Pro bono Clinics - still going strong and as vital as ever!
The Bristol Law Centre is a founding member of Bristol
Pro Bono Group. Below, the Bristol Law Centre reflects
on the changes their clinics have undergone over the last
couple of years and what the future may hold.
Demand and Capacity
Bristol Law Centre continues to run weekly pro-bono clinics to support people with
employment and family law issues, as well as civil disputes. We run these clinics
alongside our own teams’ specialist legal casework and representation service for
social welfare law issues, working as a charity with the overarching aim of increasing
access to justice.
Clinic volunteers advise on a range of issues including legal problems induced or
exacerbated by the pandemic; enquiries relating to redundancy, discrimination, child
arrangements and domestic abuse. Though demand fluctuates for specific types of
enquiries, overall it remains consistently beyond the available capacity (particularly in
family law), so the call for additional volunteers is of ongoing relevance for our clinics,
as well as other clinics within the city and across the region. We’re committed to
harnessing the enthusiasm for pro bono shown by Bristol’s firms, working in
partnership and providing valuable legal support on key issues affecting our
communities.
Accessibility and Technology
Accessibility has always been a key consideration for clinic work as we strive to reach
those who face challenges in obtaining the advice that they need. In 2017, we
explored running virtual clinics as a way of increasing access, ease and efficiency, both
for volunteers and clients. So even before the pandemic hit, we were seeing the
benefits of using technology to widen the geographical scope of our support by
eliminating the need to physically attend, matching familiar and easy-to-use
technology that was fit for purpose and led to efficiencies, and increasing capacity by
making volunteering something that could be squeezed into a lunchbreak. This
flexibility with timetabling has meant we’ve been able to engage more volunteers
during the pandemic and help more people.
However, after being forced to operate exclusively within remote parameters, it has
not gone unnoticed just how valuable face-to-face interactions are for those who may
find it easier to participate, express themselves and ultimately get the most out of the
relatively short session by seeing someone in person. As we start to see glimmers of
hope to prompt a shift away from current practices and we begin to reimagine how
we deliver clinics, these are exactly the issues we will look to balance to ensure
people’s needs are best accommodated. We’ve ensured as much as we can that that
the absence of the usual face-to-face contact has not compromised the quality of
advice provided, and we’re now keen to evaluate how and to what extent we move
