Securing
legal work has never been easy. When I reflect on my time at university, law
school and preparing for the bar exams, I cannot remember a time where
structured and direct career advice and guidance was given to me. I had to
navigate finding work in the legal sector by myself and at times, I found
myself working as a cleaner, administrative assistant, waitress and call centre
agent just to put food on the table and pay rent and bills. Although these jobs
come with transferrable skills, you still need the exposure and experience of
working within a legal environment to put into practice your legal knowledge
and to develop important skills needed for a career in law.
My
university wasn’t very helpful at all and I was never accepted onto any
mentoring programme! I had to find my own legal internships and volunteering
opportunities at law firms, barrister chambers and my local advice centre. To
raise money for a certain cause, I took on a temporary Christmas job as a
waitress working at Christmas dinner parties. I met a lot of graduates with
master’s degrees and some even studying for a PHD and they were frustrated
because they were finding it difficult to secure paid or unpaid work
placements, internships or voluntary work.
At
the time I was working as an Aviation Adjudicator and shared my personal
experiences and how I could relate to them having to do any job just to make
ends meet because you can't find work in your preferred field and what you had
had spent years studying for. All of them were from Black and Ethnic Minority
(BAME) backgrounds which hit closer to home because I could see myself in them!
As
I knew some people who worked in their field of interest, I took their contact
details and tried to connect them with people who could mentor them in some
way. Then for the law students and graduates, I started to think about what I
could do. I had a desire to start some sort of program to help
them, but I just didn’t know exactly what and how I would do this!
A
year and a half later, I was finally able to materialise my desire to give law
students and graduates, from different backgrounds, the opportunity to gain
practical legal experience, working on real-life cases through the legal
and social justice organisation I set up, United Legal Access.
I
initially focused on recruiting volunteers from BAME backgrounds, especially
for the EU Settlement and Windrush Compensation work we were doing. It just
seemed appropriate at the time to have volunteers who looked like the people we
were helping. However, I knew that others needed the opportunity to gain legal
experience and I did not want to restrict it to only those from BAME
communities.
So,
a year later, when we launched our virtual legal advice clinic at the start of
the pandemic, we created opportunities for volunteers from all backgrounds.
Today, we have 25 law students and graduates volunteering with us (as well as
20 volunteer solicitors and paralegals) from different backgrounds and from
different parts of the country. Three of them have now gone on to secure legal
jobs.
It’s amazing
how our own personal struggles, misfortunes and experience can later be used to
help others. I don’t believe in coincidences but we are placed in certain
places and go through things for a reason. I am grateful that I am in a
position to help young aspiring lawyers gain valuable learning experience that
will help them in their future career, along side doing good for the community 😊
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