Working in partnership with Hugh James
For over 18 years the School of Law and Politics has worked in partnership with leading law firm, Hugh James to offer our students a range of opportunities which allow them to experience what life is like in a high profile, ever evolving legal firm.
Hugh James offer our students paralegal placements where they develop key practitioner skills such as case management, legal research and legal writing in addition to generic employability skills such as time management, team working and commercial awareness.
We also work with Hugh James to offer our NHS Continuing Healthcare Scheme. On this pro bono scheme, our students learn about how Hugh James help families of nursing home residents to recover care home fees that arguably should have been paid by the NHS. Students work on dummy files and review medical records, draft letters to ‘clients’ and other organisations and develop their advocacy skills through participating in a mock Independent Review Panel. Students obtain valuable employability skills and are provided with the opportunity to interact with a Partner and Senior Associate.
The scheme is a fantastic opportunity for the students to, not only get to know an area of law they probably will have not had any exposure to before, but to also develop their skills in terms of writing to clients, reviewing medical records and advocacy. It’s a privilege for me to have come full-circle and to be able to give back to the scheme that essentially set my legal career in motion.
With so much going on, Hugh James regularly post on their blog about working with us so we’ve pulled some recent posts together to highlight the ways in which we work together and how our students benefit from it.
I would encourage the students to get to know the people they are working with, both in terms of other students and the Hugh James supervisors. It is a brilliant way to start networking which is a really important skill.