The success of the student run Pro Bono Group (a student society) led to a pitch for an onsite law centre. The Centre was then founded by the Law Department in 2006 and became a long-term collaboration between staff, students, volunteer barristers and solicitors and our local community. QMLAC was the first of its type at a London university. This clinical legal education initiative mixes the theory of law with the practice of client and community work, in a mechanism that enables a maximum output for the inputted resource. The Centre is mindful of its context within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets and its commitment to public engagement. Over the past 14 years the QMLAC has grown from strength to strength expanding the range of student activities and client legal resources. It has provided over 3,200 pieces of specialist legal advice, won over £110,000 of welfare benefits for clients in tribunals and has reached over 6,000 school students and community groups with public legal education workshops.
QMLAC is a dynamic organisation, which is shaped by the very students it collaborates with and the client / community need. It develops in line with need, whether that be community need, new teaching practices or suggestions from volunteer lawyers.
The Centre provides a rich community for learning, friendship and professionalism while actively instilling principles of social justice to QMUL Law Students. The well-known teaching pedagogy clinical legal education is embraced wholeheartedly at QMLAC. This includes; student led teaching (eg Problem Based Learning), reflection, mentoring and recognising and the importance of disorientating moments - and supporting students with those moments.
The QMLAC team has six members of academic and professional services staff, in addition to the student and lawyer volunteers. The staffing team coordinate and facilitate the wider team, which in reality is more than 800 people (volunteers, clients, secondary schools and undergraduate students). This sense of belonging and collaboration achieves far more than each part could do alone. The true essence of this collaboration is demonstrated by the fact that the QMLAC could not run without any part of its wider team.