work with on streetlaw? no. this is a free service. we cannot receive money from or on behalf of anyone we work with. we do not have a client account and we are not subject to the rules applying to such an account. you may only accept a gift with the tutor’s agreement. it has been known for grateful people to offer the odd bottle of wine or box of chocolates! even if this happens you must inform your tutor. 4.12 can conflicts of interest arise and if so what do i do? it is unlikely that such a situation could arise on the streetlaw programme. if you do have any concerns over what you can or cannot do, see your tutor. he or she should in any event be on the lookout for conflict situations. 4.13 what if there are complaints? 14 http://www.sra.org.uk/solicitors/code-of-conduct.page http://www.sra.org.uk/solicitors/code-of-conduct.page © [insert law school name] [year] 23 in what we hope is the unlikely event of a complaint or concern, please refer the matter immediately to your tutor who will activate [insert name of law school]’s complaints procedure. 5. working with community groups it is important to define and manage everyone’s expectations – before, during and after the event. in the preparatory work carried out by the streetlaw team, the scope of each project is clearly explained to each group with which we work. you will explain to the group at your first meeting what the sessions will cover, stressing the fact that we do not give legal advice on individual cases but that we can try to answer questions of general application within the topic area that has been prepared. in addition, we can refer individual cases to appropriate sources of help. we will also endeavour to make clear to all students what is expected of them. this handbook sets out much of that detail. you will be expected to present your material in a user-friendly way. more is said on this below (see separate document – streetlaw teaching methods). the emphasis is on team work and audience participation. this must not be a lecture! although we only work with groups who invite us to do so, there is often an issue of credibility to address. “what can a bunch of law students tell us?” in order to gain the trust of those you work with you will need to show you do have something to offer. this will become clear if you actively engage the group in your presentation, if you are well prepared and if you take the views and concerns of the group seriously. this should help to engender mutual respect. this means that you must be aware of the nature of the group you are working with, taking into account their needs, social and cultural backgrounds and the circumstances in which they may find themselves. this is true for all streetlaw sessions but is especially relevant when working with, for example, the young, the elderly, those with particular mental or physical conditions, homeless people and prisoners. their experiences and situations call for particular sensitivity. you will of course be well-briefed, including, where appropriate, on security matters. however, you must always be aware of the dynamics operating or likely to be found in the group you are working with. 6. who are the members of staff on the streetlaw team at [insert name of law school]? the members of staff are: title name room contact details © [insert law school name] [year] 24 7. a final word working on a pro bono initiative such as streetlaw provides you with a unique opportunity for two reasons. first, it gives you hands-on experience of the practical matters you are studying elsewhere on your course, within a closely supervised environment. second, and perhaps more importantly, it gives you time to think about what you have achieved, and how you could improve on your performance next time. the opportunity to reflect on your experiences is one that you may rarely have when you finally enter practice. as a result, if you are to gain the maximum benefit from taking part you need not only to aspire to the highest professional standards, but also to commit yourself to the work as an opportunity to learn about your own strengths and weaknesses. we all have to learn from the experience and it is inevitable that both staff and students involved will have constructive suggestions for ways in which our operations can be improved. please pass on suggestions even where they are critical. [insert name of law school] streetlaw programme [month, year] © [insert law school name] [year] 25 appendix a a guide to professional practice this guide applies to all pro bono work carried out at [insert name of law school]. any solicitors working on our pro bono initiatives must ensure that we comply, in all respects, with relevant practice rules governing the profession and other principles of conduct. accordingly, students must adhere to rules of professional practice stringently and this handbook gives an outline of the basic rules for your attention. of course, this is not a comprehensive guide to the rules of professional conduct, and your attention is drawn in particular rules of professional practice set out by the solicittors regulation authority (reference given above). further, some of these rules cover circumstances which are outside the scope of those applicable to a streetlaw context, but are included to give a rounded impression of the professional conduct regime. depending on the pro bono activity in question, certain sections of this guide will not be relevant, but each is included for completeness. the solicitors regulation authority is authorised to make rules to regulate the professional practice, conduct and discipline of solicitors. the rules have changed over the years but the main set of rules concerning our work can be found in the solictors regulation authority handbook, version 19, 2017 (the “code”). the solicitors regulation authority is the independent regulatory body of the law society of england and wales. 1. indemnity insurance rules all solicitors who are held out as principals in private practice are required to be insured against loss arising from claims in respect of civil liability, of any description, incurred in connection with practice. typically this covers where solicitors give negligent advice. [insert name of law school] has informed its insurers of the activities planned and ensured that cover is in place for claims based on professional negligence made against it. 2. supervision and management of an office solicitors running legal services for the public must exercise proper supervision over students and maintain conduct of the case or project, generally. all solicitors working in such service must hold a practising certificate. there are strict rules applying to the staffing and supervision within a law firm (including the need for tutors to have requisite experience). however, for services operating in the notfor-profit sector these rules have recently been relaxed, to enable the services to operate within their particular constraints. © [insert law school name] [year] 26 staff who do not hold a practising certificate or who are not solicitors, may still work in a solicitor’s office providing that they, too, are overseen by a solicitor in the circumstances defined above.15 3. general principles of obtaining instructions a prospective client who is seeking a solicitor must have a free choice as to whom to instruct. it is therefore fundamental to the relationship which exists between a solicitor and the client that a solicitor should be able to give impartial and frank advice, free from any pressures or interests which would destroy or weaken professional independence or the relationship with the client. the fundamental principle relating to obtaining instructions is that a solicitor cannot do anything in the course of practising as a solicitor, or permit another person to do anything on his or her behalf, which compromises or impairs, or is likely to compromise or impair, any of the following: • the solicitor's independence or integrity; • a person's freedom to instruct a solicitor of his/her choice; • the solicitor's duty to act in the best interests of the client; • the good repute of the solicitor or of his/her profession; • the solicitor's proper standard of work; • the solicitor's duty to the court. the code explains a solicitor’s obligations in terms of referral of business. in the course of a pro bono project you may need to use referral lists and you will be directed to these by your tutor16. a useful resource in terms of referring people to solicitors is community legal advice – www.communitylegaladvice.org.uk. this provides you with a list of local legal aid lawyers who may assist on a wide range of legal areas (assuming the invididual is eligible for legal aid. you should only make a referral with the tutor’s approval. 4. publicity students working on our pro bono schemes should be aware of the rules governing publicity which are relevant to our practice. rule 7 of the code permits advertising, providing it is clear and not misleading or inaccurate. 15 it would be in the law school’s interest to strike up a relationship with a local firm or two, who might take responsibility for overseeing the planned session content, in order to maintain this supervision and protection where the legal content is outside of the tutor’s competence. 16 some useful preparatory work would involve putting together such a list of local agencies, but also being aware of the national phoneline options as well. lawworks can assist with the latter. http://www.communitylegaladvice.org.uk/ © [insert law school name] [year] 27 any matter involving publicity for our pro bono work must be discussed with your tutor. this includes the information put on any website we may create. it is clear the following is forbidden: • unsolicited visits or telephone calls to the general public; and • naming your clients without the clients' consent. 5. arrangements for the introduction of business under rule 9 of the code, solicitors may accept introductions and referrals of business from other persons and may make introductions and refer business to other persons, provided there is no breach of the other rules of the code. in the context of our work, it is perfectly permissible for other agencies, for example a citizens advice bureau, to refer clients to us, or for us to refer clients to other agencies or solicitors as long as we remain independent whne doing so. we would not, for example, wish to enter into any commission-earning arrangements with other legal practices17. 6. the “retainer”: acceptance of a client's instruction a solicitor is generally free to decide whether or not to accept instructions. a refusal to act, however, must not be based upon the race, colour, ethnic or national origins, gender or disability of the prospective client. a solicitor must not act or, where relevant, must cease to act further where the instructions would involve the solicitor in a breach of the law or a breach of the code, unless the client is prepared to change the instructions appropriately. a solicitor must not act or continue to act in circumstances where s/he cannot represent the client with competence or diligence. a solicitor must not accept instructions where s/he suspects that those instructions have been given by a client under duress or undue influence. where instructions are received not from a client but from a third party on behalf of that client, a solicitor should obtain written instructions from the client that the client wishes the solicitor to act. in any case of doubt the solicitor should see the client or take other appropriate steps to confirm instructions. a solicitor must not generally accept instructions to act in a matter where another solicitor is acting for the client in respect of the same matter, until either the first retainer has been determined by the client or the first solicitor has consented to the second solicitor acting in their place. especially in the context of pro bono advice, 17 lawworks has come across this sort of arrangement being suggested to pro bono services and we would advise strongly against entering into such an arrangement no matter how tempting it may appear. © [insert law school name] [year] 28 this is very important. resources are already stretched without clients seeking second opinions in parallel to their existing adviser. a solicitor who has accepted instructions on behalf of a client is bound to carry out those instructions with diligence and must exercise reasonable care and skill. above all else, a solicitor must keep the client's business and affairs confidential. further, it is implied with the retainer that a solicitor is under a duty, at all times, to observe the principles of professional conduct set out in the code. in the light of this, a solicitor must not take advantage of the age, inexperience, want of education or business experience, or ill health of the client. the solicitor is under a duty to keep the client properly informed on case progress and costs and to comply with reasonable requests from the client for information concerning the client's affairs. a solicitor is under a duty to consider and advise a client on the availability of publicly-funded legal services (formerly known as legal aid) where the client might be entitled to assistance. 7. complaints the pro bono programme operates an internal code for complaints and we feel the following code of practice is appropriate: • we must ensure that a client or group knows the name of the personnel responsible for the day-to-day conduct of the matter and the tutor responsible for overall supervision; • we must ensure that a client knows whom to approach in the event of any problem with the service provided; and • we must ensure that a client is, at all relevant times, given any appropriate information as to the issues raised in the progress of the matter18. 8. termination of retainer a solicitor must not terminate the retainer with a client except for good reason and upon reasonable notice. examples of good reasons for a solicitor terminating a retainer would include: • where a solicitor cannot continue to act without being in breach of the code; • where a solicitor is unable to obtain clear instructions from a client; and/or • where there is a serious breakdown in the confidence between a solicitor and a client. 18 in the case of streetlaw it would be sensible to treat the school or other community group as the ‘client’ for these purposes. © [insert law school name] [year] 29 a client, however, can terminate a solicitor's retainer for any reason. any decision to terminate a retainer must be made by the tutor or be reported to him or her if a client so decides. 9. publicly-funded legal services when advising or otherwise acting for clients, you must inform them about the existence and availability of publicly-funded services. they should be informed of the effect of the statutory charge (property recovered or preserved may be used to offset the cost of providing the client with legal services from public funds). clients should be told that if they lose the case they may still be ordered by the court to contribute to their opponent's costs even though their own costs are covered by payments from the public purse, and that even if they win their opponent may not be ordered to pay the full amount of their costs and may not be capable of paying what they have been ordered to pay. clients should also be told of their obligations to pay any contribution assessed and of the consequences of any failure to do so.. 10. conflict of interest a legal adviser should not accept instructions to act for two or more clients where there is a conflict, or a significant risk of a conflict, between the interests of those clients. if a solicitor or firm of solicitors has acquired relevant knowledge concerning a former client during the course of acting for that client, the solicitor or firm of solicitors must not accept instructions to act against the client. a solicitor or firm of solicitors must not continue to act for two or more clients where a conflict of interest arises between those clients. a solicitor must not act where the solicitor's own interests conflict with the interests of a client or potential client. consequently we cannot undertake work against [insert name of law school], its governors, staff, current students or other existing clients. 11. confidentiality and professional obligations to the client as mentioned earlier, a solicitor is under a duty to keep the affairs of the client confidential to the law firm and to ensure all members of staff do the same. this duty can be overridden in certain exceptional circumstances, but this is a decision that can only be taken by the tutor. an advisor, for example, must not disclose a client's address without the client's consent under any circumstances. nor must the details of a client's case be revealed or the fact that you are advising a client, © [insert law school name] [year] 30 e.g. by leaving a telephone message for a client that someone else might pick up (unless the client has authorised this). a solicitor is obliged to deal promptly with correspondence on behalf of the client or former client and with any correspondence with the solicitors regulation authority. 