Professor Richard Owen began his career as an Assistant Solicitor with the British Coal Corporation after which he went to the Cayman Islands Law School. He joined the Hillary Rodham Clinton School of Law at Swansea University as Director of the Swansea Law Clinic in January 2017.
A former Chair of the Association of Law Teachers, Richard was also formerly a member of the Law Commission’s Wales Advisory Committee. He has also been a visiting professor to Fudan University, an Independent Reviewer for the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives, and a reviewer for the Quality Assurance Agency.
Currently, Richard is a member of the Law Society's Wales and Access to Justice Committees. Richard's experience, which bridges academia and legal practice, means he is passionate about experiential learning, and engaging students by using real-life clients. He wants students to experience the law’s potential to be a powerful instrument for good or ill in people’s lives and become change makers.
Richard was particularly proud when he gave evidence to the Welsh Assembly with undergraduate students who used their experiences in the Clinic to explain to a legislature how in their view the law in Wales could be made more accessible. He wants his students to engage with the major challenges society currently faces such as access to justice, climate change and inequalities.
The Swansea Law Clinic is embedded in the local community and works in partnership with a cancer charity, a food bank, a prison, a mental health charity and a local court. The knowledge gained working at the clinic enables students to develop innovative solutions to challenges faced by these communities. He takes pleasure in the quality of work students produce and the compliments they regularly receive from their clients. The advantage of an experiential learning approach, he feels, is that students not only develop their critical thinking but also their soft skills through their interactions with clients, so it takes a more holistic approach to legal education.