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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


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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 involved- participants, 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; 

 



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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