Pro bono projects in London (Holborn and Waterloo)
BPP Legal Advice Clinic (BLAC)
With the assistance of our clinic manager and case supervisors (volunteer lecturers and practitioners), our students interview and advise clients on their employment, housing, family and immigration law problems. BLAC's aims are to offer free legal advice to the community and to provide our students with the opportunity to gain practical legal experience.
Employment law telephone advice line
Legal advisers (volunteer barristers and solicitors) with the help of our students provide members of the public with initial advice over the telephone on employment law issues. The advice line is open to individuals referred from a number of organisations including the Apex Trust and Prisoners' Families and Friends Service.
Environmental Law Pro Bono Group
The group's goals are to promote your understanding of the legal aspects of environmental issues and to assist environmental non-profit organisations including the Environmental Law Foundation and Friends of the Earth, with their legal work. The group invites speakers on a range of environmental issues and volunteers its members to conduct pro bono legal research in this area.
Human Rights Unit
The Human Rights Unit includes a variety of student human rights initiatives, through which our students provide supporting legal research to organisations such as Amicus, Amnesty International, Interights, the Solicitors International Human Rights Group, the European Human Rights Advocacy Centre, Reprieve and the International Bar Association's Human Rights Institute. Through the BPP Liberty Letters Clinic, our students draft replies to human rights queries from the public.
The BPP Human Rights Law Journal publishes an annual volume of student-written articles on topical human rights issues. To view these, please use the links below:
Innocence project
Through the Innocence project, our students work under a barrister's or solicitor's supervision investigating cases of convicted persons who maintain innocence but have exhausted the initial appeals process. Our students seek evidence that will assist them in making applications for such cases to be reviewed by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, for referral back to the Court of Appeal. The project is part of the Innocence Network UK.
Intellectual Property Pro Bono Group
The group's aims are to promote our students' understanding of the field of intellectual property (IP) law while facilitating IP lawyers' provision of pro bono services to the community. The group has three main branches of activity - providing interviews and letters of legal advice to a small number of individuals and charities; designing and delivering presentations on IP law to music, film and art students; and replying to IP queries submitted to the online advice service of our partner organisation Own It, a not-for-profit group providing free intellectual property advice to the creative industries.
Law firm pro bono shadowing project
In this project, the centre teams our students with law firms to assist solicitors with their pro bono assignments. In one model, our students accompany Norton Rose solicitors to their advice sessions at Tooting Law Centre and then assist with the follow-up work. This project benefits our students by offering them practical legal experience as well as contact with practising solicitors; it benefits the firms by providing assistance in conducting their pro bono work and promoting their reputation in the law school; most importantly, it benefits the pro bono clients.
Legal Translation Service (LTS)
The LTS is suitable for our students who have native or fluent foreign language abilities, who are willing to be trained in basic interpretation and translation technique. The project's goal is to provide legal advice centres with interpreters to assist the provision of legal advice to clients with limited English language abilities. The group also offers translation services to non-profit organisations.
For more information about how to use this service, please click here.
Mediation Friends project
This is a pioneering initiative in which our students are trained in mediation and then provide free support to otherwise unrepresented parties in mediation. The project's goals are to provide assistance to the unrepresented parties and to promote the use of mediation as a form of alternative dispute resolution.
Personal Support Unit's volunteering project
Our Bar students can work as volunteers in the Personal Support Unit (PSU) at the Royal Courts of Justice and the Principal Registry of the Family Division. As PSU Volunteers, the students provide practical and moral support to litigants-in-person (LiPs). The volunteers meet LiPs to talk through their cases informally and to accompany them around the courts and in hearings.
Streetlaw
The Streetlaw project is based on the philosophies of the US-based Street Law Program and Streetlaw UK to promote education about the law, democracy and human rights to citizens who would not otherwise have access to legal knowledge or education. Our students provide interactive learning presentations on the law to various groups, including primary and secondary school pupils, prison inmates, community groups and the homeless. Our BVC students also assist school children to prepare for the Citizenship Foundation's mock trial competitions and help organise the mock trials.