Advancing Clinical Legal Education and Facilitating Access to Justice through Policy Clinics

In 2018 Northumbria Law School’s Student Law Office integrated a Policy Clinic (PC) into its curriculum in order to broaden the reach of its clinical legal education (CLE) programme. In the PC, the students undertake a different type of CLE where they carry out empirical or desk-based research, with the ultimate aim of contributing to law reform. Under supervision, students undertake tasks such as preparing literature reviews, conducting participant interviews, analysing data, and composing reports for submission to the instructing organisation or individual and pertinent official bodies. Previous research conducted by the authors has highlighted the valuable role of PCs in developing a student’s professional skills and preparedness for practice (Dunn et al, 2020; McConnell et al, 2024). While PCs are not a new concept in CLE, their prominence has increased in recent times, with more Law Schools incorporating this type of work into their programmes.

This chapter will outline the development of PCs across Europe, highlighting the varied approaches across clinics. The chapter will also explore the ways in which PCs contribute to promoting access to justice. Although social justice as an aim of CLE has been covered extensively in the literature in the context of live client programmes, there is a dearth of literature in this area relating to PCs. This chapter will therefore also explore how PCs encourage a social justice mission and examine this CLE model within the broader discourse on social justice. In the PC, students gain exposure to contemporary legal issues, cultivating an understanding of how to influence and contribute to the development of policies that foster positive societal changes. By engaging students in impactful research, PC work fosters not just the development of valuable professional skills but also instils a social justice ethos.