Advance High Quality Thinking

The Legal Need Project for Wales

Grant: £78,719
August 1, 2018

A large part of the Commissions work will be establishing what the current position in legal provision is, identifying the key issues, and then making recommendations. In terms of access to justice issues there are some fundamental questions which need to be answered. These questions have been summarised as follows:

1. What are the legal needs in Wales? Can these needs be quantified?
2. To what extent are legal needs being met by current provision?
3. How do legal needs, and the extent to which they are being met, compare regionally in Wales?

Without understanding the scale of legal need in Wales, it will not be possible make informed recommendations on how this need can be met.

Development of the General Legal Confidence (GLC Scale)

Grant: £8,800
May 21, 2018

Undertaking follow up field-work as part of a wider project by Pascoe Pleasance Ltd, funded by TLEF, to advance empirical approaches to measuring legal capability through the development of standardised inventories.

Protecting and enhancing refugee rights in the Brexit process in Scotland

Grant: £45,000
June 21, 2017

Brexit presents a challenge to rights in the UK including refugee rights. Brexit could reduce the sources and safeguards of rights for refugees and asylum seekers in the UK. The process may not enable proper scrutiny by devolved parliaments and governments in the UK to guarantee rights in matters in their competence. And, Brexit creates democratic instability for devolved institutions and uncertainty and risk around the maintenance of rights.

However, Brexit is also a catalyst and opportunity for civic society to be proactive. And constitutionally and politically, Scotland is best placed to challenge any withdrawal of rights, mitigate them and progress them.

This project will aim to steer a clear path through all this. The project will produce a legal policy analysis report on refugee rights and core messages, tailored to different audiences included those affected, and shaped by an expert reference group. An advocacy strategy for the refugee and human rights sector will be developed and promoted. Overall the project will act as a model of intervention and challenge for civic society in other areas of human rights and social protections.

Explore and Develop Potential Models for Public Law Specialist Support with University Law Clinics

Grant: £30,470
November 10, 2015

PLP will explore and develop potential models for public law specialist support with university law clinics. There is project commitment at four university law clinics with varying degrees of public law awareness and capacity: The clinics are at Huddersfield, Liverpool, Cardiff and Kent universities. Each institution is interested in developing the capacity of their clinics (and the pro bono sector more generally) to identify and progress public law issues, whether internally or by informed referral. The clinics capacities vary from provision of grassroots advice across a wide range of areas including those which will frequently engage public law issues, to one providing advice and legal representation that often involves public law and judicial review work, to one running a project creating public law toolkits for the general public and/or carers and advisers.

PLP's expertise and experience will be applied in project development, practical training, specialist support and the conduct of casework to the development of potential joint working approaches with clinics. They will bring expertise in extensive projects, education, clinical advice provision, IT innovation and research.

Review of the Bar Professional Training Course

Grant: £54,000
January 21, 2015

A project to review how the Bar Professional Training Course might be restructured to provide a better course. The intention being to enable students to assess much earlier, and at considerably lower cost, whether they had the aptitude to meet the standards necessary to win pupillage.

Understanding the role of university Law Clinics Phase 1

Grant: £27,000
November 26, 2014

The University’s Ulster Law Clinic will undertake a research project to better understand:

• the role of university law clinics in UK justice provision and
• how effective they are at reducing barriers to participative justice.

The report will:

• Map the paths to justice for citizens accessing university law clinics in the UK
• Identify the stages in their disputes at which clients contact university law clinics
• Identify the contribution that clinics make to existing access to justice provision
• Make policy recommendations relevant to the development of the clinic movement as part of an access to justice landscape
• Underpin conference presentations and peer-reviewed publications
• Be distributed to clinics and their stakeholders throughout the UK.
• Establish a foundational framework to develop further research on the utility of university law clinics as access to justice models that can be utilised and developed by others, including the Legal Education Foundation

Scope and Teaching of Professional Ethics

Grant: £110,000
November 27, 2013

This research project explores the ethical decision making capacities of new advocates across the Bar, CILEX and solicitor’s professions and also examines the influence of principles, rules and values on their ethical decision-making. The results will stimulate a more informed debate about developing common standard s for ethics in advocacy.

Do Values and Professionalism Change During Law School?

Grant: £21,000
November 27, 2013

International study conducted by researchers from UCL, Harvard, Tulsa and Cardiff Universities. It will:

• examine the values of law students;
• examine the impact of the idea being a professional on them; and,
• examine how personal values and the idea of professionalism impacts on their ethical
• decision making.

It will do this by means of a cross-sectional study of law students in at least four law schools in the US and the UK.