When lawyers at Northumbria University’s Student Law Office (SLO) were approached by a man who appeared to have been wrongfully imprisoned for eight years for armed robbery, they believed their students could help. At the SLO, students research, interview, and sometimes represent clients on a pro bono basis, all supervised by experienced lawyers. They were right – students successfully worked to get Alex Allan’s conviction overturned back in the early 2000s and, after taking his case to the court of appeal, he was paid £170,000 in compensation for the miscarriage of justice. Since then, real-world learning at Northumbria University has been driving change, helping the local community and powering the economy in the north-east.
While most cases at the SLO, set up in the 1980s to give students real-world law experience, are less high profile than Allan’s, they are no less impactful for the clients at the centre of them.
