The Power of Student Pro Bono: Personal Reflections
By Cameron Wong McDermott, Lecturer in Social Change and Clinical Legal Education
Let me begin by telling you a story…
On a cold evening in January 2021, during the second lockdown in Glasgow, I was walking in Queens Park when, by sheer coincidence, I bumped into Matt, one of my closest friends from high school. After leaving school in 2009, our paths diverged and we lost touch – he moved to an English university to study Literature, and I went to Glasgow University to study Law. Now, Matt is both a philosopher and a raconteur, and over the course of several hours, we reminisced about good times and reflected on the journeys that brought us back together in the Southside. And then Matt, blessed with a perfect recall, reminded me of who I, as a 16-year-old high school pupil, wanted to be as a lawyer: a human rights barrister in London (with a side practice in commercial law to ‘pay the bills’), all while serving as a back-bench Labour MP. How did that work out, you might ask?
Rewind to the summer of 2010. I was about to begin my second year at University. I had performed reasonably well in first year courses, and was, in my eyes, on track to achieving that ambition. Around this time, I was assigned a new Advisor of Studies – Professor Maria Fletcher, then a lecturer in EU Law. As the first in my family to go to University, I didn’t know any lawyers, but I knew I needed practical legal experience before beginning the gruelling process of applying for summer vacation schemes. Ever supportive, Maria suggested that I undertake pro bono work at a law centre. Castlemilk Law Centre had taken law students in the past, and she thought it might be a good place to start. I saw this as a chance to gain hands-on experience while ‘helping’ people. A win – win, as I thought at the time.
And so, in my second year, I began volunteering at Castlemilk Law Centre. For those not familiar with Glasgow, geographically-speaking Castlemilk is only a short drive from where I grew up in Newton Mearns in the Southside. There are some similarities. They are both suburban housing developments on the outer edges of the city limits, bordered by lush countryside. They are both served by a shopping centre and golf courses, if that’s your thing. But that is where the similarities end. In terms of socio-economic status, Castlemilk remains one of Glasgow’s most deprived areas, while Newton Mearns is one of its most affluent. Castlemilk was built in the 1950s as one of four post-war ‘peripheral’ housing estates (Drumchapel, Easterhouse, and Pollok being the others) to accommodate people moving from sub-standard tenements in parts of the old inner-city (e.g. Hutchesontown). One stark and often cited example of inequality is the lack of a major supermarket in Castlemilk selling affordable fresh food, despite campaigning by residents and promises made by national and local Government. By contrast, residents of the Mearns have their pick of major supermarkets and local butchers.
My time at Castlemilk Law Centre coincided with the early days of the Coalition Government’s (Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, 2010-2015) devasting programme of austerity. There was much work to do, and I began at the sharp end - supporting clients with administrative appeals against refusals of Disability Living Allowance. While my legal education had equipped me with useful technical skills, what became glaringly obvious was how it had failed to prepare me emotionally for the relentless pressure of supporting and representing highly vulnerable clients facing injustice. With every refusal decision, every barrier to justice put up to disempower people, every benefit sanction applied for a perceived failure to meet a condition, I grew increasingly angrier and more disillusioned. The law, I had thought, was supposed to be just and fair, and lawyers servants in the administration of justice and rule of law. Yet, this work began to shift my understanding of justice and my role in it.
I continued to do pro bono work at various law centres alongside my studies, as welfare rights became even more challenging under policies like the benefit cap and the so called ‘bedroom tax’ introduced in 2013.
Reflecting back on my student pro bono experiences during this 23rd National Pro Bono Week, I realise how profoundly they shaped my professional identity. For those unfamiliar with the concept, professional identity is, in essence, “the individual’s answer to questions such as, Who am I as a member of this profession? What am I like, and what do I want to be like in my professional role? and What place do ethical-social values have in my core sense of professional identity?".[1] Now, I had certainly been taught about professional responsibility (the rules governing the behaviour of members of a profession) and legal ethics. But it was only through directly confronting injustice that I began to understand the social and economic impact of law, the role of lawyers in society, and, most importantly, who I wanted to become as a lawyer. Self-reflection on the anger and discomfort I felt in those situations, sitting with that unease, and examining my own power and privilege ultimately shaped how I view law and practice today.
And so, what became of the wannabe human rights barrister/politician? Since graduating in 2013, I qualified as a Solicitor in Scotland and embarked on a varied career in the human rights field, which took me to Strasbourg (working for the Council of Europe) and roles in National Human Rights Institutions, where I engaged in both legal and policy work. In all my roles, I have been guided by the belief—shaped by my pro bono experience—that the law can be a tool for progressive social change, and that lawyers can, and perhaps should, work to make a difference in the lives of people facing injustice.
That belief brought me full circle in 2024, when I returned to the University as a Lecturer in Social Change, tasked among other things with developing Clinical Legal Education at the School of Law. Ideas that began to germinate when I was a student have now come to fruition, with the establishment of the Glasgow Open Justice Centre creating more opportunities for our students to take part in in-house and external pro bono work. We make reflective practice a core part of all our projects, which supports students in their professional identity formation. For example, one of our students, Ellie Armstrong, who worked on a public legal education project with the homelessness charity The Marie Trust, wrote powerfully in the Law Society of Scotland’s Journal Magazine about seeing first-hand the disconnect between legal duties designed to protect the most vulnerable and marginalised in society, and the lived reality of those attempting to enforce their rights, which challenged her understanding of justice. This experience is not uncommon in Clinical Legal Education, where learners experience “disorienting moments”, in which their prior conceptions of social reality and justice are unable to explain the clients' situations. This, according to adult learning theory, is the beginning stage of real perspective transformation.[2]
Today, pro bono work is a mainstream feature in UK-based law schools, reflecting a wider commitment to community engagement. A survey undertaken by LawWorks and CLEO (the Clinical Legal Education Organisation) reported that 93 per cent of student respondents said that the law school they attended carried out pro bono work, with 75 per cent of law schools reporting that their institutions plan to extend existing pro bono work opportunities.[3] In 2024, our own GO Justice Centre published findings from an extended student pro bono consultation process. Among the findings, one resonated with me: Students who engage in pro bono work value the opportunity to see the practical impact of law as a vehicle for driving social change in the community; exposure to experiential learning outside the classroom environment, allowing them to apply legal skills to address ‘real-world’ problems; and the opportunity to work collaboratively with peers and community-based organisations to address social justice issues.
Following student feedback, we have recently established a Student Pro Bono Committee with the bold mission of making pro bono an integral part of student and community life here at the School of Law. The Committee brings together committed and passionate students with a wide range of pro bono experience from across degree programmes. Please give their Instagram page a follow for more information about their activities and programme of events for 2024/25. I personally am looking forward to their National Pro Bono Week bake sale on Wednesday 13 November!
Revisiting that conversation with Matt, it’s interesting how my vision of myself as a lawyer has changed. For me, that change began through pro bono work and law centre experiences, alongside the guidance of supportive mentors like Maria. These experiences taught me to explore and develop my own values and ethics, and, ultimately, helped to answer that question which strikes at the heart of professional identity formation: who do I want to be as a lawyer?
[1] Carnegie Report 2004, Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law
[2] Fran Quigley, Seizing the Disorienting Moment: Adult Learning Theory and the Teaching of Social Justice in Law School Clinics, 2 Clinical L. Rev. 37 (1995).
[3] LawWorks and CLEO, Law School Pro Bono and Clinic Report 2020, written by James Sandbach and Richard Grimes. Available here: https://www.lawworks.org.uk/sites/default/files/files/LawWorks%20Law%20Schools%20Report%202020_0.pdf