12. professional obligations owed to the court and profession a solicitor who acts in litigation, whilst under a duty to do the best for the client, must never deceive the court. if, prior to, or in the course of, any proceedings, a client admits to the solicitor that he or she has committed perjury or misled the court in relation to those proceedings, it is the duty of the solicitor to decline to act further unless the client fully agrees to disclose the conduct to the court. a solicitor must comply with any order of the court which the court can properly make requiring the solicitor to take or refrain from taking some particular course of action; equally, a solicitor is bound to honour an undertaking given to any court or tribunal. a solicitor must not act, whether in a professional capacity or otherwise, towards anyone in a way which is fraudulent, deceitful or otherwise contrary to the solicitor's position as a solicitor. nor must the solicitor use the solicitor's position to take unfair advantage. © [insert law school name] [year] 31 appendix b – useful forms & precedents b.1 acknowledgment of commitment b.2 practice run-through evaluation form © [insert law school name] [year] 32 acknowledgement of commitment i understand that as a member of a streetlaw team i will be representing [insert name of law school] to the wider community. i also understand that as a student, possibly intending to become a solicitor or barrister, i will also be representing the legal profession to the wider community. in consequence, having regard to the above, i undertake to: • work diligently as a member of my team; • attend team meetings; • check my student e-mail every day whilst involved in the streetlaw programme; • respond promptly to phone calls and/ or e-mails from my team leader and/ or from any member of staff involved in streetlaw; • behave appropriately during my streetlaw visit; and • complete and return the streetlaw questionnaire promptly. please delete the whole of the next section if you are not a team leader. as team leader i additionally undertake to: • diligently carry out any tasks assigned to team leaders by any member of staff involved in streetlaw; • arrange meetings and contact all team members and my supervising tutor well in advance; • keep my supervising tutor fully informed of when each stage of preparation has been completed; • keep the team’s streetlaw log in order and up to date and ensure it is complete following the conclusion of the presentation; and • be professional in all dealings with [insert name of law school] and the external groups and organistations with which we deal. signed__________________________________class______________ print name_______________________________date__________________ © [insert law school name] [year] 33 streetlaw practice run-through evaluation form on your streetlaw visit you will be representing [insert name of law school] and the legal profession, so it is vitally important that your presentation is as good as you can possibly make it. you will need at least two full practices to enable you to spot weaknesses and to give you the chance to make improvements before the actual visit. at least one of these should be done in front of a critical audience, including your supervising tutor. the purpose of this form is to help you make the most of these practices, so make sure you complete it honestly and then act on it! score each item out of 5 (5 = very good, 1 = poor) and write brief comments about what specifically needs to be improved and how. presentation issue score (1 – 5) comment 1. clarity • are you using plain english? • are your sentences short? • are you speaking at a helpful pace? • are you pausing where appropriate? • can you be clearly heard from the back of the room? • are you looking at your audience? • are you giving clear instructions about any audience exercises/ activities? • are you linking different parts of the session clearly? 2. use of examples to illustrate legal concepts • are your examples relevant to the audience? • are they topical? • do they clearly illustrate the point? © [insert law school name] [year] 34 presentation issue score (1 – 5) comment • have you got examples from relevant case law? • have you got enough examples? 3. interaction with the audience • are you asking them enough questions? • are you asking them to participate in other ways? • is there enough interaction? • is there enough variety of activity in the session? • are you positive in your demeanour? 4. visuals – powerpoint/overhead projector/flipchart • is the font large enough? • is the style of font easily legible? • are bullet points as brief as they can be? • are the slides interesting to look at? • are illustrations relevant? • are illustrations clearly visible? 5. props • are you using any physical props? • if so, are they useful? 6. timing © [insert law school name] [year] 35 presentation issue score (1 – 5) comment • do the sessions fit into the time available? • is each section/activity of the appropriate length? 7. beginning and end • how well do you explain the aims of the session at the beginning? • how clear is your summary at the end of the session? 8. handouts, etc. • is your handout relevant/ useful? • is the information accurate and up-todate? • does it look good? © [insert law school name] [year] 36 appendix c student self-evaluation form evaluation form thank you for taking part in this streetlaw project. we would like to improve the scheme in the future so that the experience is as worthwhile as possible, both for our students and for the organisation(s) that participate. please take a moment to complete this questionnaire and then please return it to your appointed streetlaw student coordinator. please evaluate on a scale of 1-5 1 – very poor 5 – very good please circle the appropriate figure and provide evidence for your scoring – i.e. the reason why you have given the score in each instance using the space beneath the question. 1 was the presentation/workshop of interest to the audience? 1 2 3 4 5 streetlaw follow-up questionnaire (students) name of organisation visited: ……………………………………………………………………. dates of visit(s): …………………………………………………………………………………… title of presentation: …………………………………………………………………………….. length of presentation/ workshop: …………………………………………………………….. name and title of person completing the questionnaire: ……………………………………. telephone number: ....…………………………………………………………………………… e-mail address: …………………………………………………………………………………… © [insert law school name] [year] 37 2 which aspect of the visit did the audience value the most? why? 3 which aspects were least valuable? why? 4 was the ‘level’ appropriate for the audience? 1 2 3 4 5 5 was there enough / too much / too little material in the session? 1 2 3 4 5 6 was there sufficient variety in the material? 1 2 3 4 5 7 how did the content of the session fit in with the issues and concerns facing your audience? 1 2 3 4 5 8 would you be interested in taking part in another streetlaw project? yes / no / maybe 9 if yes, what would be your preferred area of law? © [insert law school name] [year] 38 10 do you have any other comments about how the scheme could be improved or adapted in the future? thank you [insert name of person responsible for overall supervison] [insert name of law school] © [insert law school name] [year] 39 appendix d – audience evaluation form evaluation form thank you for being part of this streetlaw project. we would like to improve the scheme in the future so that the experience is as worthwhile as possible for you and future audiences. please take a moment to complete this questionnaire and then please return it to: [insert relevant contact details – perhaps give them back to the group contact and they could then forward them back to you?] please evaluate on a scale of 1-5 1 – very poor 5 – very good please circle the appropriate figure and provide any comments and reasons in the space below the question. 1 was the presentation/workshop of interest to you? 1 2 3 4 5 2 which aspect of the presentation did you find most useful and why? streetlaw follow-up questionnaire (for the audience) dates of visit(s): …………………………………………………………………………………… theme of presentation: ………………………………………………………………………….. © [insert law school name] [year] 40 3 which aspects were least valuable and why? 4 was the information provided clearly? if not, which bits were unclear? 1 2 3 4 5 5 was there enough / too much / too little material in the session? 1 2 3 4 5 6 would you be interested in taking part in another streetlaw project? yes / no / maybe 7 if so, what areas of law would you like to find out more about? 8 do you have any other comments about how the scheme could be improved/ adapted in the future? thank you [insert name of law school] imagine this: you have just had a lecture on the impact of the human rights act. you know all about the european convention the rules concerning torture and degrading treatment, fair trial, privacy, family life. you have even talked about it in a ... score presentation issue (1 – 5) comment streetlaw follow-up questionnaire streetlaw follow-up questionnaire is it possible to go from zero to 60? an evaluation of one effort to build belief, capacity, and community in street law instructors in one weekend i. introduction 2 ii. a review of street law 4 iii. paper a: “from zero to sixty: building belief, capacity, and community in street law instructors in one weekend” 6 iv. building belief, capacity and community in the orientation weekend 7 a) building belief: learner-centered education 7 b) building capacity: teacher preparation 10 c) building community 13 v. methods 16 vi. evaluation: does this work? 17 a) part i 17 b) part ii 20 c) part iii 21 d) part iv 24 e) thematic results 29 vii. limitations and future research 32 viii. conclusion 33 iv. appendices 35 is it possible to go from zero to 60? an evaluation of one effort to build belief, capacity, and community in street law instructors in one weekend seán arthurs, melinda cooperman, jessica gallagher, dr freda grealy, john lunney, rob marrs & richard roe[footnoteref:1] [1: seán arthurs was a clinical teaching fellow with the street law clinic at georgetown university law center from 2011-2013 and an adjunct professor with the clinic in 2014. he has presented, written, and trained on learner centered education with diverse audiences in a variety of contexts around the globe. melinda cooperman is an attorney at the children’s law center (clc) in washington, d.c., where she represents children in abuse and neglect cases as a guardian ad litem, and works as a consultant in the field of law related education. prior to joining clc, melinda taught at the street law clinic at georgetown university law center and ran the marshall-brennan constitutional literacy project at american university’s washington college of law. jessica gallagher was the 2014-2016 clinical teaching fellow with the street law clinic at gulc. she earned her j.d. from lewis & clark law school in 2012 and is a member of the north carolina bar. dr. freda grealy is a solicitor and head of the diploma centre at the law society of ireland. she introduced street law to the law society in 2013 and leads a number of their street law programmes. john lunney is a solicitor and course manager at the diploma centre of the law society of ireland and also leads their street law programme. rob marrs is head of education at the law society of scotland and leads on implementation of street law. richard l. roe is professor of law and director of the georgetown street law program; he has taught street law at georgetown since 1980 and has facilitated a form of this training dozens of times at georgetown and around the globe.] abstract “from zero to sixty: building belief, capacity, and community in street law instructors in one weekend”,[footnoteref:2] offered guidance in how to prepare law students to teach street law through an annotated step-by-step outline of a unique weekend orientation program developed and field-tested by the seminal georgetown street law program and delivered in partnership with the law societies of ireland and scotland. although this seminal paper provided scholars and practitioners with invaluable resources, recommendations, and insights, readers left this original paper with a critical unanswered question: does this orientation program actually work? [2: arthurs, s., cooperman, m., gallagher, j., grealy, f., lunney, j., marrs, r., & roe, r. (2017). from zero to 60: building belief, capacity and community in street law instructors in one weekend. international journal of clinical legal education, 24(2), 118-241] in the present paper, we strongly answer that question in the affirmative. we briefly revisit our original paper as context and then present, share, and discuss both quantitative and qualitative data gathered to evaluate how effectively the orientation program accomplished its stated goals of building belief, capacity, and community in street law instructors in one weekend. the results derived from the data collected in both ireland and scotland evidence a series of powerful outcomes that support the orientation program’s efficacy and impact. we hope that the transformative change in attitudes and student growth measured over the course of the weekend will act as a catalyst to practitioners seeking to prepare the next generation of street lawyers and launch the next wave of street law programs. i. introduction in “from zero to sixty: building belief, capacity, and community in street law instructors in one weekend,” we presented and described our street law training program in a manner that would enable practitioners around the globe to review our approach, understand why it works, and adopt any potentially helpful aspects.[footnoteref:3] we introduced readers to street law and the street law methodology and explained how our teaching methodology and three-day orientation are grounded in research and exemplify best practices in teaching and learning at the intersection of civic education, learner-centered education, intensive teacher preparation, and community building. we provided practitioners with a step-by-step description of each of the weekend training activities and explained how these activities play out in practice. we also demonstrated that central to our orientation program is a consistent commitment to ensuring that each session in our program aligns with the steps of the broader street law learning trajectory and reinforces our core goals of building belief, capacity, and community amongst the participant in our orientation. [3: id.] we closed “from zero to sixty: building belief, capacity, and community in street law instructors in one weekend,” with suggestions for further research, and included a preview of this paper, where we will explore the impact and efficacy of the street law orientation program and positively answer the question “does it work?”[footnoteref:4] although we as authors are dedicated proponents of the street law methodology and can share a host of stories and anecdotal evidence around the powerful impact street law can have on both participants and trainees, we are also very aware of the importance of empirical proof of concept, especially when trying to gather support for a novel program. [4: arthurs, s., cooperman, m., gallagher, j., grealy, f., lunney, j., marrs, r., & roe, r. (2017). from zero to 60: building belief, capacity and community in street law instructors in one weekend. international journal of clinical legal education, 24(2), 118-241.] as educators and program developers, we recognize that formal assessment and evaluation are essential aspects of measuring program success and critical to determining whether our program achieves its stated objectives. furthermore, the feedback gathered through both qualitative and quantitative measures helps inform both how to revise our present model and how to improve future efforts. accordingly, and with the goal of moving beyond anecdotal evidence and trainee enthusiasm, we designed and administered the first quantitative and qualitative evaluations of the street law orientation weekend during the 2015 trainings in dublin and edinburgh. we implemented a preand post-test model that all trainees completed before the orientation weekend and immediately upon completion of the weekend. the results of this evaluation indicate that the orientation weekend was markedly successful in changing trainee attitudes around their belief in learner-centered education, their capacity to deliver these lessons, and the value of community in the classroom. this paper takes the results of our evaluation and answers the question “does it work?” and is written as a companion paper to “from zero to sixty: building belief, capacity, and community in street law instructors in one weekend.”[footnoteref:5] our goals in this companion paper are threefold: (1) to present the data we collected over the course of our orientations in dublin, ireland, and edinburgh, scotland; (2) to provide an in-depth discussion of our results; and (3) to address practical considerations around length and scope of the orientation weekend. consistent with our training objectives, our evaluation of quantitative and qualitative data focused on measuring the growth in participants’ belief in the street law methodology, capacity to utilize that methodology to teach learned-centered law related lessons to their students, and belief in the importance the role community plays in street law programs. [5: id.] we will first provide a review of the street law methodology, an overview of paper a, “from zero to sixty: building belief, capacity, and community in street law instructors in one weekend,”[footnoteref:6] and a description of the three-day street law orientation detailed by that paper. then, we will explain the methods we used to measure the growth in participant’s belief, capacity, and community, and provide a detailed analysis of the results and feedback cycles. finally, we will conclude and discuss the limitations of our data and offer recommendations for future study. at the outset, this paper purposely draws heavily on its predecessor so that readers without background knowledge of the street law program or orientation can engage with this program as a stand-alone paper. [6: arthurs, s., cooperman, m., gallagher, j., grealy, f., lunney, j., marrs, r., & roe, r. (2017). from zero to 60: building belief, capacity and community in street law instructors in one weekend. international journal of clinical legal education, 24(2), 118-241.] ii. a review of street law street law, where law students or lawyers teach about the law in local school, correctional, and community settings, is the fastest growing and most popular type of legal clinic in the world.[footnoteref:7] one reason for this is that street law is an accessible and low-cost model that can be employed in almost any setting, with any population, and on any legal subject. street law does not require law student participants to follow local practice rules and does not threaten the income or livelihoods of local lawyers. in emphasizing legal education that is experiential in nature, the street law model appeals to law schools responding to the legal profession’s demand for lawyers who can contribute quickly and learn on their feet. at the same time, street law helps satisfy the voracious desire of lay people to understand their rights and responsibilities in a world full of increasingly complex and obtuse legal systems, and satisfies that demand with a unique pedagogical approach that values the student, her voice, and her background. [7: although street law began as a legal clinic at georgetown in 1972, changes in the american bar association’s definition of “legal clinic” led to its transformation into an experiential “practicum” at georgetown starting in fall 2016. the program operation and methodology described here has not changed. in many law schools around the world, it functions as clinical legal education. it is also conducted outside of law schools as an experiential or educational program.] the street law program that originated at georgetown university law center in 1972 as a “course in practical law”[footnoteref:8] for high school students taught by law students for academic credit[footnoteref:9] has become far more than that today. street law programs now exist at more than 50 law schools in the united states, dozens of international law schools, and in a variety of community and non-profit partnerships.