The importance of GO Justice

Discover how Glasgow University is supporting a rights-based project that focuses on building legal capability in the community and hoping to empower marginalised groups through public legal education.

Delivering a public legal education project in the community: a law student’s perspective

A law student reflects on her experience working with the University of Glasgow’s GO Justice team on a collaborative Street Law project with a housing charity. The rights-based project focused on building legal capability in the community, aiming to empower marginalised groups through public legal education.

Public legal education

Law students in Scotland are increasingly involved in pro bono projects that address the growing need for better awareness and knowledge of rights and legal processes. Public legal education projects (for example, Street Law) aim to empower the public by developing confidence and capability to resolve legal disputes. The relationship between legal capability and an individual’s ability to identify legal problems and effectively access justice has been explored in various legal needs surveys in Scotland and in England and Wales. A 2019  survey commissioned by the Law Society and Legal Services Board found that individuals in England and Wales with low legal confidence (that they could get a fair and positive outcome in different legal scenarios) were less likely to seek professional help to resolve legal issues, and were therefore more vulnerable to worse outcomes.

In Scotland, civil society organisations have also identified a lack of knowledge of how to use human rights as a key barrier that prevents marginalised groups and individuals accessing justice effectively. Indeed, a number of responses to the Scottish Government’s Human Rights Bill consultation call for more human rights awareness raising and education, highlighting the importance of direct engagement with communities, including in local settings.

It is within this context that the University of Glasgow’s GO (Glasgow Open) Justice centre launched a Community Legal Education Programme in partnership with the Marie Trust, a homelessness charity based in Glasgow. The programme aims to deliver rights-based public legal education to enhance the legal capability of marginalised groups at the community level. As part of the collaboration, law students designed workshops focused on legal rights and duties in different areas of law, including housing, social security and employment.  Working under academic supervision, students delivered these workshops to service users as part of the Trust’s education service, designed to widen access to education for homeless people and those at risk.

The interactive and learner-centred workshops aimed to increase participants’ awareness of their rights and build their confidence in handling legal issues. Students led letter-writing exercises for appealing housing decisions, facilitated problem questions based on current case law and utilised quizzes to reinforce understanding. While fuller evaluation of the project is underway, initial feedback found that a majority of participants expressed increased understanding of using the law to access justice, reduced social isolation and improved self-confidence.

Student reflection

From a personal perspective, I was driven to volunteer for the programme in order to empower and increase people’s legal understanding. Delivering workshops to the Trust’s service users has broadened my understanding of the social and legal barriers people face when attempting to access justice. One of the most significant insights was the disconnect between legal duties that are designed to protect the most vulnerable and marginalised in society, and the lived reality of people attempting to enforce their rights flowing from these duties. For instance, during an employment law workshop, I recognised that many people are unaware of their right to appeal decisions, or don’t understand the legal processes for addressing unfair dismissal and workplace sexual harassment. These barriers to justice challenged my own legal knowledge and understanding of equality law and employment rights. 

I also observed how disempowerment affects vulnerable people’s ability to seek professional help when faced with a legal problem, or to challenge a rights violation through legal or administrative processes. For example, one participant explained that he was reluctant to report an issue with his temporary housing, fearing that it would jeopardise his chances for permanent housing. This underscores the value of public legal education as a lever of change, not only by raising awareness of rights, but also by empowering individuals and building their confidence to access legal processes to challenge and hold public authorities to account.

More generally, pro bono projects also provide students with an opportunity to develop core legal competencies, such as communication and presentation skills, while also instilling the ethical values that underpin professional legal practice. For example, working directly with the Trust’s service users enhanced my ability to communicate in an accessible and empathetic manner. The programme also fostered social responsibility by exposing me to real-life situations. I learned to listen empathetically to participants’ views of the law, which informed my reactions and responses.

Overall, my experience working on the project has reinforced my view that legal education should strive to connect classroom-based learning to real-world problems. Clinic-based projects like the Community Legal Education Programme enable students to develop a holistic understanding of the issues faced by individuals in their community, while also enhancing their legal skills, knowledge and understanding through practical experience. As I enter the legal profession, I hope clinical legal education continues to expand at the University of Glasgow, providing more students with opportunities to apply theory to practice and develop social and legal awareness.

Written by Ellie Armstrong, University of Glasgow graduate in Scots Law (LLB) with French language; Diploma in Professional Legal Practice (PgDip); future trainee at Thorntons. Connect with Ellie on LinkedIn.

About GO Justice 

The mission of the Glasgow Open (GO) Justice centre is to drive social change through legal education and research. It aims to empower communities and individuals to use the law to access justice and achieve social and economic inclusion, and does this by raising awareness of social justice issues, identifying and addressing unmet legal needs and instilling core ethical values in its students. The Community Legal Education Programme is supervised by Cameron Wong McDermott (cameron-wong.mcdermott@glasgow.ac.uk).