Pro bono projects in Manchester

BPP Community Challenge

BPP Community Challenge provides students with the opportunity to volunteer in the local community addressing local social and economic needs. Our students organise, manage and participate in both individual and team challenges which may range from helping children with their reading or maths skills to assisting local community groups with painting and decorating their facilities or gardening.

BPP Legal Advice Clinic (BLAC)

With the assistance of BLAC’s staff and supervisors (volunteer lecturers and practitioners), our law students interview and advise clients on their legal problems. BLAC’s aims are to offer free legal advice to the community and to provide students with the opportunity to gain practical legal experience.

Employment Law Telephone Advice Line (ELTAL)

ELTAL operates through external solicitors from local firms providing initial telephone advice to employment law clients on a rota basis. BPP students call potential clients to interview the clients in order to obtain full details of their case, then send the attendance notes on to solicitors in practice who provide the client with telephone advice.

Human Rights Unit

The Human Rights Unit includes a variety of student human rights initiatives, through which our students provide supporting legal research to various human rights organisations. Through our Liberty Letters Clinic, our students draft replies to human rights queries from the public.

Intellectual Property Pro Bono Group

The Group’s aims are to promote interested students’ understanding of the field of intellectual property law while facilitating IP lawyers’ provision of pro bono services to the community. The Group has two main branches of activity.

• BPP Intellectual Property Legal Advice Service (BIPLAS) - Through BIPLAS, we provide interviews and letters of legal advice to a small number of individuals and charities.
• Own-it is a publicly funded organisation which offers free intellectual property advice tocreative industries. Over the past few years, BPP students have worked alongside Own-it to help educate people about their IP rights and how to protect them. Students get involved on a practical level by drafting responses to queries from members of the public.

Legal Translation Service (LTS)

The LTS comprises students with native or fluent foreign language abilities. 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 LTS also offers translation services to non-profit organisations. If you would like to contact the service, please email: translation@bpplaw.co.uk

Mediation Friends

This is a pioneering initiative in which our students trained in mediation provide free support to otherwise unrepresented parties to 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

The Personal Support Unit (PSU) is a charity that gives practical and emotional support to litigants in person as they represent themselves through the courts.
A team of law students work as volunteers for PSU Manchester, meeting litigants in person 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 secondary school pupils, community groups and charities.

Tribunal Friends

This project provides ad hoc opportunities for students to accompany suitable clients to their Employment or Residential Property Tribunal hearings as "Tribunal Friends", whether or not they are represented. Tribunal Friends are able to assist the client to manage the tribunal proceedings as a litigant in person by taking notes of the proceedings for the client, helping them to do necessary photocopying or put paperwork in order, and providing much needed moral support. Tribunal Friends are not authorised to represent or advise the client.