the e-newsletter for BPP Law School alumni

I really enjoyed the Pro Bono work I did during my GDL, as well as writing for the BPP magazine. I was part of a group that started the Prison Street Law Project with a student in our year who was a former prison warden in Pentonville Prison.

Ex-prisoners need access to information about their legal rights and obligations in disclosing their criminal record when applying for jobs. Many of them also suffer from mental health problems and other disabilities which make finding employment even more difficult and leave them vulnerable to discrimination.

We felt that if we could empower prisoners to know their rights in employment and discrimination law, it would at least assist them through this process and help them to break the cycle of reoffending.

I've heard the project is still going. We started in Pentonville and now it has expanded to include other prisons.

After my GDL I continued supporting the project. I'd been part of the first year so I helped train the subsequent year's students to take it on.

During my pupillage I decided I didn't want to stay on in Chambers as a tenant - at that stage, I knew I wanted to explore other options.

I continued to do Pro Bono work after BPP and I set up a project training journalists in Liberia. When I saw a job advertised in the Guardian for Legal Affairs Correspondent, I thought it would be perfect.

The law is a tool that people can use to improve their lives and it's really important to find ways of communicating that with people and giving them access to the law in a way they understand.

One of the things I love about journalism is the variety of opportunities in broadcasting and TV, as well as writing news and comment.

Earlier this year, I did a Channel 4 show called The Sex Education Show, about young people and their sexual practices.

Because of the growth in mobile phone technology and the internet, a lot of children now have access to extreme material - we wanted to make sure that young people knew the law in those areas, and knew what kind of behaviour was legal and what wasn't.

think the more ways I can find of bringing law to people and making it accessible to them, the better. I want to help people understand how the law fits into their everyday lives.

I break all my stories on Twitter, because it allows people to keep up with what I'm doing. I use it as a means of connecting with people who have expertise in my area - I tweet about things I'm working on and hope I get comments back from other lawyers or journalists.

I'm passionate about the law, and I love the fact that as a journalist I can continue to develop my legal expertise and communicate how important the law is to people who might not be aware of it.

I'd really like to continue growing as a journalist, and specifically as a legal specialist, but I still feel like a barrister and lawyer as well as a journalist, and I hope to continue that way.

Afua was speaking to Will Finch. You can follow Afua on Twitter at
http://twitter.com/AfuaHirsch.