Pro bono projects in Manchester
BPP Legal Advice Clinic (BLAC)
BLAC aims to offer free legal advice to the community and to provide our students with the opportunity to gain practical legal experience. With the assistance of BLAC’s staff and supervisors (volunteer lecturers and practitioners), our students interview and advise clients on their legal problems.
Greater Manchester Cares
Greater Manchester Cares is an initiative of Business in the Community. It provides opportunities for businesses to volunteer in the local community addressing local social and economic needs. Many of the large firms of solicitors and accountants, financial institutions and other major businesses in the local area support the work of Greater Manchester Cares by providing teams of volunteers. Our students organise, manage and participate in both individual and team challenges ranging from helping children with their reading or maths skills, to assisting local community groups with gardening or decorating their facilities.
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.
Intellectual Property Pro Bono Group
The group’s aims are to promote our students' understanding of the field of intellectual property (IP) law whilst 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 non-profit group providing free IP advice to creative industries. Our students can also take part in creating our regular newsletter about recent developments for those in the creative industries.
Personal Support Unit's volunteering project
Our students work as volunteers in the Personal Support Unit (PSU) at the Manchester Civil Justice Centre. They provide practical and moral support to litigants-in-person (LiPs). They 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.