The partnership agreed between the Law Clinic and Osborne Clarke at the start of this academic year promised to be one which would give the Law Clinic’s student members the professional support that they will need in order to provide effective legal advice to the local community.

Osborne Clarke invited all 120 members of the Law Clinic, including newly recruited members and students studying the Clinical Legal Studies unit, to their offices in Bristol for this year’s core training session. In order to facilitate the training of all of the Law Clinic’s members, Osborne Clarke kindly hosted 4 separate sessions over the course of 29 October and 12 November. Each session lasted a total of 3 hours and included a lunch provided at Osborne Clarke’s offices which doubled up as a valuable networking opportunity. 

In particular, the training sessions focused on developing skills in client interviewing, letter drafting and legal research skills. The Law Clinic’s students were fortunate to receive a number of presentations from a variety of Osborne Clarke’s employees. This included talks from partners, associates, trainees and members of the graduate recruitment team.

At a time when the Law Clinic is experiencing a very high demand of client cases, the training provided by Osborne Clarke has equipped its members with the essential skills needed to provide a professional client service.

The Law Clinic’s Training Manager, second year law student Bryan Wang commented:

The training delivered by Osborne Clarke was nothing short of excellent, dedicated and systematic. I felt that the training sessions took a very holistic approach to legal issues in general, covering all the essential areas of the type of work that we do. Furthermore, it equipped the Clinic’s members with the fundamental skills and tools necessary to conduct their assigned case work.

The feedback from members was hugely positive, will students expressing that they had found the training useful both from the practical skills gained, and in giving them confidence in preparing their first cases of the year.

Academic Director John Peake reiterated the Law Clinic Members’ positive response:

I am really pleased with the involvement of Osborne Clarke in training our Clinic students. The feedback from the students has been uniformly positive and I see this collaboration as part of a developing and ongoing relationship between one of Bristol's leading law firms and the University of Bristol Law Clinic.

We are delighted that such successful events can serve as a platform to develop this relationship. Discussion has already begun about organising supplementary training sessions for the Spring term to focus on the communication and presentation skills needed across the range of Law Clinic projects.

The Law Clinic would like to thank Osborne Clark for their on-going help and support which is helping us to maximise our effectiveness and positive impact within the Bristol community.