Law lecturer Colin Smith of Trinity College has told a webinar on access to justice  that if law students simply absorb the existing priorities of the legal system, they will not be sensitised to its structural problems, and the obstacles to justice which they create.

A barrister specialising in human rights and disability law who lectures at TCD’s school of law, Smith said that legal professionals themselves, in their make-up and attitudes, could act as barriers to justice.

Agency

“Lawyers aren’t without agency in this system, and we influence how it works by the advice that we give and the arguments that we make,” he said.

“We want to give students the professional skills that they need to confront these barriers,” he said.

As a law lecturer he seeks to promote the practice of human-rights law as a core legal skill, he said.

“We’ve tried to create a human-rights-law module based on the principles of clinical legal education,” he said.

Legal interactions

Students learn through participation in real legal interactions, coupled with reflection on that experience, he said.

They see the barriers to justice in the legal system and propose ways to navigate around them, he said.

In 2020, the students produced a guide on the rights of Travellers and Roma. 

“The idea was that our work would then be useful to FLAC, and to others, in strategic litigation around this issue,” he said.

There is an appetite in law schools for a greater role for clinical legal education, he said, which should  lead to more lawyers with the skills to serve marginalised communities.

But disability law, refugee law, social-welfare law, and housing law remain at the margins of the legal system, the TCD lecturer said.