Pro bono or not to pro bono

So when I started Law School I was eager to get involved. I chose ‘StreetLaw’ for many reasons but mainly because the project is aimed at helping the vulnerable and those who do not have easy access to the law, and I therefore this could be my ‘Erin Brokovich’ moment, although obviously on a much less grander scale. 

Getting prepared

It was decided at the beginning of the year, by the powers that be, that the target group would be young people, and so we had a training session whereby we were taught how to work with children, nothing major just a few ice breaker techniques and a little role play and then we were ready!

We had to ring around schools to find out if they actually wanted us to come in and speak to their students, which was a much tougher task than originally anticipated. Most schools were reluctant to accept our invitation to go and give a talk to students on topical issues, largely because my Law School is an independent institution and so people outside the legal sphere are unaware of it. Due to numerous laws and public opinion on child protection etc we had to approach several schools before anyone accepted the invite for the StreetLaw volunteers to attend and give a talk. Fortunately we did find a few schools willing to participate. 

Pro bono at High School

The event I was involved in was at a high school. The topic areas we decided to discuss with the students were drugs and alcohol and ‘happy-slapping’. A group of StreetLaw volunteers got together and we decided on activities that would allow us to get a message across but at the same time be interesting to 15-16 year olds. In the end we wrote a short fictitious house party scenario full of drugs and alcohol related activities.

The students then had to read through the scenario (in retrospect it would have been more fun if we had them act it out) and they had to decide what was unlawful. The main purpose of this activity was to see how aware the students were of drugs and alcohol related offences and it led up nicely to our talk about all the offences involved with drugs and alcohol and the possible punishments in law.

We also talked about the social impact and how it could affect wider society. We had a really good discussion, some of the students had more knowledge of drug substances then I did, but this emphasised the importance of getting through to these students and getting them thinking about the legal and social consequences getting involved with unlawful drugs and alcohol will have.

‘Happy-Slapping’ was the focus of the second part of the presentation. We did a PowerPoint presentation we had created earlier using lots of statistics, current news and evocative images of victims. We then had an interactive session based on the presentation where the students took part in a quiz and then a question and answer session.

Again it was interesting, if not a little scary to see how much the students already knew on this topic area, but again what we got them to do was think about the legal and social implications ‘happy-slapping’ leads to, discussing the impact on not only the victim, but their family and also the life long impact on perpetrators which could include a prison sentence and a criminal record. 

All in all it was a really good event. Personally the StreetLaw members learnt a lot, we had to research the topic areas ourselves and apply our legal acumen, and the students gained a lot of information from us.

We were quite shocked by how aware the students were about the topic areas though, they knew of drugs and offences that I had only come across in my more senior years, but I think this made the activities more worthwhile, knowing we were teaching the students things that were very real and present in life.

Also, as we the volunteers were students ourselves and fairly young in age, the young students were able to interact with us more confidently and with ease. We even got some people to share personal experiences, which the other students could learn from.

Pro bono at Primary School

Another group of volunteers carried out a presentation at a primary school. The target audience was obviously much younger and therefore the content was different too. The children were introduced to the basic concepts of the law for example who the police are and what they do, the difference between right and wrong in a legal context.

The volunteers created a role play scenario which they had the children act out and other light hearted games and activities to get their point across, for example they played a game where they had different ‘islands’ people were sent to based on activities they carried out, so you had a good island and a bad one representing lawful and unlawful. Again the feedback from the StreetLaw volunteers was that they had a great time working with the kids, and it was a good experience to put into a CV or job application.

So hopefully I have given you a slight taste of the type of work you can get involved with through pro-bono projects, and I must say it can be quite fun, you get to meet new people and its nice to do something good with all that legal knowledge you have acquired over the years. Although I initially got involved to bulk up my CV, I gained a lot from the project. It was such a fantastic feeling to work with the kids knowing you could have made a difference in their lives however small it may be.

Sameena Manzar

LLB Graduate from the University of East Anglia

30-09-2009