The Law School at the University of Sussex is raising cash with a sponsored walk to expand the free legal services they are offering to the people of Brighton and Hove.

Students and staff took part in the 10km Brighton Legal Walk yesterday evening (15 June), beginning at the Magistrates Court in Edward Street and continuing along the seafront to finish in the city centre.

Legal aid cuts have created growing demand for free legal services in the city. The Sussex Law School is addressing this by creating Sussex Pro Bono, which will send law students to work in various local projects.

Law students and tutors are already involved in a wide range of projects. In one project called StreetLaw, law students have been working with Art Schism, an art gallery in North Laine, to help answer questions from the artists about copyright, legality and criminality. The students have been researching legal points in relation to graffiti and their street art.

Undergraduates working on the StreetLaw project have also helped “SinnaOne”, one of the artists at Art Schism, to take part in art therapy workshops with pupils from the Brighton & Hove Pupil Referral Unit who have been excluded from school.

Law lecturer Dr Lucy Finchett-Maddock, who set up the StreetLaw Project with Art Schism, said: “The Brighton legal walk is a really important event in the legal calendar for Sussex Law School – not least because it is the 800^th anniversary of Magna Carta. We are raising money for these initiatives which involve students in legal issues in the community.”

Getting law students involved with community legal projects is known as giving them a “clinical legal education" - a burgeoning area of legal practice and education within the UK, explained Dr Finchett-Maddock.

“The upsurge in clinical law is a barometer of the effects the legal aid cuts have had on the legal profession, those training in law, and those seeking free legal advice. Students are becoming one of the only remaining viable sources of pro bono legal assistance if legal aid criteria are not met,” she said.

In another project, Sussex law undergraduates are working with Brighton Housing Trust (BHT), which provides housing-related legal services for those on a low income. BHT helps people who are facing eviction and homelessness.

The University is also setting up the Environmental Law Project, which will offer free advice to communities facing environmental issues. It is working with a charity called the Environmental Law Foundation to do so.  

It has also worked on the Innocence Project to free prisoners who have been wrongly convicted and has begun offering a Creative Industries Law Clinic to answer questions about intellectual property and media law in particular for digital industries.

The repeal of the Human Rights Act will be debated at the Brighton Dome Studio Theatre today (Tuesday 16 June) as part of the School of Law, Politics and Sociology's Sussex Salon series and there will also be discussions about the effect of cuts to legal aid.

“The 10km Brighton Legal Walk raised awareness about the erosion of rights and is raising funds to expand Sussex Pro Bono,” said Dr Finchett-Maddock. You can still donate online at the team's fundraising page.

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