Royal Holloway’s Greatest Needs fund enables the College to provide support where its impact can be most keenly felt. Discover how donations helped to fund a Legal Advice Centre, and its far-reaching impact
Thanks to generous donations made to the Greatest Needs fund by our alumni community, Royal Holloway established a Legal Advice Centre in January 2020. Offering free legal advice to the local community, the campus-based centre is student-led under the supervision of a practising solicitor, and has engaged additional volunteer solicitors from five partner law firms.
Not only does the Legal Advice Centre give back to the local community by offering much-needed support to often extremely vulnerable people, it also provides our students with invaluable work experience. From interviewing clients and researching the law to providing written advice, the centre provides students with experience across family, contract, consumer and housing law.
Street Law Clinic
In addition to providing day to day legal advice, the centre runs outreach projects, including the Street Law Clinic. Street Law developed in the US in the 1970s with the purpose of empowering communities with legal knowledge. Our Street Law Clinic has enabled our student volunteers to deliver interactive legal workshops under the supervision of qualified legal professionals, or academic members of staff.
Refugee Law Clinic
Student volunteers have also been recruited to collaborate with the Refugee Law Clinic, set up by the School of Advanced Studies, an inter-collegiate project of the University of London. Royal Holloway students are able to provide pro bono legal advice for refugee clients. The Centre’s other projects include working with the Afghanistan and Central Asian Association (ACAA) on a research project to examine the impact of COVID-19 on vulnerable people within the Afghan community.
“This research has allowed me to delve deeper into the financial consequences of the pandemic in England and has developed my understanding of not just the basic economic impacts of Covid-19, such as job losses, but also how this has led to greater struggle in the lives of the public,” says Jasmine Urry (BSc Sociology and Criminology).
HMP Coldingley Legal Advice Clinic
The HMP Coldingley Law Clinic, in partnership with Creighton and Partners Solicitors, enables our students to provide free legal advice remotely to prisoners at HMP Coldingley on family law matters. “The HMP Coldingley Clinic provided me with the opportunity to gain invaluable work experience,” says student volunteer Vanesa Yakimova. “It allows you to help clients with real life problems that you cannot see in the Law Text Book. I am tremendously proud to be part of the project.”
The project has also been a positive experience for the prisoners. “The men are now more confident that things will progress more positively and they can achieve some level of contact with their children,” says Katie Littleboy, Connections Family Worker at HMP Coldingley. “The staff, students and solicitors have not only provided advice, but also reassurance and compassion. I am very grateful, as are the men, for the support being provided.”
For the student volunteers, the Legal Advice Clinic has been a hugely enriching addition to their experience at Royal Holloway. “The Legal Advice Centre provides truly unique and invaluable opportunities,” says volunteer Olivia Smith. “It provides us with the chance to get hands on experience interviewing clients. This enables us to learn and more importantly develop the key skills required for a future career in law.”
“I would strongly recommend that any students who are thinking about joining the Legal Advice Centre do so!” says Student and LAC volunteer Remi Gruzska. “It really gives students a feel for what being a solicitor is like, with real life cases that they can work on – cases that can have an impact on the lives of the people that they are helping.”
Funding for the Legal Advice Centre also enabled the employment of a full-time Legal Assistant to support the Centre’s Director, Nicola Antoniou, in undertaking more projects, increasing student volunteer numbers, taking on new volunteer solicitors and funding professional indemnity insurance.
“We are extremely grateful to those who give to the Greatest Needs fund. Donations helped us to keep the doors open of our student-led Legal Advice Centre,” says Nicola Antoniou, Director of the Legal Advice Centre. “The students develop key skills that will prepare them for their legal careers and it provides them with an opportunity to deal with real people with real problems.”
In 2021, our students at the Legal Advice Centre were awarded the College’s Outstanding Community Action Volunteering award, in recognition of their efforts and contribution.
If you would like to support the Greatest Needs fund, you can donate now or contact us for more information
