Pro bono projects in London (Holborn & Waterloo)

BPP Legal Advice Clinic (BLAC)

With the assistance of our Clinic Manager and Case Supervisors (volunteer lecturers and practitioners), you will interview and advise clients on their employment, housing, family and consumer law problems. BLAC's aims are to offer free legal advice to the community and to provide you with the opportunity to gain practical legal experience. For further information please download a BPP London Legal Advice Clinic flier.

Employment telephone advice line

You will work with Legal Advisers (volunteer barristers and solicitors) to 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 you will 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 Human Rights Institute. Through our Liberty Letters Clinic, you will draft replies to human rights queries from the public.

Intellectual property pro bono group

The Group's aims are to promote your understanding of the field of intellectual property 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 non-profit group providing free intellectual property advice to London's creative industries.

Law firm pro bono shadowing project

In this Project, the Centre teams you with law firms to assist solicitors with their pro bono assignments. In one model, you accompany Norton Rose solicitors to their advice sessions at Tooting Law Centre and then assist with the follow-up work. This Project benefits you by offering practical legal experience as well as contact with practicing solicitors; it benefits the firms by providing assistance in conducting 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 you if you have native or fluent foreign language abilities, and you will 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.

Mediation friends project

This is a pioneering initiative in which you (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 volunteering project

As a Bar student, you will work as a volunteer in the Personal Support Unit 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. You will provide interactive learning presentations on the law to various groups, including primary and secondary school pupils, prison inmates, community groups and the homeless. Our Bar course students also assist schoolchildren to prepare for the Citizenship Foundation's mock trial competitions and help organise the mock trials.