[footnoteref:10] from the outset, street law’s appeal has been derived just as much from its relevant law-related content–“the law useful in people’s daily lives, the legal processes, constitutional principles and values on which these are based”[footnoteref:11]—as from the activity based, participatory teaching methodology it employs. over forty plus years, street law programs have steadily improved this learner-centered, democratic model of teaching and learning and its interactive and experiential methodology to not only teach about the law but also to create an experience of justice in the classroom. [8: newman, j., o’brien, e.l., arbetman, l.p., cameron, l., mcclymont, m., & mcmahon, e. (1977). street law: a course in practical law. st. paul, mn: west publishing company.] [9: roe, r. (2012). law school-high school. in s.e. redfield (ed.), the education pipeline to the professions: programs that work to increase diversity (pp. 135-144). durham, nc: carolina academic press.] [10: robust international street law programs include those in south africa (www.streetlaw.org.za), the czech republic (i.e., http://streetlaw.eu), the united kingdom (i.e., http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/law/life/pro-bono/streetlaw.aspx), hong kong (i.e., https://disabilityrights.law.hku.hk/street-law/), and australia (i.e., www.streetlaw.org.au). additionally, there are myriad examples of local bar associations, community organizations, state-related law organizations, regional global associations, private corporations, and even a dedicated non-profit, street law, inc., providing community legal education around the world on a range of topics under the umbrella term, “street law,” or related terms such as community legal education, justice education, and democracy education. street law, inc. offers one compilation of global programs through their website. street law, inc. (n.d.). program locations. retrieved from http://www.streetlaw.org/en/program_map.] [11: newman, j., o’brien, e.l., arbetman, l.p., cameron, l., mcclymont, m., & mcmahon, e. (1977). street law: a course in practical law. st. paul, mn: west publishing company.] street law accomplishes this by introducing learners to the law and legal systems while remaining grounded in the best practices in civic education that research shows help learners develop their cognitive, expressive, academic, and critical thinking abilities through the exploration of a variety of civic and law-related situations. regardless of program or country, it has become known for its distinctive emphasis on learner-centeredness and corresponding de-emphasis on direct instruction. street law instruction is largely non-directive. it emphasizes the cognitive, expressive, and reflective work of the learners themselves. essentially, the teacher serves not as a lecturer but as the facilitator who guides students through the components of each lesson.[footnoteref:12] the students do the talking and thinking; and they do the primary cognitive expressive work to create substantive meaning and connections to the law and legal theories. using rich, thoughtfully structured lessons, this methodology draws from both the hands-on model of clinical legal education as well as the best practices for effective teaching and learning, as discussed infra. this student-centered approach is well suited both for the new instructors[footnoteref:13] and for the learners they teach,[footnoteref:14] from elementary and high school students[footnoteref:15] to adults. [12: for more on this approach of guided participation, see, e.g., mascolo, m. f. (2009). beyond student-centered and teacher-centered pedagogy: teaching and learning as guided participation. pedagogy and the human sciences, 1(1), 3-27.] [13: roe, r. (2012). law school-high school. in s.e. redfield (ed.), the education pipeline to the professions: programs that work to increase diversity (pp. 135-144). durham, nc: carolina academic press.] [14: american bar association. (2003). essentials of law-related education. chicago, il.] [15: arthurs, s. (2015). street law: creating tomorrow’s citizens today. lewis & clark law review, 19(4), 925-961.] street law programs are also characterized by the diversity of teaching and learning methods. specific methods include case studies, role plays, hypotheticals, problems, mock trials, hearings and legislative activities, negotiations, small group discussions, news articles, video clips, guest participants, field trips, projects, and simulations. the wide range of topics includes current events and issues, negotiations and dispute resolution, human rights, criminal law and procedure, family, housing, liability, and many others. embracing such a broad range of teaching methods and covering topics that are both ubiquitous and distinct to every community enables street law to have a wide-ranging effect because street law audiences are often very diverse. by drawing upon established best practices in civic education that promote increased tolerance, respect, and understanding of others, an appreciation for the importance of democratic debate, and a practical grounding in the complexities of implementing justice and human rights in real world settings, street law creates an environment for learners to truly experience and compare how the law and legal systems differ throughout communities across the world. iii. paper a: “from zero to sixty: building belief, capacity, and community in street law instructors in one weekend” as we discussed in paper a, “from zero to sixty: building belief, capacity, and community in street law instructors in one weekend,” there is an increased need for street law training that equips law students and new lawyers with the tools they need to successfully introduce and support the street law model in school, correctional, and community settings, as interest in street law grows across the globe.[footnoteref:16] these trainings must be meaningful and substantive for the law students, developed in a collaborative way that embeds skills and knowledge in street law practitioners and faculty, and be responsive to the local context where host institutions often face significant time and resource constraints. paper a described one training approach that has been repeatedly successful in developing law student instructors who believe in the potential of street law’s unique learner-centered methodology, are capable of designing and executing lessons exemplifying this approach, and who are committed to building and valuing community in their classrooms.[footnoteref:17] [16: arthurs, s., cooperman, m., gallagher, j., grealy, f., lunney, j., marrs, r., & roe, r. (2017). from zero to 60: building belief, capacity and community in street law instructors in one weekend. international journal of clinical legal education, 24(2), 118-241.] [17: id.] over the last four years, past and present staff from the street law program at georgetown university law center, in collaboration with their irish and scottish colleagues, have conducted seven in-person, weekend-long orientation programs in dublin with the law society of ireland and in edinburgh with the law society of scotland. although the context and audience differed, the orientations remained essentially identical in both sites. between friday evening’s introductions and sunday afternoon’s demonstration teaching sessions, the street law facilitators help build belief in the street law methodology, instructional capacity in the future street law teachers, and community among the young lawyers and law students who attend the orientation. paper a described the first step in the street law process—how to teach the law students, new lawyers, or trainees to be street law instructors,[footnoteref:18] with particular reference to the weekend orientations conducted for the recently qualified lawyers and lawyers-in-training in the law societies of ireland and scotland in 2013, 2014 and 2015.[footnoteref:19] one of the most powerful qualities of the learner-centered street law methodology is that it can be applied in multiple different settings, including in different legal settings, and with different groups of people. we recognize this can lead to some confusion in terms. in paper a, for the purpose of ease of reading, we referred to the experienced street law faculty/trainers from georgetown and the host sites as facilitators.[footnoteref:20] the facilitators are the ones who design and lead the weekend training sessions. we referred to the main audience of this weekend training, whether lawyers, law students, or community leaders as trainees. these trainees are the people who will be going into the schools or communities to lead interactive lessons. we referred to the ultimate consumers of these street law lessons, typically secondary school students or community members seeking to know more about the law, as students.[footnoteref:21] again for ease of reading, and to remain consistent, we will utilize the same terminology. [18: the street law program model in law schools involves a combination of training in the methodology and content of the course as well as highly supportive supervision of the law student instructors. these instructors typically receive academic credit, attend a multi-day orientation and weekly seminars, are given regular, supportive supervision through observations, feedback and consultations with faculty, engage in reflection through journals, lesson planning analysis, and portfolio assessment, and receive substantial administrative support for their placements in the school, corrections and community settings.] [19: arthurs, s., cooperman, m., gallagher, j., grealy, f., lunney, j., marrs, r., & roe, r. (2017). from zero to 60: building belief, capacity and community in street law instructors in one weekend. international journal of clinical legal education, 24(2), 118-241.] [20: id.] [21: in ireland, the trainees are at the start of their professional practice course i (ppci) at the law society and for most of them this is the beginning of their 2 year traineeship. the students are in their fourth year of secondary school, which is referred to as transition year (ty). in scotland, the trainees are generally undergraduate llb students (although occasionally are postgraduate students undertaking the vocational diploma in professional legal practice). the students are pupils in secondary school typically aged between 14 years old and 16 years old. a full explanation of the routes to qualification as a solicitor in both jurisdictions can be found in section 7 of the fair access to the legal profession report. marrs, r., & meighan, d. (2014). fair access to the legal profession. the law society of scotland. retrieved from https://www.lawscot.org.uk/media/295065/fair-access-for-publication-300114.pdf.] iv. building belief, capacity and community in the orientation weekend the goal of our orientation program is that by the end of the weekend our trainees will develop (1) belief in the learner centered educational methodology, (2) the capacity to design engaging and stimulating lesson plans that tie concretely to legal substance, and (3) an understanding of the importance of community—both amongst the trainees themselves and the high school students in their classrooms. building belief: learner-centered education developing trainees’ belief in the power and potency of learner-centered education is one of the three key goals of the street law orientation weekend, because the heart of any street law lesson is the opportunity for students and trainees to think critically about the law, the societal context that gave rise to our legal system, and their own role within this legal system. our goal is that trainees leave orientation believing in the street law teaching methodology so that they will dedicate the time necessary to design innovative, engaging lesson plans for their high school students. learner-centered education rests on the premise that students need to be actively involved in their own learning and that students construct knowledge, develop deeper conceptual understanding, and are better able to transfer their learning to new situations when they are authentically involved in the learning process.[footnoteref:22] learner-centered education is often contrasted with the more traditional top-down, teacher-centered approach known as instructionism that views students as empty vessels to be filled and teachers as the imparters and transmitters of everything students need to know.[footnoteref:23] with learner-centered education, students’ prior knowledge is valued and the teacher’s role is to help students build bridges between their current understandings and the new subject matter.[footnoteref:24] [22: sawyer, r. k. (ed.). (2005). the cambridge handbook of the learning sciences. cambridge university press; prince, m. (2004). does active learning work? a review of the research. journal of engineering education, 93(3), 223-231; bransford, j. d., brown, a. l., & cocking, r. r. (1999). how people learn. washington, dc: national academy press.] [23: sawyer, r. k. (ed.). (2005). the cambridge handbook of the learning sciences. cambridge university press; bransford, j. d., brown, a. l., & cocking, r. r. (1999). how people learn. washington, dc: national academy press.] [24: bransford, j. d., brown, a. l., & cocking, r. r. (1999). how people learn. washington, dc: national academy press; toshalis, e., & nakkula, m. j. (2012). motivation, engagement, and student voice. the education digest, 78(1), 29.] learner-centered classrooms are characterized by classroom activities that value student voice and participation.[footnoteref:25] students in learner-centered environments are in control of the learning process and become creators of meaning.[footnoteref:26] as students actively integrate new information, experiences, relationships and perspectives into their preexisting structures and values, students develop new cognitive structures and build more complex understandings of both the present academic task and the different ways they can engage with challenging and unfamiliar topics.[footnoteref:27] students are encouraged to use their reasoning skills, creativity, and strategic thinking abilities to approach and resolve problems that both have more than one right answer and more than one pathway to a final conclusion.[footnoteref:28] group deliberation and group problem solving are hallmarks of effective learner-centered education as students learn from their peers and from the interaction between their own ideas and the ideas of their classmates.[footnoteref:29] the teacher is positioned as a co-constructor of knowledge and a facilitator of student learning rather than a gatekeeper of information.[footnoteref:30] through this process of independent discovery, discourse, dialogue, and reflection, students become meaning-makers and gain a sense of agency over their own learning.[footnoteref:31] this process of wrestling with new ideas and engaging in cognitive conflict, accompanied by student demonstrations of their learning and reflection on the learning process helps students become better critical thinkers and develop enhanced analytical and higher order thinking skills.[footnoteref:32] [25: mostrom, a. m., & blumberg, p. (2012). does learning-centered teaching promote grade improvement? innovative higher education, 37(5), 397-405; mezirow, j. (1997). transformative learning: theory to practice. new directions for adult and continuing education, 1997(74), 5-12; bransford, j. d., brown, a. l., & cocking, r. r. (1999). how people learn. washington, dc: national academy press.] [26: bransford, j. d., brown, a. l., & cocking, r. r. (1999). how people learn. washington, dc: national academy press; toshalis, e., & nakkula, m. j. (2012). motivation, engagement, and student voice. the education digest, 78(1), 29; mostrom, a. m., & blumberg, p. (2012). does learning-centered teaching promote grade improvement? innovative higher education, 37(5), 397-405.] [27: bransford, j. d., brown, a. l., & cocking, r. r. (1999). how people learn. washington, dc: national academy press; cheang, k. i. (2009). effect of learner-centered teaching on motivation and learning strategies in a third-year pharmacotherapy course. american journal of pharmaceutical education, 73(3), 42; crumly, c. (2014). pedagogies for student-centered learning: online and on-ground. augsburg fortress publishers.] [28: mezirow, j. (1997). transformative learning: theory to practice. new directions for adult and continuing education, 1997(74), 5-12; bransford, j. d., brown, a. l., & cocking, r. r. (1999). how people learn. washington, dc: national academy press.] [29: mezirow, j. (1997). transformative learning: theory to practice. new directions for adult and continuing education, 1997(74), 5-12; prince, m. (2004). does active learning work? a review of the research. journal of engineering education, 93(3), 223-231.] [30: crumly, c. (2014). pedagogies for student-centered learning: online and on-ground. augsburg fortress publishers; cheang, k. i. (2009). effect of learner-centered teaching on motivation and learning strategies in a third-year pharmacotherapy course. american journal of pharmaceutical education, 73(3), 42.] [31: toshalis, e., & nakkula, m. j. (2012). motivation, engagement, and student voice. the education digest, 78(1), 29; bransford, j. d., brown, a. l., & cocking, r. r. (1999). how people learn. washington, dc: national academy press; mitra, d. l. (2004). the significance of students: can increasing “student voice” in schools lead to gains in youth development? teachers college record, 106(4), 651-688. