Friday 14 October 2016 saw this session’s intake of new student advisors complete their Initial Advisor Training. This year, we received more applications than ever before, and we took on 74 new case workers.

Over the past two weeks, our new students have been trained on how to be an effective advisor.  At the first training session, the student advisors were welcomed to the Clinic before starting to learn how effectively to interview a client.  They were then given the opportunity to practice what they had learnt by interviewing each other.

At the next session, the Law School’s Professor Charles Hennessy gave them an intensive course in legal research by setting them a problem solving question based on a real life case.

The third session involved a discussion on legal ethics lead by Professor Nicolson followed by a session on legal letter writing.

The final session acted as a ‘case simulation’, with the new advisors putting everything they had learned into practice on a mock case.

Commenting after the graduation ceremony, trainer John Stringer said:

“Our new advisors have gone through a really intensive training programme.  Despite having to take in a lot of information and learn new skills in a short space of time, our new recruits have been brilliant, never letting their enthusiasm or attention falter.”

“This year we took a different approach following the structure of a case and further incorporating our experienced student advisors into the training, with a number of them helping at our training sessions.  I think our new advisors found it beneficial to learn from their peers who are already in the role.  I also wanted the new students advisors to get used to asking their fellow advisors for help as it is something they will do in the Clinic on a regularly basis.  Just because the training is finished, does not mean the learning is and the best way for our new advisors to learn will be to work with and question our more experienced student advisors.”

Student Directors Jacob Hay and Fergus Lawrie commented:

“We are delighted to welcome our 74 new case workers, and are looking forward to working with them in the coming months. The effort they invested in each training session was outstanding, and we are confident they will be great assets to their clients.”

Professor Donald Nicolson, Law Clinic Director, remarked:

“Competition for places within the Clinic was at an all time high this year, and based on the enthusiasm with which our new intake approached the training sessions, I am confident that this will be matched with an outstanding calibre of advisors amongst our new intake. I am indebted to the staff and students who helped deliver the training this year — which I hope proved valuable and interesting for our new intake.”