Rachel Knowles, Sonia Kalsi (Centre for Access to Justice)

Asynchronous Submission

We teach access to justice and community engagement, a third year module which brings together literature on the fundamental obstacles to access to justice with experiential learning in our legal advice clinic in East London.

With the advent of the pandemic lockdown, our challenge was how to transition a practical, clinical module into an online environment, whilst retaining our core values and objectives. We had to address very real challenges of our client base, who were particularly vulnerable due to their social welfare needs, whilst also taking into account how to build a successful community of practice with our students to best support their learning and engagement.

We will draw on our experience of delivering this module both in person and virtually, to address the key questions about the benefits and limits of virtual teaching and advice delivery in the context of inclusivity (related to both digital inclusivity and other barriers).

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