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9620.2004.00354.x.] [32: prince, m. (2004). does active learning work? a review of the research. journal of engineering education, 93(3), 223-231; bransford, j. d., brown, a. l., & cocking, r. r. (1999). how people learn. washington, dc: national academy press; mezirow, j. (1997). transformative learning: theory to practice. new directions for adult and continuing education, 1997(74), 5-12; toshalis, e., & nakkula, m. j. (2012). motivation, engagement, and student voice. the education digest, 78(1), 29; magnussen, l., ishida, d., & itano, j. (2000, november). the impact of the use of inquiry-based learning as a teaching methodology on the development of critical thinking. journal of nursing education, 39(8), 360-364.] the street law orientation weekend is heavily learner-centered itself because in order to build and deliver lessons that will help students accomplish these tasks, trainees must first experience for themselves the effectiveness of the methodology. through the process of firsthand engagement followed by debrief, reflection, and critique, trainees come to appreciate the powerful transformative power of learner-centered education and can then draw on their own experience to inform their understandings around the efficacy of this approach in promoting student engagement, motivation, and learning. this experiential approach enables trainees to develop their own belief in the potential of learner-centered education. over the course of the weekend, trainees are introduced to a variety of novel and creative scenarios and hypotheticals of increasing complexity, each requiring them to work collaboratively and construct meaning in a new learning framework. the diversity of interactive activities and the fun nature of these activities is intentional as research indicates that the “more unusual the learning action, the better it is remembered.”[footnoteref:33] in addition to the novelty and fun component of these activities, the emphasis on trainee voice, choice, and challenge leads to consistently high levels of engagement and motivation throughout the weekend. [33: lowenstein, g. (1994) the psychology of curiosity; a review and reinterpretation psychological bulletin 116(1):75 – 98.] in ‘who gets the heart?’, for example, trainees work in small groups to select one of five deserving and needy candidates for the sole available heart transplant. each candidate profile contains factors that trainees can interpret differently as counseling in favor (or against) each candidate’s application. as trainees weigh and evaluate the merits of each candidate in their small groups, the different values and importance each trainee assigns to these factors becomes evident. trainees share their opinions, present arguments in support of different candidates and must eventually reconcile their divergent priorities and perspectives and decide on a final candidate. as with each of the weekend’s activities, trainees are authentically in charge of the decision-making process (including determining how they will reach a final decision, whether through voting or required consensus, for example) and are prompted to share their group’s reasoning and arguments with the broader group. the cognitive conflict that inheres to this process of actively assimilating new and diverse opinions into present knowledge structures in order to achieve group consensus requires trainees to examine and reflect on their own belief systems and values. a group decision requires compromise, consideration of peer perspectives, and an opportunity to present and defend one’s opinions while accommodating the opinions of others. through this process, trainees develop awareness around competing belief and value systems as well as a heightened sense of their own agency and the power of their individual voices in impacting a final decision. building capacity: teacher preparation in addition to developing trainees’ beliefs in the merits of learner-centered education, the street law orientation weekend also seeks to develop in trainees the capacity to design and deliver learner-centered lessons, because belief alone is not enough. trainees must have the ability to design lessons on their own that stimulate high cognitive critical thinking skills, in order to carry the heart of street law into their classrooms. developing and implementing engaging lesson plans is a skillset that is developed throughout the semester as trainees flex their muscles to create innovative lessons and the ability to reflect on and improve those first iterations. by first experiencing the weekend orientation as learners themselves, the trainees come to understand the theory and pedagogy in order to then design and conduct their own high quality lessons. we recognize that a comprehensive teacher preparation program involves years of study and practice. to help us meet the challenge of preparing the trainees to be successful teachers in just one weekend, we rely on four core best practices in teacher preparation to help us position the trainees to succeed in their field placements. first, the street law facilitators model the methods, practices, and activities that trainees will later employ with their own students. research on teacher preparation and development demonstrates that teachers first learn about effective teaching by observing how effective teachers teach.[footnoteref:34] through observation of successful learner-centered techniques and pedagogical practices, new teachers gain an appreciation for what is possible and are more likely to replicate these techniques and practices in their own classrooms.[footnoteref:35] additionally, through participation in lessons and activities as learners, novice teachers gain an understanding for how these lessons play out in practice and what to expect as their own students experience similar lessons.[footnoteref:36] consistent modeling of learner-centered teaching techniques combined with first-hand involvement in learner-centered activities helps create in students both the desire and capacity to utilize these approaches in their own classrooms.[footnoteref:37] [34: korthagen, f., loughran, j., & russell, t. (2006). developing fundamental principles for teacher education programs and practices. teaching and teacher education, 22(8), 1020-1041; stigler, j. w., & hiebert, j. (1999). the teaching gap: best ideas from the world’s teachers for improving education in the classroom. new york, ny: free press; darling-hammond, l., & mclaughlin, m. w. (2011). policies that support professional development in an era of reform. phi delta kappan, 92(6), 81-92; grossman, p. (2011). framework for teaching practice: a brief history of an idea. teachers college record, 113(12), 2836-2843.] [35: darling-hammond, l., & mclaughlin, m. w. (2011). policies that support professional development in an era of reform. phi delta kappan, 92(6), 81-92; bransford, j. d., brown, a. l., & cocking, r. r. (1999). how people learn. washington, dc: national academy press; hiebert, j., & morris, a. k. (2012). teaching, rather than teachers, as a path toward improving classroom instruction. journal of teacher education, 63(2), 92-102.] [36: grossman, p. (2011). framework for teaching practice: a brief history of an idea. teachers college record, 113(12), 2836-2843; hiebert, j., & morris, a. k. (2012). teaching, rather than teachers, as a path toward improving classroom instruction. journal of teacher education, 63(2), 92-102; bransford, j. d., brown, a. l., & cocking, r. r. (1999). how people learn. washington, dc: national academy press.] [37: bransford, j. d., brown, a. l., & cocking, r. r. (1999). how people learn. washington, dc: national academy press; tabak, i., & radinsky, j. (2015). educators’ coaches, peers, and practices: revisiting how teachers learn. journal of the learning sciences, 24(3), 343–346; hiebert, j., & morris, a. k. (2012). teaching, rather than teachers, as a path toward improving classroom instruction. journal of teacher education, 63(2), 92-102.] second, we deliberately guide the trainees in reflection and processing sessions in order to help them develop the capacity to integrate successful teaching techniques and methods into their own practices.[footnoteref:38] the best teachers often make teaching seem effortless and it is only through reflection and deliberate inquiry that the intentionality of their efforts and the connection between their teaching moves and the resultant student learning can be made visible.[footnoteref:39] through a process of surfacing and reflecting on pedagogical intent and execution, new teachers develop the capacity and awareness to later incorporate similar (or better) methods into their own teaching.[footnoteref:40] [38: ball, d. l., & cohen, d. k. (1999). developing practice, developing practitioners: toward a practice-based theory of professional education. teaching as the learning profession: handbook of policy and practice, 3-22; hiebert, j., & morris, a. k. (2012). teaching, rather than teachers, as a path toward improving classroom instruction. journal of teacher education, 63(2), 92-102; lieberman, ann. (1995). practices that support teacher development. phi delta kappan 76(8), 591.] [39: hiebert, j., & morris, a. k. (2012). teaching, rather than teachers, as a path toward improving classroom instruction. journal of teacher education, 63(2), 92-102; garet, m. s., porter, a. c., desimone, l., birman, b. f., & yoon, k. s. (2001). what makes professional development effective? results from a national sample of teachers. american educational research journal, 38(4), 915-945; zeichner, k. (2012). the turn once again toward practice-based teacher education. journal of teacher education, 63(5), 376-382.] [40: bransford, j. d., brown, a. l., & cocking, r. r. (1999). how people learn. washington, dc: national academy press; tabak, i., & radinsky, j. (2015). educators’ coaches, peers, and practices: revisiting how teachers learn. journal of the learning sciences, 24(3), 343–346; hiebert, j., & morris, a. k. (2012). teaching, rather than teachers, as a path toward improving classroom instruction. journal of teacher education, 63(2), 92-102.] the third best practice of teacher preparation we rely on during the orientation centers on the collaborative nature of teacher learning and development.[footnoteref:41] the benefits of sharing a learning experience around new methods, pedagogy, or content-specific instruction and then collectively discussing and reflecting on that experience are multiple and significant. this collaborative process generates a diversity of ideas, observations, and perspectives that help new teachers understand both the theoretical rationale and practical implications from multiple angles.[footnoteref:42] the group approach to lesson study and the development of new skills and knowledge also creates communities of practice where the art and science of teaching is valued as both challenging and a continual improvement process.[footnoteref:43] working in teams to engage with problems of practice and skill development is safer and more welcoming as critique and critical analysis are depersonalized and each member participates in order to elevate the collective learning.[footnoteref:44] the experience of contributing to collective improvement and problem solving in groups helps aspiring teachers realize the advantages of group work and understand how to structure effective groups within their own classrooms.[footnoteref:45] [41: easton, lois brown. (2008). from professional development to professional learning. phi delta kappan 89(10), 755-761; bush, robert n. (1977). we know how to train teachers: why not do so! journal of teacher education 28(6), 5-9; grossman, p., compton, c., igra, d., ronfeldt, m., shahan, e., & williamson, p. (2009). teaching practice: a cross-professional perspective. teachers college record, 111(9), 2055-2100; papay, j. p., taylor, e. s., tyler, j. h., & laski, m. (2016). learning job skills from colleagues at work: evidence from a field experiment using teacher performance data (no. w21986). national bureau of economic research.] [42: darling-hammond, l., & mclaughlin, m. w. (2011). policies that support professional development in an era of reform. phi delta kappan, 92(6), 81-92; easton, lois brown. (2008). from professional development to professional learning. phi delta kappan 89(10), 755-761.] [43: papay, j. p., taylor, e. s., tyler, j. h., & laski, m. (2016). learning job skills from colleagues at work: evidence from a field experiment using teacher performance data (no. w21986). national bureau of economic research; darling-hammond, l., & mclaughlin, m. w. (2011). policies that support professional development in an era of reform. phi delta kappan, 92(6), 81-92; bush, robert n. (1977). we know how to train teachers: why not do so! journal of teacher education 28(6), 5-9.] [44: bush, robert n. (1977). we know how to train teachers: why not do so! journal of teacher education 28(6), 5-9; easton, lois brown. (2008). from professional development to professional learning. phi delta kappan 89(10), 755-761; grossman, p., compton, c., igra, d., ronfeldt, m., shahan, e., & williamson, p. (2009). teaching practice: a cross-professional perspective. teachers college record, 111(9), 2055-2100.] [45: berry, b., daughtrey, a., & wieder, a. (2010). preparing to lead an effective classroom: the role of teacher training and professional development programs. center for teaching quality; garet, m. s., porter, a. c., desimone, l., birman, b. f., & yoon, k. s. (2001). what makes professional development effective? results from a national sample of teachers. american educational research journal, 38(4), 915-945.] finally, we provide the trainees the opportunity to practice their teaching by designing and implementing their own lessons. without question, the design and implementation of one’s own lessons is the single most important component of teacher training.[footnoteref:46] teachers, like students, learn through doing.[footnoteref:47] when teachers move from merely thinking about teaching or learning about theory into the process of preparing and delivering a lesson, they are challenged to think about how an idea would work in practice and the myriad different skills, techniques, and pedagogical moves required to execute that idea in a classroom.[footnoteref:48] actually implementing and delivering that lesson then allows teachers to rehearse and apply those skills and provides immediate feedback and accountability on both what went well and what can be improved for the next iteration.[footnoteref:49] through this practice-based approach, teachers construct their own new knowledge frames and develop an informed vision and understanding of what teaching entails that is both grounded in authentic work and adapted to fit their own teaching style and context.[footnoteref:50] [46: garet, m. s., porter, a. c., desimone, l., birman, b. f., & yoon, k. s. (2001). what makes professional development effective? results from a national sample of teachers. american educational research journal, 38(4), 915-945; grossman, p., & mcdonald, m. (2008). back to the future: directions for research in teaching and teacher education. american educational research journal, 45(1), 184-205; grossman, p. (2011). framework for teaching practice: a brief history of an idea. teachers college record, 113(12), 2836-2843; ball, d. l., & cohen, d. k. (1999). developing practice, developing practitioners: toward a practice-based theory of professional education. teaching as the learning profession: handbook of policy and practice, 1, 3-22; zeichner, k. (2012). the turn once again toward practice-based teacher education. journal of teacher education, 63(5), 376-382.] [47: bransford, j. d., brown, a. l., & cocking, r. r. (1999). how people learn. washington, dc: national academy press; korthagen, f., loughran, j., & russell, t. (2006). developing fundamental principles for teacher education programs and practices. teaching and teacher education, 22(8), 1020-1041; mascolo, m. f. (2009). beyond student-centered and teacher-centered pedagogy: teaching and learning as guided participation. pedagogy and the human sciences, 1(1), 3-27.] [48: garet, m. s., porter, a. c., desimone, l., birman, b. f., & yoon, k. s. (2001). what makes professional development effective? results from a national sample of teachers. american educational research journal, 38(4), 915-945; zeichner, k. (2012). the turn once again toward practice-based teacher education. journal of teacher education, 63(5), 376-382; easton, lois brown. (2008). from professional development to professional learning. phi delta kappan 89(10), 755-761.] [49: easton, lois brown. (2008). from professional development to professional learning. phi delta kappan 89(10), 755-761; grossman, p. (2011). framework for teaching practice: a brief history of an idea. teachers college record, 113(12), 2836-2843.] [50: hiebert, j., & morris, a. k. (2012). teaching, rather than teachers, as a path toward improving classroom instruction. journal of teacher education, 63(2), 92-102; zeichner, k. (2012). the turn once again toward practice-based teacher education. journal of teacher education, 63(5), 376-382; korthagen, f. a., & kessels, j. p. (1999). linking theory and practice: changing the pedagogy of teacher education. educational researcher, 28(4), 4-17.] building community the final theme of the street law orientation weekend focuses on the importance of building community in the classroom, between facilitators and trainees, and within the trainee group. building this community is a central objective of the orientation weekend and the street law approach is grounded in a well-documented body of research around best practices in teaching and learning broadly and in teacher training specifically. we define what we mean by community, discuss the benefits of community, and explain how community is created before turning to the specifics of the street law approach. within the education space, a community can be defined as a collection of individual learners with shared practices, beliefs, and understandings who collectively participate in the pursuit of a common goal.[footnoteref:51] a welcoming community, or positive learning environment, is characterized by mutual interdependence, meaningful caring and supportive relationships, and the creation of a safe space where individuals feel valued and heard.[footnoteref:52] members of this group, classroom, or school community understand both why the community exists and the purpose of this community.[footnoteref:53] community formation occurs when individuals share an experience that creates and reinforces a group identity and provides feelings of connectedness and belonging to members of this learning community.