On 10 August 2018 the Law Clinic held its annual away day at our director, Kate Laverty’s, house. The purpose of the away day is to discuss the aims of the clinic for the upcoming year.

All attendees took part in team building exercises, brainstorming ideas, debated how to improve existing processes and made important policy decisions, all aimed at continuing the success of the clinic.

The overall aim of the Law Clinic is to provide access to justice to those who would otherwise go without; with this in mind, we used this as a starting point for our discussions.

We analysed statistics gathered from both client and student feedback, focussing on changes we could make in order to maximise both the client and student experience when using/being involved in, the law clinic.

Following these reports, participants were split into two groups and were given a workshop based on a perennial issue faced by the Law Clinic. These issues encompassed a wide range of areas including: client feedback, external connections, funding and student experience.

Group 1 focussed on these areas in order to create a strategy for tackling any issues that had been raised.  For example, when reporting on client feedback we discussed which aspects of our service are the most important to the client. This raised a variety of answers including ongoing and transparent communication.

While Group 1 discussed the service we provide and the experience of our clients, Group 2 delved into the law clinics relationship with its student volunteers.  Discussion centred on the goal of ensuring that each student who volunteers in the law clinic has the best experience possible, so that when Student Volunteers depart the Law Clinic, they feel they have truly made a difference to the people in our community.

After concluding our group sessions, both groups took it in turns to present their conclusions. From these conclusions all attendees pooled everything together to create 9 key goals for the upcoming clinic year, called our Diamond 9. The Diamond 9 will shape the Law Clinics future direction and will be prevalent at the executive meetings where decisions are made. Decisions should be in keeping with these aims throughout the year ahead. Our nine key goals for 2018/19 are: