Voices blog

This year, in addition to our evaluation of the scheme, the Lawyers in Schools team focussed on two schools for a more in-depth evaluation of the impact of the programme on the students involved.

Five students from Haverstock School and five from Central Foundation Boys’ School welcomed me into their schools both before the programme started and once the programme had finished. This gave me a wealth of qualitative data to analyse and report on, a chance to measure more specifically the impacts made throughout the process and a great opportunity to meet the people who the programme has been designed for.

Perhaps the most surprising finding to come out of these focus groups was the discernible shift in attitude - both to the law and to legal professionals - from pre-programme to post-programme.

The young people made it quite clear that their initial expectations of the lawyers were somewhat unfavourable. Some of the amusing adjectives floating around were: ‘bald’, ‘stressed’, ‘formal’, ‘tired’ and ‘posh’ wearing ‘a suit, black leather shoes and a tie’ and of course, driving ‘a Porsche or something…normally they’re kind of posh so you never see them in a Vauxhall.’ All joking aside, the air of cynicism amongst these young people aimed at the legal profession was really quite shocking. The prevalent view was that lawyers do their job to ‘collect money.’ When asked where their ideas of lawyers stem from, one student admitted, ‘American movies seeing the lawyer take a bribe.’ I wondered what it would take to set these perceptions onto a more positive cycle and worried that six hours with lawyers might not be enough!

The switch when I returned for the post-programme focus groups was palpable. It was clear that their perceptions of the legal profession had had quite a makeover throughout the Lawyers in Schools process. I was keen to hear about their experiences and the first question I asked was, ‘were the lawyers how you expected them to be?’ One young person replied, ‘I thought they were going to be posh, high class and uptight. I didn’t think they’d want to speak to young people but they were cool’ - high praise indeed for our volunteer lawyers. Another contributed: ‘I thought they were a bit average actually…normal, like they’d been through what we’re going through.’

So what about the perception that all lawyers are money hungry monsters who drive around in Porsches made of gold? One of the young people said: ‘I think they’re here to help as well…it’s not just about the money.’ It was certainly apparent that the young people were grateful that the lawyers had volunteered their time. In their minds this meant that ‘they do want to keep us out of trouble.’ After all, ‘they gave us the rights bit [of the law] so that means they don’t want us to get in trouble.’

It wasn’t just the lawyers that were on the end of some severe criticism before the programme began, the law itself came under some pretty heavy fire. When asked, before the first session, what they knew about law the responses were similarly cynical. ‘Laws are a boundary to stop us having fun,’ said one of the young people. A ‘slightly’ more positive response of, ‘nothing,’ came from another. It became quite startlingly clear to me at that point how important the sessions would be for these young people. I was pretty sure that the excuse of knowing ‘nothing’ wouldn’t wash if this young person were ever to get into legal difficulty. God willing he doesn’t - but would ignorance really be bliss?

‘What would the country be like without laws?’ they were asked. ‘It would be heaven,’ one responded. To be fair, one of them did recognise the possible very worst case scenario: ‘there’d be naked people running around everywhere,’ a prospect that makes him ever so slightly grateful for the rules underpinning our society.

Again, the metamorphosis that took place throughout the sessions was a pleasant surprise when I went back to meet them. Yes they agreed that the law stopped them from doing some things that they wanted to do (they’re only human after all!) but they also saw that this was often for their own protection as opposed to an evil ploy set by adults to stop young people having fun.

I was interested to know if it was just the media that had influenced their thoughts or whether there were other forces at play here. What causes such cynicism in our youth today? Well, one of the focus groups told me that throughout their education they had received various visits from other people in authority: ‘in Year 8 we had police officers come and they talked to us about getting arrested but they were biased because they just told us things we can and can’t do.’ Apparently young people don’t like that very much. One of the things they liked about the Lawyers in Schools sessions, and something that really warmed them to the lawyers, was that our volunteers ‘explained why’ The volunteers also invited the young people to challenge them, form opinions, think about how the law affects them and evaluate where they stand on certain issues. A great formula for getting them to like you it seems.

The Public Legal Education Network (Plenet) states that a legally capable citizen will have the knowledge, skills and attitude to be able to anticipate and deal with any legal problems that may arise. Lawyers in Schools has been designed to raise young people’s awareness and understanding of the law - and often having the right attitude can be a vital element of this.

It is all well and good - if a bit inhuman - knowing all you need to know about the law and having the necessary skills but having the right attitude is key to dealing with legal problems if it ever becomes necessary. What good would it be having all the knowledge but having no faith or trust in the system or the professionals that you need to work with to get your problem sorted? When you look at it like that, attitude is a pretty good place to start.

Deputy Vice President of the Law Society of England & Wales, Lucy Scott-Moncrieff, is a mental health and human rights lawyer and also managing partner of Scott-Moncrieff Harbour and Sinclair a virtual law firm which operates online.

The Law Society of England & Wales has been a long time supporter of Lawyers in Schools and, as such, Lucy was keen to observe one of the sessions at Haverstock School in Chalk Farm, North London in February. It was fitting to Lucy’s background that the session was on the topic of discrimination and, following the lesson, she kindly wrote the following for us…

‘The lawyers from Olswang worked with small groups of Year 10 students on the law relating to discrimination. As you would expect from the students of a London comprehensive, the group brought their own experiences and those of their families to the discussion, and they seemed genuinely interested in the role that the law plays, or doesn’t play, in this complex subject.