[footnoteref:54] [51: battistich, v., solomon, d., watson, m., & schaps, e. (1997). caring school communities. educational psychologist, 32(3), 137-151; barab, s. a., & duffy, t. (2000). from practice fields to communities of practice. theoretical foundations of learning environments, 1(1), 25-55.] [52: battistich, v., solomon, d., watson, m., & schaps, e. (1997). caring school communities. educational psychologist, 32(3), 137-151; flanagan, c., stoppa, t., syvertsen, a.k., & stout, m. (2010). schools and social trust. in l. sherrod, j. torney-purta, & c. flanagan (eds.), handbook of research on civic engagement in youth (307-330). hoboken, nj: john wiley & sons, inc.] [53: lave, j., and wenger, e. (1991). situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation. new york: cambridge university press; barab, s. a., makinster, j., & scheckler, r. (2004). characterizing system dualities: building online community. designing for virtual communities in the service of learning, 53-90.] [54: barab, s. a., & duffy, t. (2000). from practice fields to communities of practice. theoretical foundations of learning environments, 1(1), 25-55; flanagan, c., stoppa, t., syvertsen, a.k., & stout, m. (2010). schools and social trust. in l. sherrod, j. torney-purta, & c. flanagan (eds.), handbook of research on civic engagement in youth (307-330). hoboken, nj: john wiley & sons, inc.] establishing and supporting a positive learning community or climate leads to significant and interconnected pro-social academic, behavioral, and social outcomes. students who experience positive learning environments perform better academically, are more open to learning, and are more likely to trust the knowledge and information shared by the teacher.[footnoteref:55] students who feel cared for and emotionally supported in their learning communities are more motivated, engaged, and enthusiastic.[footnoteref:56] these students put forth more effort, participate more frequently, and attend and persist in the learning process to a greater degree than students who don’t share a sense of community.[footnoteref:57] the relationships and peer and teacher support that characterize supportive and safe learning communities create a sense of belonging that leads to less intragroup competitiveness, heightened cooperation, increased willingness to take risks, and a more positive attitude towards school and learning.[footnoteref:58] [55: berkowitz, r., moore, h., astor, r. a., & benbenishty, r. (2016). a research synthesis of the associations between socioeconomic background, inequality, school climate, and academic achievement. review of educational research, 0034654316669821; furrer, c., & skinner, e. (2003). sense of relatedness as a factor in children's academic engagement and performance. journal of educational psychology, 95(1), 148; bryk, a., & schneider, b. (2002). trust in schools: a core resource for improvement. new york, ny: russell sage foundation; raider-roth, m. (2005). trusting what you know: the high stakes of classroom relationships. indianapolis, in: jossey-bass; olson, kirke (2014). the invisible classroom: relationships, neuroscience, & mindfulness in school. new york, ny: w.w. norton & company, ltd.] [56: tschannen-moran, m. (2014). the interconnectivity of trust in schools. in van maele, d., van houtte, m., & forsyth, p.b. (eds.) trust and school life (pp. 57-83). new york, ny: springer; urdan, t., & schoenfelder, e. (2006). classroom effects on student motivation: goal structures, social relationships, and competence beliefs. journal of school psychology, 44(5), 331349.] [57: ruzek, e. a., hafen, c. a., allen, j. p., gregory, a., mikami, a. y., & pianta, r. c. (2016). how teacher emotional support motivates students: the mediating roles of perceived peer relatedness, autonomy support, and competence. learning and instruction, 42, 95-103; furrer, c., & skinner, e. (2003). sense of relatedness as a factor in children's academic engagement and performance. journal of educational psychology, 95(1), 148; urdan, t., & schoenfelder, e. (2006). classroom effects on student motivation: goal structures, social relationships, and competence beliefs. journal of school psychology, 44(5), 331349; klem, a. m., & connell, j. p. (2004). relationships matter: linking teacher support to student engagement and achievement. journal of school health, 74(7), 262-273.] [58: gillen-o’neel, c., & fuligni, a. (2013). a longitudinal study of school belonging and academic motivation across high school. child development, 84(2), 678-692; furrer, c., & skinner, e. (2003). sense of relatedness as a factor in children's academic engagement and performance. journal of educational psychology, 95(1), 148; klem, a. m., & connell, j. p. (2004). relationships matter: linking teacher support to student engagement and achievement. journal of school health, 74(7), 262-273; tschannen-moran, m. (2014). the interconnectivity of trust in schools. in van maele, d., van houtte, m., & forsyth, p.b. (eds.) trust and school life (pp. 57-83). new york, ny: springer; wentzel, k. r. (1997). student motivation in middle school: the role of perceived pedagogical caring. journal of educational psychology, 89(3), 411.] the value and importance of creating a positive and safe learning community also applies to the process of educating the individuals who bear primary responsibility for shaping this climate—teachers. teachers who participate in positive learning communities during their teacher training also exhibit the impactful academic, behavioral, and social outcomes outlined above.[footnoteref:59] additionally, teacher training models that intentionally create communities, or cohorts, of novice teachers produce more confident and effective teachers who are more likely to seek and share resources, more likely to feel a sense of collective responsibility, and more likely to continue to grow and develop as teachers even beyond the initial shared experience.[footnoteref:60] significantly, the benefits of a teacher training model that encourages and promotes community don’t end with the teacher training process. teachers who learn in communities gain an appreciation for both the importance of learning communities and the steps needed to create these communities, a mindset and skillset that later translate into their own practices and the communities they will build in their own classrooms.[footnoteref:61] [59: beck, c., & kosnik, c. (2001). from cohort to community in a preservice teacher education program. teaching and teacher education, 17(8), 925-948; wenger, e., & lave, j. (1991). situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation. cambridge: cambridge university press.] [60: wenger, e., & lave, j. (1991). situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation. cambridge: cambridge university press; beck, c., & kosnik, c. (2001). from cohort to community in a preservice teacher education program. teaching and teacher education, 17(8), 925-948; hadar, l., & brody, d. (2010). from isolation to symphonic harmony: building a professional development community among teacher educators. teaching and teacher education, 26(8), 1641-1651; berry, b., daughtrey, a., & wieder, a. (2010). preparing to lead an effective classroom: the role of teacher training and professional development programs. center for teaching quality.] [61: catalano, r. f., oesterle, s., fleming, c. b., & hawkins, j. d. (2004). the importance of bonding to school for healthy development: findings from the social development research group. journal of school health, 74(7), 252-261; beck, c., & kosnik, c. (2001). from cohort to community in a preservice teacher education program. teaching and teacher education, 17(8), 925-948.] community does not happen by accident. building a positive learning community involves intentionality around structure, relationships, and pedagogy. to form a community, there must first be a shared experience and a common purpose that give rise to a group identity.[footnoteref:62] supportive and caring relationships are formed by respecting individual differences, demonstrating and practicing genuine care for the wellbeing of others, and allowing for the sharing of individual opinions and experiences.[footnoteref:63] giving students the opportunity to get to know one another, to share about their own backgrounds, and to listen to the views and viewpoints of others are techniques that help build the trust and safe space elements of community.[footnoteref:64] specific pedagogical practices that help build community include giving students autonomy and decision-making authority, structured problem-solving tasks that require cooperative and small group work, and providing multiple opportunities for interaction, discussion, and sharing.[footnoteref:65] [62: barab, s. a., & duffy, t. (2000). from practice fields to communities of practice. theoretical foundations of learning environments, 1(1), 25-55.] [63: flanagan, c., stoppa, t., syvertsen, a.k., & stout, m. (2010). schools and social trust. in l. sherrod, j. torney-purta, & c. flanagan (eds.), handbook of research on civic engagement in youth (307-330). hoboken, nj: john wiley & sons, inc.; arbaugh, j. b., & garrison, d. r. (2007). researching the community of inquiry framework: review, issues and future directions. the internet and higher education, 10, 157-172; paloff, r., & pratt. k, (2001). building learning communities in cyberspace: effective strategies for the online classroom. san francisco: jossey-bass; klem, a. m., & connell, j. p. (2004). relationships matter: linking teacher support to student engagement and achievement. journal of school health, 74(7), 262-273; wentzel, k. r. (1997). student motivation in middle school: the role of perceived pedagogical caring. journal of educational psychology, 89(3), 411] [64: klem, a. m., & connell, j. p. (2004). relationships matter: linking teacher support to student engagement and achievement. journal of school health, 74(7), 262-273; hadar, l., & brody, d. (2010). from isolation to symphonic harmony: building a professional development community among teacher educators. teaching and teacher education, 26(8), 1641-1651; allen, j., gregory, a., mikami, a., lun, j., hamre, b., & pianta, r. (2013). observations of effective teacher-student interactions in secondary school classrooms: predicting student achievement with the classroom assessment scoring system-secondary. school psychology review, 42(1), 76.] [65: catalano, r. f., oesterle, s., fleming, c. b., & hawkins, j. d. (2004). the importance of bonding to school for healthy development: findings from the social development research group. journal of school health, 74(7), 252-261; goodenow, c. (1993). classroom belonging among early adolescent students’ relationships to motivation and achievement. the journal of early adolescence, 13(1), 21-43; ruzek, e. a., hafen, c. a., allen, j. p., gregory, a., mikami, a. y., & pianta, r. c. (2016). how teacher emotional support motivates students: the mediating roles of perceived peer relatedness, autonomy support, and competence. learning and instruction, 42, 95-103.] over the course of the street law orientation weekend, relationships are intentionally cultivated as trainees move through different groups and interact with each other over the course of the weekend. each interactive activity throughout the orientation is designed to give trainees the chance to discuss and make decisions and the opportunity to explain their views, both within their small groups and within the larger group. trainees problem solve in teams and divergent views are encouraged and supported. a slideshow of pictures showing trainees talking, laughing, and interacting during the day’s activities are shown at the beginning of the following day. trainees work in pairs to design their practice teaching lesson and the feedback and support trainees receive during the ensuing peer debrief are intentionally structured to build confidence and highlight the positive elements of each practice lesson. the shared experience of coming together to spend a long weekend talking, learning, and interacting around a common purpose, forges a group identity and sense of belonging to a cohesive and supportive community of street law teachers marked by a sense of cooperation and connectedness. the closing quaker reflection is the biggest testament to the community built during the street law orientation weekend, however. many trainees explicitly commented on the sense of trust, belonging, and connectedness they now feel as part of this group, and in both ireland and scotland, at least one trainee mentioned how they didn’t think it was possible to build such a tight community in such a short time . . . but were proven wrong. v. methods accordingly having defined the three stated aims of the training weekends, we designed and developed testing instruments to measure trainee growth over the course of the orientation weekend in the three core areas of belief, capacity, and community. testing was by way of a preand post-test design, characterized as an experimental design, where two measurements are made of the same experimental unit—in our case, groups of trainees undertaking street law orientation training. the first measurement takes place prior to the administration of an intervention (the orientation training) and there is a distance in time between the collection of the post-test data from the pre-test[footnoteref:66]. [66: bonate, p.l (2000). analysis of pretest-posttest designs. crc press.] data collection trainees in both scotland and ireland were asked to anonymously complete a pre-test, prior to the orientation weekend and a near-identical post-test in the week following their orientation weekend. copies of these testing instruments can be found in the appendices i and ii. in scotland, as the trainees are not students of the lss, they were asked to complete the pre-test on arrival at the lss in advance of the opening session of their orientation. the questionnaire was distributed in paper format, with lss staff subsequently entering the data into survey monkey. the post-test was also completed onsite at the lss; with students asked to complete the post-test in paper format at a final debrief with lss staff, following the conclusion of formal orientation activities. again this data was subsequently entered into survey monkey by law society staff. the response rate was 90% of trainees who attended. in ireland, trainees are students at the law society and the pre-test was distributed electronically via survey monkey in the week preceding the orientation. students received the test via email and were simultaneously allowed to prioritize options for school placements. the follow up post-test survey was distributed in the week following the orientation, with students encouraged to complete the test to facilitate research into the training weekend to enable future improvements. there were 40 trainees participating in the orientation weekend; 33 trainees (82.5%) completed the pre-test and 31(77.5%) trainees completed the post-test. data analysis the trainee submissions from both scotland and ireland were independently compiled and scored to evaluate whether the training was successful in meeting the stated aims of building belief, community, and capacity in each site. the full results are displayed in the attached charts.[footnoteref:67] in the following sections, we take the reader through excerpts of the results from each of the four different sections of the pre and post-test. these results illustrate clear, and nearly identical, trends in both scotland and ireland that we believe reflect a strong endorsement of the street law methodology and the merits of the orientation weekend program. we highlight several measurements that reflect a seismic shift in attitudes amongst trainees and discuss how the results specifically support each of the stated aims. [67: see appendices iii and iv.] after this sequential discussion of results as set forth in the preand post-tests, we next share a comparative thematic analysis of the results. we coded our questions to correspond to one of our three theme objectives—belief, capacity, and community—and discuss the change of trainee attitudes within each theme and between the irish and scottish participant groups. vi. evaluation: does this work? 1. part i in part i, trainees were presented with six statements used to measure trainee attitudes around their excitement to teach, beliefs around different pedagogical methods, and the importance of personal connections in the classroom. a likert scale, which is a survey question that offers a scaled range of ore coded responses, was used. trainees were asked to indicate their levels of agreement or disagreement by circling one of five pre-coded responses with the use of a neutral point neither agreeing nor disagreeing. results discussion a cursory glance at quantitative data from the preand post-test results in this section evidences a demonstrable shift in attitudes amongst trainees. we highlight in the following charts some of the notable transformations. the responses to the opening question, “i am excited about teaching”, strikingly reflect this change. trainee enthusiasm towards teaching increased significantly in both ireland and scotland. at the beginning of the weekend, the average response to “i am excited about teaching” for scottish trainees was 1.68. by the end of the weekend almost all, 95.96%, of the scottish trainees strongly agreed to being excited about teaching with an average response of 1.04, a 37.86% increase in enthusiasm. the irish response pre-training averaged to 1.79. after the training, the average response regarding enthusiasm was 1.39, with 45.45% of irish trainees strongly agreeing that they were excited about teaching. these responses represented a 22.42% increase in enthusiasm among the irish trainees. juxtaposing this question with “i feel confident that i know how to teach secondary school students about the law” also reveals a significant increase in the trainees’ confidence in their ability to teach law. the scottish trainees had a 43.20% increase in confidence and the irish trainees had a 35.92% increase. another significant question in this section related to whether trainees could present legal issues in an interesting way. this issue goes to the heart of street law methodology and the importance placed on connecting with students to create engagement in the classroom. prior to the training, scottish trainees’ average response was 2.00, or agree. this response shifted 34.78% to an average response of 1.30, with 69.57% of responders answering strongly agree. the scottish post-test saw 100% of trainees in the agree fields, with a noticeable shift to strongly agree from an original position of agree. pre-training, the irish trainees’ average response to whether they could “present legal issues in an interesting and engaging way” was 2.5, halfway between agree and neutral. after training, the average response dropped to 1.77, between agree and strongly agree, a change of 29.03%. this section is indicative of the interconnection between the goals of developing trainee belief in the potential of learner-centered education and building teaching capacity in trainees and enabling them to design and deliver learner centered lessons. pre-test data suggests that to volunteer for this project, trainees have a certain base level of confidence in their own ability. the question for facilitators is how can this confidence and belief be fostered? we propose that the increased enthusiasm and confidence of trainees in the post test results is a result of their exposure to learner-centered methodology through an orientation process that is itself heavily learner-centered.