Can students do pro bono work?

Nov 18, 2021

Written By Emily Buckley

While it’s obvious you want to make your future job applications stand out, it’s not always obvious how to do this. You’ve probably come across vacation schemes, law firm open days, and society membership, but all budding lawyers should also consider pro bono work. The free provision of legal advice or representation for those in need, here’s why these schemes are fantastic learning experiences for students.

Building practical legal skills

Assisting real life cases gives you a better grounding in how the legal industry operates and thus what your day-to-day work life will look like, especially compared to students who have only learned from textbooks and university workshops. Additionally, as these are real-life projects – in contrast to the simulated situations generated by firms during vacation schemes – they will give you rich material to discuss during job interviews.

Pro bono can offer the chance to get specific skills and experience in things like client interaction and expectation management, interviewing skills, recognising and researching legal issues, drafting legal documents, negotiation and even advocacy. Proving you can work in real-life scenarios that can change clients’ lives or livelihoods should not only boost your confidence, but also show recruiters your ability to hit the ground running in the workplace.

Networking

Pro bono schemes bring together stakeholders from different social circles, professions, sectors and backgrounds. Not only can you meet other students with a similar legal interest as yourself, but also solicitors working for a variety of law firms or in-house teams, and employees and volunteers for charities of variable sizes. Making the most of this melting pot of contacts could open professional doors you hadn’t even foreseen. Ask your new contacts plenty of questions – about their role or area of expertise, for advice on applications, work experience opportunities, their own connections with people in the fields of work you are considering – and see where it takes you.

Having genuine contact and relationships with these professionals should add more weight to speculative requests for internships or shadowing, and for non-law students this can be an especially good chance to show your commitment to a legal career.

Experiment with new practice areas

Pro bono work can give you a taste of areas of law that you’ve not studied in class: this is especially helpful for students doing the Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL), as it only features the essential modules. There are pro bono opportunities for countless specialisms, including employment rights, wills and probate, miscarriages of justice, debt relief, consumer protection, disability rights and environmental rights.

If you feel as though a more niche topic is the career path for you, trialling it before fully committing with a training contract is a sensible idea. It’s great if this time cements your passion – it may drive you to set up a more specialist society or newsletter at your university, or thoroughly expand your commercial awareness of the sector. If the project shows you that specialism isn’t the right path, then you still have impressive experience under your belt, and it’ll redirect you to a path that does interest you.

Make a real impact

Pro bono gives you a chance to make a genuine difference in people’s lives, especially as legal aid funding is cut. According to a 2020 survey, there has been a significant decline in funding for both civil and criminal cases, dropping from £2,768 million in 2005/6 to £1,738 million in 2019/20, thanks to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012.

This means pro bono work is becoming even more important. Knowing that you are helping those in your local community who have no alternatives is an extremely rewarding and compassionate use of your time: not many students can genuinely say they’ve changed lives in this way.

Pro Bono