Legal education, ethics and access to justice: forging warriors for justice in a neo-liberal world

Abstract

This article explores the reasons for a greater emphasis on access to justice in UK legal education and how law schools might go about raising awareness of the issue in students and fostering a commitment on their part to play a role in redressing problems of unmet legal need. It argues that the most effective means of doing so is through law clinics and other forms of voluntary legal services which expose students to the issue of unmet legal need and which may inspire them to seek to enhance access to justice when in practice. Moreover, it argues that the potential for the practical engagement by students with problems of access to justice is enhanced by the very same neo-liberal forces that make the issue of access to justice so urgent in UK society and which seem to militate against an education in which access to justice plays a central role.