[footnoteref:68] through their direct engagement with learner-centered pedagogy, trainees come to their own understanding of its transformative potential. simultaneously, the movement in questions 3-6 indicates a new understanding among trainees of how to engage students in the classroom. they have gained in confidence, having developed their ability to design and teach a lesson, and are motivated by the potential of an engaging learner-centered lesson. [68: arthurs, s., cooperman, m., gallagher, j., grealy, f., lunney, j., marrs, r., & roe, r. (2017). from zero to 60: building belief, capacity and community in street law instructors in one weekend. international journal of clinical legal education, 24(2), 145-152. page 145 -152] 1. part ii part ii of the testing instrument offered students 10 statements to review and asked them to circle the statements they believed to be accurate. these statements generated quantitative data focused on trainees’ confidence in designing and executing interactive, learner-centered lessons involving legal issues. the charts in the appendix show the full results of section ii of the scottish and irish evaluations.[footnoteref:69] [69: see appendix iii.] results discussion linking directly to the aim of building trainee belief in the power of learner-centered education, the most transformational change in this section was the understanding of what learner-centered education is. in both orientation locations trainees had very little understanding of this concept prior to their training. in scotland, only 4.26% of trainees thought they understood the concept prior to their training, compared against 95.65% of trainees during our post-test phase. similarly in ireland, at the start of the weekend, only 15.15% of trainees thought they knew the meaning of learner-centered education. at the end of the weekend, this had risen to 83.87% of trainees. the statement “i know the difference between lower and higher level thinking” saw a similar growth trend in positive responses off a low level of understanding in the pre-test questionnaire. this trend suggests positive movement towards our goal of building capacity in trainees. a fundamental component of street law is to teach in a learner-centered manner which models to students an experience of justice and equality in the classroom. in order to teach students in a learner-centered way, trainees must understand the difference between lowerand higher-level thinking. it is encouraging to see trainees building understanding of these pivotal concepts over the course of the orientation weekend as a first step to implementing them in their future teaching placement. further significant movement came in response to the statement “i would be comfortable reaching out to 5 or more law society peers for resources and ideas”. the percentage rose in both locations (in scotland from 63.83% to 86.96% and in ireland from 66.67% to 96.77%). from these replies, we see evidence of a burgeoning community within the group. this is reinforced by the growth in positive responses to the statement “i know how to create a welcoming and safe learning environment in a school classroom”. both these replies evidence support for the dual aspect of building community, both within the group of trainees and in the classroom. [footnoteref:70] we can infer from these results that they will take the community building elements of the training weekend that they have recognized and use them to create a positive and welcoming environment in their future classrooms. [70: arthurs, s., cooperman, m., gallagher, j., grealy, f., lunney, j., marrs, r., & roe, r. (2017). from zero to 60: building belief, capacity and community in street law instructors in one weekend. international journal of clinical legal education, 24(2), 161-168.] another indicator to highlight is the growth in positive response to the statement “teaching secondary school students aligns with many skills from the practice of law”. street law programs and other civic education programs that place law students in schools and community settings to teach law have a concrete place in the growing field of experiential and clinical legal education throughout the world. from a faculty standpoint, we often tout the benefits of these programs and regularly connect the skills students gain to marjorie shultz’s and sheldon zedeck’s “26 lawyering effectiveness factors.”[footnoteref:71] the positive growth within the trainee responses shows that trainees instinctively make the connection between their work as teachers and the skills they need to succeed as lawyers. [71: schultz, m.m., & zedeck, s. (2009). predicting lawyer effectiveness: a new assessment for use in law school admission decisions. cels 2009 4th annual conference on empirical legal studies paper.] it should be noted that there was a negative finding in this section. in response to the statement “lecture is a more effective teaching method than discussion”, there was an increase in trainees in scotland (1 pre 5 post) and ireland (1 pre – 4 post) who in post-test chose that lecture is a more effective teaching method than discussion. we surmise that this incongruous finding is a result of the fact that unlike the other statements offered, this statement was framed with a negative response matching to the stated goals of the weekend and that a number of students do not take sufficient time to consider the questions and mark what they believe to be a positive finding. this issue will be discussed further in section vii “limitations and future research”. 1. part iii part iii of the testing instrument asked trainees to circle a number from 1 to 10 to indicate their connection to the law society community, perspective on the legal profession, and whether they planned to teach law as they had been taught. results discussion as in part i and part ii, we saw positive movement between the quantitative results from pre-test and post-test in part iii of the survey. the first statement, “i feel comfortable and connected to others in the law society community”, directly addressed the stated goal of building community. the responses in the chart below clearly demonstrated that the training contributed to building community amongst the trainee groups. prior to the weekend, the average response was 5.66 in scotland and 6.94 in ireland. this changed, after the weekend, to 8.30 and 8.42, respectively. this supports the anecdotal evidence of facilitators from both law societies who have witnessed the strong friendships that have developed, team work involved, and strong camaraderie amongst previous street law cohorts. the second statement – “i could see myself volunteering to lead a presentation on a complicated legal topic to a group of farmers or pharmacists” – saw positive movement that suggested success in building belief and capacity. prior to the weekend, the average response was 5.66 in scotland and 5.06 in ireland. this changed after the weekend to 8.14 and 7.32, respectively. these responses have been supported by examples of volunteering by previous street law trainees in ireland. the street law clinic is moving into its fifth year and each year, veteran street lawyers are invited back to the law society to facilitate a number of programs. one example of this would be the prison law program.[footnoteref:72] between autumn 2016 and spring 2017, eleven former street law trainees (some of whom are now practicing solicitors) collaborated with law society staff in the induction of new trainees for the prison law strand of the street law clinic. further, these former street law trainees accompany the neophyte street lawyers at each of the prison program sessions; further cementing a sense of community between different cohorts of street law trainees. in addition, whilst traditionally the street law program takes place during the first block of classes at the law society of ireland (“lsi”) professional practice i, increasingly street law trainees are proactive in terms of making contact to get involved in projects during their second block onsite in their professional practice ii. as an example, in 2017 eight trainees were involved in an initiative with local schools. the lsi has also developed a “solicitors of the future program” and is on the cusp of launching an initiative for “solicitors in the community”.[footnoteref:73] once again, a number of trainees who have been through the street law program have returned to be involved. this collaborative approach ensures sustainability and credibility for the program and supports the street law aims of capacity building, inclusion, and community. [72: the law society of ireland facilitates a prison law program with detainees in wheatfield prison in partnership with the charity solas and their compass program for prisoners. solas homepage (n.d.). retrieved july10 , 2017, from http://www1.solas.ie/ ] [73: details of the solicitors of the future program can be found at https://www.lawsociety.ie/public/transition-year-programmes/solicitors-of-the-future/ and the solicitors in the community at https://www.lawsociety.ie/globalassets/documents/education/diplomas/streetlaw/solicitors-in-the-community-street-law-programme.pdf both retrieved august 03 2017.] the chart below illustrates responses to the third question which sought to ascertain whether trainees would “teach secondary school students the same way i was taught”. this statement was written to test whether street law is significantly different than the way in which law is taught in both ireland and scotland. reverse scoring[footnoteref:74] was used to show this negative movement in order to parallel the other graphs in the section. we determine that the low bar of pre-test results to this question suggests that trainees aspire to teach in a different manner to the way they were educated. the negative movement in trainee responses further demonstrates that trainees see value in the street law methodology and recognize the differences it has with the traditional, teacher-directed method of teaching law. [74: see appendix iii.] it should again be noted that approximately three students in each jurisdiction indicated in post-testing that they would teach secondary school students in the same way that they were taught. again, this finding is contrary to the overall findings of our testing and arises in a question that was framed with a negative response correlating to the research aims. this exposes a potential limitation of quantitative data gathering in a pre-test and post-test design and will be discussed further in the “limitations and future research” section below. 1. part iv part iv of the testing instrument consisted of a short answer section. we asked four questions, set forth below, that were designed to explore trainees’ existing views on the law and law society, as well as their theoretical and practical approach to legal education. results discussion these short answer questions, in particular, expanded on the quantitative findings of parts i-iii and helped illustrate how radically the street law approach differed from the educational experience of trainees to date. question 1 asked students to list words that described their “education experience to date”. we have used a word cloud illustration below to demonstrate the frequency with which we heard different words trainees used to describe their experience. scotland pre-test ireland pre-test ireland and scotland do have different routes to qualification as a lawyer, so it is understandable that the words that are used will differ somewhat.[footnoteref:75] there are, however, broad similarities in the pre-test results. in both ireland and scotland, the words that feature most prominently in the pre-weekend word cloud were: challenging, interesting, informative, and engaging. however, references to traditional methods of learning were common: ‘lectures’, ‘exams’, ‘essays’, etc. additionally, numerous pejorative words— ‘complicated’, ‘confusing’, ‘dated’, ‘inconsistent’, ‘not interesting’—were listed alongside more positive comments: ‘fulfilling’, ‘fascinating’, interesting’, ‘intriguing’. [75: irish street lawyers are training to become a solicitor having completed an undergraduate degree (which may or may not have been in law). their training will be a mix of vocational learning at the law society and training in the workplace with a solicitor. scottish street lawyers are all undergraduate law students.] post-test most strikingly in post-test, no obviously pejorative words are present and words associated with traditional teaching methods have disappeared. the words that now feature most prominently in both scotland and ireland are broadly similar; ‘fun’, ‘interesting’, engaging’, ‘community’, ‘interactive’, and ‘inspiring’. pejorative words have been replaced with the positivity of ‘amazing’, ‘unforgettable’, ‘confidence’, ‘inspiring’, ‘beneficial’, ‘enlightening’ and ‘exciting’. the post-test word clouds are presented are below: scotland post-test ireland post-test we also collated these responses from the “educational experience of law to date” question in ireland, and share these in the chart below. in identifying the importance of engagement, fun, and interaction, trainees have recognized a new way of teaching that places connection with students as its core principle. in question 2, trainees responded to a query about how they would teach a class about different classes of murder. the responses provide further evidence of the increased capacity of students to teach in a learner-centered manner and reflect the opportunity trainees had at orientation to practice their teaching by designing and implementing their own learner-centered lessons[footnoteref:76], the most important component of teacher training.[footnoteref:77] in the pre-test, trainee responses largely focused on top-down instruction whereby the instructor would lecture or explain the relevant law; in post-test responses, trainees demonstrated a strong preference for interactive lessons that engage students on factual cases and are led by the student voice. this shift in preferred pedagogy from top-down instruction is be evidenced in the chart below, which compares the citation of three terms (explain, discussion, and group work) in the irish pre-test and post-test. these results are an indicator of how trainees moved away from lecture style pedagogy with its emphasis on explanation to a learner centered classroom with its emphasis on collaborative group work and discussion. [76: arthurs, s., cooperman, m., gallagher, j., grealy, f., lunney, j., marrs, r., & roe, r. (2017). from zero to 60: building belief, capacity and community in street law instructors in one weekend. international journal of clinical legal education, 24(2), 226-229.] [77: garet, m. s., porter, a. c., desimone, l., birman, b. f., & yoon, k. s. (2001). what makes professional development effective? results from a national sample of teachers. american educational research journal, 38(4), 915-945; grossman, p., & mcdonald, m. (2008). back to the future: directions for research in teaching and teacher education. american educational research journal, 45(1), 184-205; grossman, p. (2011). framework for teaching practice: a brief history of an idea. teachers college record, 113(12), 2836-2843; ball, d. l., & cohen, d. k. (1999). developing practice, developing practitioners: toward a practice-based theory of professional education. teaching as the learning profession: handbook of policy and practice, 1, 3-22; zeichner, k. (2012). the turn once again toward practice-based teacher education. journal of teacher education, 63(5), 376-382] question 3 took the stated goal of community and looked at whether the orientation weekend could help build a connection between the trainees and the organizing institution, by asking trainees about their most valuable connection with the law society to date. pre-test responses identified trainee skills modules and the social element of their time in the law society, such as meeting new people, as key connections to date, with some students even leaving this question blank. an immediate positive connection with the host institutions and a true validation of the weekend from the local perspective was that 100% of trainees identified the street law training weekend as their most valuable connection in the post-test. while we recognize the potential recency bias in this outcome[footnoteref:78], nonetheless the responses illuminate an oft-overlooked benefit of street law trainings hosted by professional legal bodies or institutions; it helps establish strong relationships between members and their legal bodies, as well as establishing relationships within these bodies. the value of this collegiality is difficult to quantify at such an early stage in their careers although many law schools globally are considering how to encourage civility, collegiality and political fraternity[footnoteref:79] in their cohorts[footnoteref:80]. jonathan smasby, executive director for the texas center for legal ethics, who noted that there are many lawyers who would ‘like to do the right thing but don’t know what the right thing is’[footnoteref:81]. many have written about falling standards of civility and behavior in the legal professions globally. carter notes that by ‘’making the principal ethic merely one of victory’ lawyers cede the field to those with the least concern that ‘we are, all of us, not lone drivers but fellow passengers’[footnoteref:82]. street law trainings offer a unique channel for reaching young legal professionals and forming positive early connections. this connection can assist with the development of a positive professional identity. [78: dickey, d., & pearson, c. (2005). recency effect in college student course evaluations. practical assessment, research and evaluation, 10(6), 1-10.] [79: kronman, a. (1993) the lost lawyer: failing ideals of the legal profession. 