Kent law students filled the main Kent Law Clinic office on Tuesday for the first weekly meeting of the term and were introduced to a case involving a client who’s being asked to repay housing benefit payments totalling more than £20,000.
Law Clinic Director Graham Tegg told students the weekly meetings are an excellent opportunity to be introduced to real cases: ‘Enquiries come in to the Clinic from people needing access to legal advice and we attempt to work out a legal resolution for them. We use these weekly meetings in the Clinic to think about the problems that come in.’
Graham shared more details about the housing benefits case and invited interested students to get involved by meeting with him to review the case in more detail before he meets the client next week. The client is due to attend an appeal hearing later this month.
Other opportunities for law students to get involved with the work of the Law Clinic include:
- Signing up as Clinic Volunteers (working for a one-and-a-half hours per week for a fixed block of time): Volunteers will work in groups of four to deal with incoming calls and tasks associated with ongoing client casework
- Attending Monday evening advice sessions with local lawyers: students can help organise and/or sit in on the weekly sessions (held in the Wigoder Law Building) to observe local volunteer lawyers at work as they advise people from the local community. Students make notes and report back to the Law Clinic’s Tuesday meetings
- Attending case presentation sessions in the Moot Court: Law Clinic students taking the Clinical Option module will present details of the cases that they’re working on (details to be confirmed soon)
- Attending Law Clinic social events: The Law Clinic’s first social event of the year, open to all, will be a Pub Quiz later this month (details to be confirmed soon!)
- Shadowing opportunities in court: Coming soon, Stage 2/3 students will be able to take advantage of new shadowing opportunities at Canterbury Crown Court and the local Magistrate’s Court, enabling them to observe the work of criminal solicitors in close detail.
Students who wish to get involved with the Law Clinic are asked to sign up as members by completing a form – you can pop into the Clinic office at any time to do this or come along to the Tuesday meetings. Once you’ve signed up, you’ll be added to the Law Clinic’s mailing list. Details of Clinic events and opportunities will also be posted on the Clinic’s notice board in the main office.
The next weekly meeting will be at 2pm on Tuesday 8 October in the Clinic. All undergraduate and postgraduate law students are welcome, regardless of whether you attended yesterday’s session.
For more insights into the cases taken on by Clinic lawyers, read the Law Clinic’s blog – Clinical (including a post summarising the Clinic’s activities over the summer vacation and a post by law student Lucy Owens reflecting on her experience of attending court with Clinic Solicitor Viven Gambling).
