Multicultural clinical experience

In their paper Pamela Robotham and Sara Chandler (College of Law) examined the impact on teaching and learning of multiculturalism, presenting the approach they have developed as a result of changes in the client base of the College’s Legal Advice Centre.

Over the past five years there has been a cultural shift in the client base of the Legal Advice Centre in the London Bloomsbury Centre of the College of Law, resulting in a widening of access to the service and consequently a more diverse client base.

Student advisors have worked with these changes and as a result have had the opportunity to learn more and appropriate ways of responding to their clients. Issues arising have included language, specifically enabling students to use languages other than English in their volunteering, and providing a service for deaf clients with British Sign Language interpretation.

Supervision and training practices have also changed as the Centre’s practice of legal services has evolved. Among the tools of teaching and learning are ethics workshops, where students have the opportunity to learn tactics and strategies to use when confronted with oppressive attitudes and behaviour and discrimination in respect of race, religion, class, sex, language, disability, sexual orientation etc.

Rosemary Evans (Staffordshire University) reports:

This was a session with a difference – the delegates were put to work! The wonderful double act, along with the well designed interactive elements of the session, led to a lively and interesting debate.
 
Students working in the clinic need to be trained to understand the dynamics of working with clients. This initial training takes the form of ethics workshops, where students have the opportunity to learn tactics and strategies to use when confronted with a wide ranging list of behaviours and attitudes arising out of race, religion, class, sex, language, disability and sexual orientation, to name but a few.
 
Session participants were divided into two groups and undertook one of the training sessions the students experience. One group was asked to consider what might cause quiet behaviour and a reluctance to engage in class on the part of a student, and the steps that might need to be taken to encourage engagement. The second group considered what might cause someone to dominate a class and how that could be handled. The theory was that by being able to recognise the characteristics and behaviours of others, student (or participants in this instance!) would be better able to understand their clients and find solutions to problems.

About the presenters

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Pamela Robotham is a supervising solicitor at the College of Law’s Legal Advice Centre (Bloomsbury Centre, London). Before joining the College of Law she worked for a number of housing organisations and in a legal aid practice as a housing solicitor. She also has experience in training international pro bono lawyers, with a particular interest in Uganda, Zambia and Antigua.
 
Sara Chandler is director of pro bono services for the College of Law and associate professor and the senior supervising solicitor at the Legal Advice Centre (Bloomsbury Centre, London). An active member of the Clinical Legal Education Organisation (CLEO), Sara participates in the International Journal of Clinical Legal Education Conferences as well as in the Global Alliance for Justice Education. She also has experience in training international pro bono lawyers, with a particular interest in Uganda, Zambia and Nigeria.
 
Sara and Pamela presented a paper, Putting ethics into practice, on the teaching of ethics in the Legal Advice Centre at UKCLE’s Vocational Teachers Forum V (2005).

Last Modified: 9 July 2010