93-101. harvard university press.] [80: linder, d., & levit n. (2014) ‘the good lawyer: seeking quality in the practice of law. oxford university press. (99-127).] [81: filisko, g.m. (2013) ‘’you’re out of order! dealing with the costs of incivility in the legal profession. american bar association journal january 2013 (33-37).] [82: carter, sl (1998). civility, manners, morals, and the etiquette of modern democracy. yale university press (286).] anecdotally, we would suggest that this connection continues and can be supported by trainees returning in subsequent years and remaining involved in different capacities with the program.[footnoteref:83] this would be an interesting research question to revisit in a longitudinal study as we surmise that this strong connection will remain when their trainees have graduated to the professional ranks. [83: arthurs, s., cooperman, m., gallagher, j., grealy, f., lunney, j., marrs, r., & roe, r. (2017). from zero to 60: building belief, capacity and community in street law instructors in one weekend. international journal of clinical legal education, 24(2), 226-229.] the final short answer question focused on what trainees believed to be the main goals of legal education for the public. there was a large degree of overlap in trainee responses to this question as they consistently recognized in preand post-test ideas such as “accessible” and “to create understanding” as goals of legal education. the major change in the post-test responses was the impact of street law in the increased reference to making legal education both relevant and engaging, concepts which had not been present at pre-test. 1. thematic results parts i, ii, and iii of the pre/ post-tests were also coded to indicate how they related to the themes of belief, capacity, and community.[footnoteref:84] each question was evaluated as to whether it spoke to belief, capacity, or community. those results were then combined by theme and analyzed for percent change pre to post-test. the coding of the questions allowed us to measure the percent change of each theme from before the training to after the training more clearly. by coding the questions and measuring percent change we were also able to compare changes in ireland and scotland to one another, despite the difference in the median numeric values of each question. we were excited to see that the numeric results backed our experience that all three themes increased over the course of the training. [84: see appendix v for coding of questions and statements.] in part i, scotland and ireland trainees both showed increases in belief, capacity, and community. in part ii, scotland and ireland trainees also showed increases in all three themes. lastly, part iii again showed increases in all three themes for trainees in both scotland and ireland. analysis of the results shows empirically that all three themes were increased over the training. moreover, the attainment of the stated themes can be summarized in the following quote from a trainee on their orientation experience: “i was not expecting to have my eyes opened to an entirely different method of teaching, one which i had never personally experienced before. the training weekend completely altered both my perspective on what way the street law model works and also my expectations for the six-week program ahead”. vii. limitations and future research this study aimed to provide an evaluation of the street law orientation weekend during 2015 trainings in dublin and edinburgh. specifically, the testing measured the immediate impact of the training weekend in meeting three stated objectives of building belief, capacity and community. we acknowledge some inherent limitations within this study. first, the pre-test and post-test framework, where participants completed their post-test immediately after completing their orientation training, has the potential to result in recency bias[footnoteref:85] which sees responses to recent events weighted more positively. while open-ended questioning can be utilized to overcome potential issues around recency bias, we would suggest that researchers undertaking a similar study would conduct further testing to establish if trainee responses post-orientation remain consistent through their teaching placement. data could be gathered following trainees’ completion of their street law program using the same pre-test and post-test instrument at sufficient remove from the orientation weekend. alternatively a more qualitative approach could be adopted through the use of structured interviews or focus group and a longitudinal study to establish student perceptions of the success of the facilitators in achieving the aims of street law orientation. [85: dickey, d., & pearson, c. (2005). recency effect in college student course evaluations. practical assessment, research and evaluation, 10(6), 1-10.] within the paper we have also highlighted a number of incongruous results. we determined that these arose from the tendency of respondents to agree with questions. these respondents are known as “yea-sayers”.[footnoteref:86] a suggested recommendation to this potential limitation of closed questioning in survey questionnaires is to frame questions in the negative.[footnoteref:87] our use of negatively phrased questions indicated that a small number of trainees (three or four) in each location displayed “yea-saying” tendencies. the addition of the open-ended questions at part iv is a further method of overcoming this limitation. a further recommendation for more comprehensive and nuanced evaluation in future iterations would be the use of an independent third party evaluation. [86: mitchell, r.c., & carson, r.t. (1989) using surveys to value public goods the contingent valuation method. resources for the future.] [87: boynton, p. m., & greenhalgh, t. (2004). selecting, designing, and developing your questionnaire. bmj, 328(7451), 1312-1315.] while this study had a narrow focus, we also propose a number of areas of future research to provide further evidence that street law works. these potential areas of research include; · to what extent their street law experience helped develop trainees legal skills · the impact of street law on trainees’ professional identity and commitment to pro bono work · discovering the impact a street law program facilitated by trainees has on the critical thinking skills, active citizenship, and educational aspirations of the secondary school students taking the program · making the law accessible how street law programs advance and compliment the goals of law societies / public bodies/ universities viii. conclusion there is a reason why street law programs are the fastest-growing and most popular legal education programs in the world. street law programs are relatively easy to implement, offer young lawyers and law students the chance to work within their communities while gaining invaluable practical and legal skills, and are unique in both the scale and scope of their outreach to the general public. despite the prevalence of these programs across the globe, however, the research and literature base around street law remains scant. in our initial paper, from zero to 60: building belief, capacity and community in street law instructors in one weekend, we presented the research and methodology behind the critical initial training of street law trainees.[footnoteref:88] we also explained how we facilitate this initial training and included a step-by-step guide for interested practitioners. the question left unanswered in our initial paper was whether these trainings are effective. in this paper, we set forth both the qualitative and quantitative data that permits us to answer this question with a definitive yes. [88: arthurs, s., cooperman, m., gallagher, j., grealy, f., lunney, j., marrs, r., & roe, r. (2017). from zero to 60: building belief, capacity and community in street law instructors in one weekend. international journal of clinical legal education, 24(2), 118-241.] the universal spirit of collaboration and cooperation in street law has been evident in the experiences of the law societies of scotland and ireland in launching their own successful street law initiatives in collaboration with the georgetown street law program. we all believe deeply in the transformative power of the street law methodology and want to help make the law more relevant, more accessible, and more understandable to as many people as possible. this paper, read in conjunction with the companion paper from zero to sixty: building belief, capacity, and community in street law instructors in one weekend[footnoteref:89], provides both a practical annotated step-by-step guide to our successful weekend orientation program and evidence of the powerful outcomes that can result. we hope that this data can help inspire and support practitioners interested in starting or improving their own street law programs. [89: arthurs, s., cooperman, m., gallagher, j., grealy, f., lunney, j., marrs, r., & roe, r. (2017). from zero to 60: building belief, capacity and community in street law instructors in one weekend. international journal of clinical legal education, 24(2), 118-241.] all three of the partners involved here – the georgetown street law program, the law society of ireland, and the law society of scotland – are true learning organizations and would welcome further inquiry as well as visits during orientation weekends.[footnoteref:90] we are very cognizant that while we have described one successful orientation approach, we have by no means described the only approach that can work. practitioners will need to take into account their own site, resource, and context-specific factors, as well as their own preferences and capacities in developing their own programming. indeed, we are constantly refining and iterating on our own model and hope that practitioners will share their insights and experiences with us. [90: representatives from the following institutions have attended the most recent orientation weekends held at the law society of ireland – university of ulster jordanstown, northumbria university, nui galway, cepleruniversity of birmingham, middlesex university, letterkenny it, trinity college dublin.] iv. appendices appendix i: pre-test appendix ii: post-test appendix iii: law society of scotland pre and post test results appendix iv: law society of ireland pre and post test results appendix v: coding of questions and statements appendix i: pre-test autumn 2015 street law: what i know now instructions: this is not a test. this is a tool for us to get a sense of what you now know and how you think about certain topics. this is anonymous so please answer honestly-it will help us make the training better! part i: circle a number from 1 to 5 to indicate how much you agree or disagree strongly agree agree neutral  disagree strongly disagree 1 2 3 4 5 1. i am excited about teaching 1 2 3 4 5 2. i feel confident that i know how to teach secondary school students about the law. 1 2 3 4 5 3. i think using discussion in classrooms is an 1 2 3 4 5 essential tool for learning 4. i feel like i could present legal issues in an 1 2 3 4 5 interesting and engaging way 5. one of the most effective things a teacher can 1 2 3 4 5 do is make personal connections with his/her students 6. a good street law lesson will impact most 1 2 3 4 5 students in the same way, no matter what school or class part ii: please circle the statements you think are accurate now i know how to create a welcoming and safe learning environment in a school classroom i know the difference between lower level thinking and higher level thinking i feel like i could work with a partner to create an interactive legal education session i think i will teach the secondary school students in a more engaging and interactive way than my teachers did with me i know what learner centered education is i am looking forward to teaching the secondary school/transition year students i would be comfortable reaching out to 5 or more law society peers for resources and ideas lecture is a more effective teaching method than discussion teaching secondary school students aligns with many skills from the practice of law working in a small group is a productive use of time part iii: circle a number from 1-10 depending on how true you think the statement is 1. i feel comfortable and connected to others in the law society community not true true 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 2. i could see myself volunteering to lead a legal presentation on a complicated legal topic to a group of farmers or pharmacists not true true 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 3. i would teach secondary school students the same way i was taught law not true true 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 4. i have an understanding of the positive role solicitors/lawyers can play in the community not true true 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 part iv: short response 1. based on your experience/situation, list 3 words describing your educational experience of law to date: 2.  if you had to go into a secondary school classroom tomorrow and teach the class about the different types of murder, how do you think you would do it? please explain briefly. 3. what has been your most valuable experience or connection with the law society so far? 4. two main goals of law education for the public should be: appendix ii: post-test autumn 2015 street law: what i know now instructions: this is not a test. this is a tool for us to get a sense of what you now know and how you think about certain topics. this is anonymous so please answer honestly-it will help us make the training better! part i: circle a number from 1 to 5 to indicate how much you agree or disagree strongly agree agree neutral  disagree strongly disagree 1 2 3 4 5 1. i am excited about teaching 1 2 3 4 5 2. i feel confident that i know how to teach 1 2 3 4 5 secondary school students about the law. 3. i think using discussion in classrooms is an 1 2 3 4 5 essential tool for learning 4. i feel like i could present legal issues in an 1 2 3 4 5 interesting and engaging way 5. one of the most effective things a teacher can 1 2 3 4 5 do is make personal connections with his/her students 6. a good street law lesson will impact most 1 2 3 4 5 students in the same way, no matter what school or class part ii: please circle the statements you think are accurate now i know how to create a welcoming and safe learning environment in a school classroom i know the difference between lower level thinking and higher level thinking i feel like i could work with a partner to create an interactive legal education session i think i will teach the secondary school students in a more engaging and interactive way than my teachers did with me i know what learner centered education is i am looking forward to teaching the secondary school/transition year students i would be comfortable reaching out to 5 or more law society peers for resources and ideas lecture is a more effective teaching method than discussion teaching secondary school students aligns with many skills from the practice of law working in a small group is a productive use of time part iii: circle a number from 1-10 depending on how true you think the statement is 1. i feel comfortable and connected to others in the law society community not true true 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 2. i could see myself volunteering to lead a legal presentation on a complicated legal topic to a group of farmers or pharmacists not true true 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 3. i would teach secondary school students the same way i was taught law not true true 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 4. i have an understanding of the positive role solicitors/lawyers can play in the community not true true 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 part iv: short response 1. list 3 words describing your educational experience with law from street law orientation weekend: 2.  if you had to go into a secondary school classroom tomorrow and teach the class about the different types of murder, how do you think you would do it? please explain briefly. 3. what has been your most valuable experience or connection with the law society so far? 4. two main goals of law education for the public should be: appendix iii: law society of scotland pre and post test results pre-test circle a number from 1 to 5 to indicate how much you agree or disagree pre-test strongly agree (1) agree (2) neutral (3) disagree (4) strongly disagree (5) total weighted average i am excited about teaching. 48.94% 23 44.68% 21 2.13% 1 2.13% 1 2.13% 1 47 1.64 i feel confident that i know how to teach secondary school students about the law. 14.89% 7 34.04% 16 44.68% 21 6.38% 3 0.00% 0 47 2.43 i think using discussions in classrooms is an essential tool for learning. 72.34% 34 19.15% 9 4.26% 2 2.13% 1 2.13% 1 47 1.43 i feel like i could present legal issues in an interesting and engaging way. 21.28% 10 59.57% 28 17.02% 8 2.13% 1 0.00% 0 47 2.00 one of the most effective things a teacher can do is make personal connections with his/her students. 44.68% 21 36.17% 17 17.02% 8 2.13% 1 0.00% 0 47 1.77 a good street law lesson will impact most students in the same way, no matter what school or class. 29.79% 14 38.30% 18 17.02% 8 12.77% 6 2.13% 1 47 2.19 post-test please circle the statements you think are accurate now post-test strongly agree (1) agree (2) neutral (3) disagree (4) strongly disagree (5) total weighted average i am excited about teaching. 95.56% 43 4.44% 2 0.00% 0 0.00% 0 0.00% 0 45 1.04 i feel confident that i know how to teach secondary school students about the law. 62.22% 28 37.78% 17 0.00% 0 0.00% 0 0.00% 0 45 1.38 i think using discussions in classrooms is an essential tool for learning. 93.48% 43 6.52% 3 0.00% 0 0.00% 0 0.00% 0 46 1.07 i feel like i could present legal issues in an interesting and engaging way. 69.57% 32 30.43% 14 0.00% 0 0.00% 0 0.00% 0 46 1.30 one of the most effective things a teacher can do is make personal connections with his/her students. 76.09% 35 21.74% 10 2.17% 1 0.00% 0 0.00% 0 46 1.26 a good street law lesson will impact most students in the same way, no matter what school or class. 