I was impressed by the preparation that had been put into the session by Olswang, and by the rapport that the lawyers had with the students on this fifth visit out of a series of six. It was a great pleasure to see the students applying the law to novel situations as well as considering the role that it has played in their own experiences.

Clearly, ‘Lawyers in Schools’ is right on target for the regulatory objective of increasing public understanding of the citizen’s rights and duties. Long may it, and the Citizenship Foundation, continue!’

I spent part of Tuesday 31 January in a school in central London, joining Santander and Ashurst’s fourth session at Maria Fidelis School. Santander is in their third year of taking part in the project, and Ashurst joined them this year. I sat with a volunteer lawyer in a class of about thirty Year 10 (ie 14 or 15 years old) girls.

Using the Citizenship Foundation’s excellent Lawyers in Schools materials, I found myself discussing the finer points of discrimination law. We worked our way through some case studies and the challenge was to work out whether, in each case, the law on discrimination had been broken or not. Among the things we all learnt were:

• Discrimination can happen on the basis of any of the equalities measures - race/ethnicity, gender, religion/belief, sexual orientation, ability/disability and age;
• Sometimes it is difficult to prove discrimination in a court of law;
• There’s a difference between having our feelings hurt and the law being broken. In other words, not all prejudiced behaviour is against the law.

It made a great difference to have six volunteers with the class. In a positive way it soaked up the attention, energy and interest of these bright girls. Extra adults in a class is one of the big bonuses from the school’s point of view.

In a lively, yet very thoughtful way we also discussed the rights and wrongs of sacking Andy Gray and Richard Keys. I was in a minority of one!!!

Thanks very much to the school, for hosting us… to the Santander volunteers …. and to the fantastic Year 10 girls. We all enjoyed ourselves and learnt a lot. Every school should have this CF programme!

‘This was beneficial to my education and important to my future’ was the comment made by a student from St Matthew Academy in South-East London this term as groups of lawyers entered the classroom in a number of schools across the country to start their Lawyers in Schools programmes for the year. It has not only been a busy few weeks for our volunteer lawyers but also for me as I have been dashing around schools in London to attend the first classes to support everyone involved.

There were nervous faces all round and not just from the students but once the ice had been broken and the sessions were underway students’ confidences grew and personalities shone through. As for the lawyers, they instantly developed a rapport with the students and it wasn’t long before classes were filled with the gentle sound of debate and the wonderful (and unexpected) sound of laughter.

Having joined the Lawyers in Schools team at the end of August I had been eagerly anticipating the start of these sessions in order to see both mine and everyone else’s work in action. More importantly it meant that I could meet the students that we work for. Listening to students debate issues such as whether you can ever be emotionally mature enough to have children at the age of sixteen or whether having legal ages at which you can smoke and drink alcohol just makes you more inclined to be rebellious was fantastic. There were no winning sides either: students learnt what the law states and that this is to be followed but they also began to learn that laws are not necessarily ‘right’ and can be changed if there is good reason to do so and again even this reasoning is open to debate.

For me, the most satisfying part of the whole experience was watching students that normally don’t speak up in class get involved and come out of their shells. The small group-work involved in the scheme really encourages even shy students to get involved in discussions. Time and time again over the last few weeks I have been told by teachers that shy and even boisterous students are being really engaged and showing a new side to their personality. I was shocked when at one school I walked into a room of what appeared to be model students working in their groups with the lawyers only to be told by the class teacher that this was normally one of the most challenging classes to work with in the year, but they were really engaging with the volunteers and participating in the discussions.

About Lawyers in Schools

Lawyers in Schools is a unique educational and corporate social responsibility programme in which lawyers enter the classroom in local schools to facilitate sessions that closely tie in with the citizenship syllabus, whilst also developing links with their community.

For more details about the scheme, please visit www.lawyersinschools.org.uk

I sacrificed my lie-in on Saturday to attend the Convention on Modern Liberty, which was co-directed by opendemocracy’s Anthony Barnett and the Guardian’s Henry Porter. I went on behalf of the Citizenship Foundation as a few of our projects are concerned with ‘rights and responsibilities’, but also because I’m personally interested in these debates and would like to take CF’s thinking on them further.

In any case, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Last week I got an email saying that I needed to get there early to make sure I could get a seat in the main hall. I, of course, disregarded this advice and showed up bang-on 9.30. And it was PACKED. Luckily a friend had been kind enough to save me a seat so I was able to hear the opening keynote, given by Shami Chakrabarti.

As per usual, Shami gave a speech that was impassioned and forceful, principled and…funny? She was throwing around jokes like nobody’s business and how we laughed. We didn’t, however, rise to her incitement to cry out ‘hell no’ in response to several instances of Government infringement on civil liberties. This reluctance to speak in unison represented, to me, the main problem with this convention: what exactly did it stand for? While most of those attending seemed to (angrily) agree that ID cards pose a serious threat to civil liberties, the political coalition between Right, Left and Liberal didn’t extend to agreement in regards to the security of the Human Rights Act. And so, at least in the sessions I attended, the Human Rights Act was largely ignored.

How much does that matter? Well, probably not much if the purpose of the day was merely to encourage debate and shine a light on a growing feeling amongst the chattering classes that this Government is committing a series of grave breaches of trust. But, if it was, as Henry Porter triumphantly declared in yesterday’s Observer, the birth of a movement, I think this lack of consensus on deeply contentious issues matters a great deal.