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NCLS Partnership
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We have a long-term partnership with Norfolk Community Law Service. Fifty of our students volunteer with them each year, and staff spend time across both the UEA clinic site and the NCLS offices in Norwich. Clients may see us and our students at both places.
NCLS helps over 4000 people each year. 95% say they are happy with the service they received.
Many of their solicitor volunteers are former UEA students who’ve gone from student volunteering to being fully qualified advisors offering pro bono support through their law firms or chambers.
Some NCLS trustees are also former UEA students.
Students at NCLS work across several different teams, embedded with the full-time NCLS staff.
Debt - a Financial Conduct Authority registered service helping people manage debt
Immigration - a team advising on a wide range of immigration issues including indefinite leave to remain, Ukraine Scheme, and citizenship.
Welfare Rights - helping people who have been refused welfare benefits to challenge that refusal at the welfare benefits tribunals. Our students have helped recover over £15 million for people in Norfolk who were initially wrongly refused benefits to which they were entitled.
Legal Services – the main backroom team supporting the free legal advice service that covers employment law, family law, wills, general civil law. This services helps over 1800 people each year.
Family Court Support and Domestic Abuse – the largest team, supporting people in children arrangements cases and providing advice on all aspects of relationship breakdown, as well as protection from abuse. Our partnership with NCLS has produced our joint Norfolk Family Court Information website providing support to people representing themselves.
Students have direct client contact, taking calls, booking appointments, attending appointments, and following up. They sit in on appointments with the client and an advisor or local solicitor, taking a note of the advice. Students build great links with the 85 or so local solicitors who volunteer and develop considerable skills in dealing with vulnerable clients.
Students may be working in a team that covers an area of law they are studying or they may be able to experience an area of law that isn’t taught at undergraduate level. As they are embedded with the team they receive ongoing direct supervision and support, and NCLS has a volunteer coordinator.
We recruit annually in March, by application and then interview. Students are allocated a team, and their preferences for which team are met as much as is possible. Students volunteer for one half day per week.
Given the timing of the recruitment, it’s not possible for first years to apply. We try to make opportunities available to GDL and LLM students who apply to UEA later than the UCAS deadlines and are here for a year only, but we cannot guarantee this.