60.87% 28 21.74% 10 10.87% 5 2.17% 1 4.35% 2 46 1.67 81 pre-test. please choose the statements you think are accurate now. answer choices response number response percentage of total (47) i know how to create a welcoming and safe learning environment in a school classroom 21 44.68% i know the difference between lower level thinking and higher level thinking. 8 17.02% i feel like i could work with a partner to create an interactive legal education session. 40 85.11% i think i will teach the secondary school students in a more engaging and interactive way than my teachers did with me. 11 23.40% i know what learner-centered education is. 2 4.26% i am looking forward to teaching the secondary school/transition year students. 45 95.74% i would be comfortable reaching out to 5 or more law society peers for resources and ideas. 30 63.83% lecture is a more effective teaching method than discussion. 1 2.13% teaching secondary school students aligns with many skills from the practice of law. 27 57.45% working in a small group is a productive use of time. 33 70.21% post-test. please choose the statements you think are accurate now. answer choices response number response percentage of total (46) i know how to create a welcoming and safe learning environment in a school classroom. 45 97.83% i know the difference between lower level thinking and higher level thinking. 35 76.09% i feel like i could work with a partner to create an interactive legal education session. 44 95.65% i think i will teach the secondary school students in a more engaging and interactive way than my teachers did with me. 41 89.13% i know what learner-centered education is. 44 95.65% i am looking forward to teaching the secondary school/transition year students. 45 97.83% i would be comfortable reaching out to 5 or more law society peers for resources and ideas. 40 86.96% lecture is a more effective teaching method than discussion. 5 10.87% teaching secondary school students aligns with many skills from the practice of law. 39 84.78% working in a small group is a productive use of time. 42 91.30% circle a number from 1-10 depending on how true you think the statement is (1=not true, 10=true) based on your experience/situation, list 3 words describing your educational experience of law to date. the words that featured most prominently were: challenging, interesting, informative and engaging. traditional methods of learning were common ‘lectures, essays’ etc. there were numerous pejorative words: ‘complicated’, ‘confusing’, ‘dated’, ‘difficult’, ‘inconsistent’, ‘not interesting’, ‘overwhelming alongside more positive words ‘fulfilling, fascinating, ‘interesting’, ‘intriguing’. list three words describing your educational experience with law from the street law orientation weekend the words that featured most prominently were: fun, interesting, engaging, community, interactive, inspiring. there were no pejorative words. there were numerous positive words including ‘amazing’, ‘belief’, ‘beneficial’, ‘broadens perspectives’, ‘confidence’, ‘educational’, ‘enlightening’, ‘exciting’. appendix iv. law society of ireland pre and post test results pre-test. circle a number from 1 to 5 to indicate how much you agree or disagree. pre-test strongly agree (1) agree (2) neutral (3) disagree (4) strongly disagree (5) total weighted average i am excited about teaching. 45.45% 15 42.42% 14 3.03% 1 6.06% 2 3.03% 1 33 1.79 i feel confident that i know how to teach secondary school students about the law. 3.03% 1 21.21% 7 45.45% 15 21.21% 7 9.09% 3 33 3.12 i think using discussions in classrooms is an essential tool for learning. 45.45% 15 39.39% 13 15.15% 5 0.00% 0 0.00% 0 33 1.70 i feel like i could present legal issues in an interesting and engaging way. 6.25% 2 37.50% 12 56.25% 18 0.00% 0 0.00% 0 32 2.50 one of the most effective things a teacher can do is make personal connections with his/her students. 30.30% 10 36.36% 12 18.18% 6 15.15% 5 0.00% 0 33 2.18 a good street law lesson will impact most students in the same way, no matter what school or class. 12.12% 4 24.24% 8 24.24% 8 33.33% 11 6.06% 2 33 2.97 post-test. please circle the statements you think are accurate now. post-test strongly agree (1) agree (2) neutral (3) disagree (4) strongly disagree (5) total weighted average i am excited about teaching. 70.97% 22 25.81% 8 0.00% 0 0.00% 0 3.23% 1 31 1.39 i feel confident that i know how to teach secondary school students about the law. 16.13% 5 70.97% 22 9.68% 3 3.23% 1 0.00% 0 31 2.00 i think using discussions in classrooms is an essential tool for learning. 80.65% 25 16.13% 5 0.00% 0 0.00% 0 3.23% 1 31 1.29 i feel like i could present legal issues in an interesting and engaging way. 38.71% 12 51.61% 16 6.45% 2 0.00% 0 3.23% 1 31 1.77 one of the most effective things a teacher can do is make personal connections with his/her students. 54.84% 17 29.03% 9 12.90% 4 0.00% 0 3.23% 1 31 1.68 a good street law lesson will impact most students in the same way, no matter what school or class. 25.81% 8 38.71% 12 6.45% 2 19.35% 6 9.68% 3 31 2.48 pre-test. please choose the statements you think are accurate now. answer choices response number response percentage of total (33) i know how to create a welcoming and safe learning environment in a school classroom 6 18.18% i know the difference between lower level thinking and higher level thinking. 5 15.15% i feel like i could work with a partner to create an interactive legal education session. 30 90.91% i think i will teach the secondary school students in a more engaging and interactive way than my teachers did with me. 8 24.24% i know what learner-centered education is. 5 15.15% i am looking forward to teaching the secondary school/transition year students. 27 81.82% i would be comfortable reaching out to 5 or more law society peers for resources and ideas. 22 66.67% lecture is a more effective teaching method than discussion. 1 3.03% teaching secondary school students aligns with many skills from the practice of law. 14 42.42% working in a small group is a productive use of time. 26 78.79% post-test. please choose the statements you think are accurate now. answer choices response number response percentage of total (31) i know how to create a welcoming and safe learning environment in a school classroom. 28 90.32% i know the difference between lower level thinking and higher level thinking. 22 70.97% i feel like i could work with a partner to create an interactive legal education session. 31 100.00% i think i will teach the secondary school students in a more engaging and interactive way than my teachers did with me. 25 80.65% i know what learner-centered education is. 26 83.87% i am looking forward to teaching the secondary school/transition year students. 30 96.77% i would be comfortable reaching out to 5 or more law society peers for resources and ideas. 29 93.55% lecture is a more effective teaching method than discussion. 4 12.90% teaching secondary school students aligns with many skills from the practice of law. 19 61.29% working in a small group is a productive use of time. 28 90.32% circle a number from 1-10 depending on how true you think the statement is (1=not true, 10=true) based on your experience/situation, list 3 words describing your educational experience of law to date. list three words describing your educational experience with law from the street law orientation weekend. appendix v. coding of questions and statements belief capacity community i am excited about teaching. x x i feel confident that i know how to teach secondary school students about the law. x x i think using discussion in classrooms is an essential tool for learning. x i feel like i could present legal issues in an interesting and engaging way. x one of the most effective things a teacher can do is make personal connections with his/her students. x x a good street law lesson will impact most students in the same way, no matter what school or class. x x i know how to create a welcoming and safe learning environment in a school classroom. x x i know the difference between lower level thinking and higher level thinking. x i feel like i could work with a partner to create an interactive legal education session. x x i think i will teach the secondary school students in a more engaging and interactive way than my teachers did with me. x x i know what learner-centered education is. x x i am looking forward to teaching the secondary school/transition year students. x x i would be comfortable reaching out to 5 or more law society peers for resources and ideas. x x lecture is a more effective teaching method than discussion. x x teaching secondary school students aligns with many skills from the practice of law. x x working in a small group is a productive use of time. x x i feel comfortable and connected to others in the law society community. x i could see myself volunteering to lead a legal presentation on a complicated legal topic to a group of farmers or pharmacists. x x x i would teach secondary school students in the same way i was taught law. x x i have an understanding of the positive role solicitors/lawyers can play in the community. x x x based on your experience/situation, list 3 words describing your educational experience of law to date. x x x if you had to go into a secondary school classroom tomorrow and teach the class about the different types of murder, how do you think you would do it? please explain briefly. x what has been your most valuable experience or connection with the law society so far? x two main goals of law education for the public should be: x x i feel confident that i know how to teach secondary school students about the law. scotland post-test 1.3777777777777778 pre-test 2.4255319148936172 average response 1 = strongly agree 5 = strongly disagree i feel confident that i know how to teach secondary school students about the law. ireland post-test 2 pre-test 3.1212121212121215 average response 1 = strongly agree 5 = strongly disagree i feel like i could present legal issues in an interesting and engaging way. scotland post-test 1.3043478260869565 pre-test 2 average response 1 = strongly agree 5 = strongly disagree i feel like i could present legal issues in an interesting and engaging way. ireland post-test 1.774193548387097 pre-test 2.5 average response 1 = strongly agree 5 = strongly disagree i feel comfortable and connected to others in the law society community. ireland post-test 8.4193548387096779 pre-test 6.9393939393939394 average response 1 = not true 10 = true i feel comfortable and connected to others in the law society community. scotland post-test 8.304347826086957 pre-test 5.659574468085105 average response 1 = not true 10 = true i could see myself volunteering to lead a legal presentation on a complicated legal topic to a group of farmers or pharmacists. scotland post-test 8.108695652173914 pre-test 5.6595744680851068 average response 1 = not true 10 = true i could see myself volunteering to lead a legal presentation on a complicated legal topic to a group of farmers or pharmacists. ireland post-test 7.32258064516129 pre-test 5.0606060606060614 average response 1 = not true 10 = true i would teach secondary school students the same way i was taught law. scotland post-test 3.0217391304347831 pre-test 3.5957446808510642 average response 1 = not true 10 = true i would teach secondary school students to the same way i was taught law. post-test 2.9999999999999996 pre-test 3.3030303030303032 average response 1 = not true 10 = true street law pre-survey top words interesting challenging research lecture-based long reading 8 6 4 3 3 3 street law post-survey top words engaging fun interactive informative exciting inspiring interesting 14 12 9 7 3 3 3 pre explain discussion group work 15 4 8 post explain discussion group work 2 15 21 part i percent increase scotland part i belief capacity community 0.47758227195759395 0.53650556800079152 0.40058694057226685 ireland part i belief capacity community 0.3302366733023665 0.3575629714870221 0.40909090909090895 belief capacity community percent increase part ii percent increase scotland part ii belief capacity community 0.8545853123858238 0.78101316314319913 0.42096170457817461 ireland part ii belief capacity community 0.73477286616418835 0.99597017293352375 0.4664107485604605 belief capacity community percent increase part iii percent increase scotland part iii belief capacity community 0.22188289513867687 0.22188289513867687 0.29885911509515384 ireland part iii belief capacity community 0.10867078471745595 0.22567793342758002 0.25653327888934263 belief capacity community percent increase a good street law lesson will impact most students in the same way, no matter what school or class. pre-test 5 = strongly disagree 4 3 = neutral 2 1 = strongly agree 1 6 8 18 14 post-test 5 = strongly disagree 4 3 = neutral 2 1 = strongly agree 2 1 5 10 28 number of responses one of the most effective things a teacher can do is make personal connections with his/her students. pre-test 5 = strongly disagree 4 3 = neutral 2 1 = strongly agree 0 1 8 17 21 post-test 5 = strongly disagree 4 3 = neutral 2 1 = strongly agree 0 0 1 10 35 number of responses i feel like i could present legal issues in an interesting and engaging way. pre-test 5 = strongly disagree 4 3 = neutral 2 1 = strongly agree 0 1 8 28 10 post-test 5 = strongly disagree 4 3 = neutral 2 1 = strongly agree 0 0 0 14 32 number of responses i think using discussions in classrooms is an essential tool for learning. pre-test 5 = strongly disagree 4 3 = neutral 2 1 = strongly agree 1 1 2 9 34 post-test 5 = strongly disagree 4 3 = neutral 2 1 = strongly agree 0 0 0 3 43 number of responses i feel confident that i know how to teach secondary school students about the law. pre-test 5 = strongly disagree 4 3 = neutral 2 1 = strongly agree 0 3 21 16 7 post-test 5 = strongly disagree 4 3 = neutral 2 1 = strongly agree 0 0 0 17 28 number of responses i am excited about teaching. pre-test 5 = strongly disagree 4 3 = neutral 2 1 = strongly agree 1 1 1 23 21 post-test 5 = strongly disagree 4 3 = neutral 2 1 = strongly agree 0 0 0 2 43 number of responses i would teach secondary school students the same way i was taught law. pre-test response 10 = true 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 = not true 0 0 1 1 3 10 9 11 5 7 post-test response 10 = true 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 = not true 2 0 1 1 1 1 7 10 12 11 number of responses i have an understanding of the positive role solicitors/lawyers can play in the community. pre-test response 1 = not true 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 = true 0 0 0 0 1 5 11 15 7 8 post-test response 1 = not true 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 = true 1 0 0 0 0 0 3 15 14 13 weighted average 1 number of responses i feel comfortable and connected to others in the law society community. pre-test response 1 = not true 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 = true 1 0 4 2 19 6 8 6 0 1 post-test response 1 = not true 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 = true 0 1 0 0 1 2 5 16 10 11 number of responses i could see myself volunteering to lead a legal presentation on a complicated legal topic to a group of farmers or pharmacists. pre-test response 1 = not true 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 = true 1 2 4 6 6 14 6 5 1 2 post-test response 1 = not true 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 = true 0 2 0 0 1 4 6 9 14 10 number of responses a good street law lesson will impact most students in the same way, no matter what school or class. pre-test 5 = strongly disagree 4 3 = neutral 2 1 = strongly agree 2 11 8 8 4 post-test 5 = strongly disagree 4 3 = neutral 2 1 = strongly agree 3 6 2 12 8 number of responses one of the most effective things a teacher can do is make personal connections with his/her students. pre-test 5 = strongly disagree 4 3 = neutral 2 1 = strongly agree 0 5 6 12 10 post-test 5 = strongly disagree 4 3 = neutral 2 1 = strongly agree 1 0 4 9 17 number of responses i feel like i could present legal issues in an interesting and engaging way. pre-test 5 = strongly disagree 4 3 = neutral 2 1 = strongly agree 0 0 18 12 2 post-test 5 = strongly disagree 4 3 = neutral 2 1 = strongly agree 1 0 2 16 12 number of responses i think using discussions in classrooms in an essential tool for learning. pre-test 5 = strongly disagree 4 3 = neutral 2 1 = strongly agree 0 0 5 13 15 post-test 5 = strongly disagree 4 3 = neutral 2 1 = strongly agree 1 0 0 5 25 number of responses i feel confident that i know how to teach secondary students about the law. pretest 5 = strongly disagree 4 3 = neutral 2 1 = strongly agree 3 7 15 7 1 post-test 5 = strongly disagree 4 3 = neutral 2 1 = strongly agree 0 1 3 22 5 number of responses i am excited about teaching. pre-test 5 = strongly disagree 4 3 = neutral 2 1 = strongly agree 1 2 1 14 15 post-test 5 = strongly disagree 4 3 = neutral 2 1 = strongly agree 1 0 0 8 22 number of responses i have an understanding of the positive role solicitors/lawyers can play in the community. pre-test response 1 = not true 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 = true 0 0 1 2 3 6 5 8 5 3 post-test response 1 = not true 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 = true 0 0 0 0 0 1 7 10 7 6 number of responses i would teach secondary school students to the same way i was taught law. pre-test response 10 = true 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 = not true 0 0 0 1 3 4 4 10 7 4 post-test response 10 = true 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 = not true 1 0 1 1 0 2 2 9 8 7 number of responses i could see myself volunteering to lead a legal presentation on a complicated legal topic to a group of farmers or pharmacists. pre-test response 1 = not true 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 = true 4 2 5 5 2 1 8 4 0 2 post-test response 1 = not true 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 = true 0 1 0 1 5 4 4 5 6 5 number of responses i feel comfortable and connected to others in the law society community. pre-test response 1 = not true 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 = true 0 0 2 0 4 4 12 5 5 1 post-test response 1 = not true 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 = true 0 0 0 0 0 0 5 12 10 4 number of responses i am excited about teaching. scotland post-test 1.0444444444444445 pre-test 1.6808510638297873 average response 1 = strongly agree 5 = strongly disagree i am excited about teaching. ireland post-test 1.3870967741935485 pre-test 1.7878787878787881 average response 1 = strongly agree 5 = strongly disagree