In recent years human rights law has become an increasingly popular choice for both students and practitioners. University law faculties are increasingly offering human rights modules as part of their law degrees and more firms boast specialisms in the field. The introduction of the Human Rights Act 1998 has incorporated human rights law, public law and EU law into English law, and made the European Convention on Human Rights directly enforceable in the national courts.

Susie Labinjoh is a partner at Hodge Jones & Allen, one of the leading predominantly publicly funded law practices in the country. She studied philosophy at the University of Hull and, while her mind was on the big questions, she didn’t think about a career, least of all in law. “It didn’t even cross my mind!” she says. It wasn’t until she left university and started working in a law firm that she found the law interesting. Susie continued to work, studying the GDL in the evenings, before moving to The College of Law in Guildford for her LPC. She won a training contract at Hodge Jones & Allen and has stayed there since qualifying in 1999.

Susie’s seats ranged from crime to employment to personal injury and actions against the police. In this final seat she was involved in specific human rights work: “I did compensation claims for miscarriages of justice, judicial reviews, death in custody inquests and civil actions against the police. One of my first cases was a false imprisonment claim. My client had been arrested and detained in the police station for three days and it turned out the police had the wrong person. My client unfortunately had the same surname as the real suspect.” Another memorable case involved an Article 2 inquest after the police shot someone carrying an air rifle.

Susie notes that the Hodge Jones & Allen training contract was very hands-on. She says: “You get to do a lot more than you would in other firms. I worked with my supervisor and would be given specific tasks to do such as drafting pleadings, taking instructions from clients and taking statements on my supervisor’s files. However, in most of the seats, I also had a small caseload of my own to work on.”

As a partner, Susie works on more complex cases, as well as supervising her own trainee and three other solicitors. Her total caseload tops 100: “I have inquest cases involving deaths in police or prison custody. I have Human Rights Act cases where people have been wrongly detained in immigration custody with the threat of being deported to war zones. Then there are false imprisonment, assault, and malicious prosecution and misfeasance cases, generally against the police.”

Susie also works on “more complex claims for compensation arising from miscarriages of justice. Claims against the police or Customs and Excise can also arise out of these cases”. She spends most days “interviewing clients and witnesses, taking statements, writing letters to the other side, preparing documents for court and supervising other solicitors”.

Although it’s rare that Susie goes to court, this year she did end up in the House of Lords. She says: “The case arose from a miscarriage of justice compensation claim. We judicially reviewed the clients’ awards of compensation because there had been a deduction for their so-called ‘saved living expenses’ while they were incarcerated. I considered that it was palpably unfair that someone could be sent to prison for 18 years for a crime they didn’t commit and then have their award of compensation reduced by the money they were supposed to have saved by being in prison. So we challenged the decision by way of judicial review in the High Court, winning some of the issues and losing others. We appealed to the Court of Appeal and again, won some, lost some. Finally we appealed to the House of Lords.”

Although Susie’s team lost the appeal, the experience was the highlight of her career thus far. She comments: “It was an amazing experience to listen to five judges considering and discussing a case you have brought. I remember being a student, reading countless House of Lords decisions. I never ever imagined that one day one of my cases would be in the Lords.”

As human rights is a practice area that frequently raises normal issues, Susie says that you must have “a strong sense of fairness and be able to appreciate when something isn’t right. For me, it’s always been about acting for people, helping them improve their lives or right wrongs done to them – not being a faceless corporate bod who’s perusing shipping contracts”.

Another interesting side to the area is the media interest. Susie shrugs it off but stresses the importance of getting it right. She says: “It’s very important to explain your cases in an interesting and accessible way as there can be a lot of negativity towards human rights and civil liberties especially in the tabloid press. People perhaps have the impression that it’s gone too far but that’s generally because cases aren’t reported correctly.”

Because human rights cases often make the news, Susie says it’s essential to have an awareness of current affairs. Also, you need to be “tenacious, able to deal with people who are in vulnerable situations, and generally patient and empathetic”. Sometimes it won’t be obvious what the problem is. “A client’s not going to turn up at the office and say, ‘I think I have a Human Rights Act claim’,” says Susie, so you need a complete legal knowledge.

If Susie regrets anything, it’s not having much experience when she started her career. She advises students to volunteer at the Citizens Advice Bureau or law centres: “It’s a very good thing to do because it is rewarding in itself, gives you invaluable experience and will make your application form and CV stand out. Don’t be afraid to write to firms who do those areas of work and ask if it would be possible to do some work experience.”

If legal knowledge and work experience are technical prerequisites for working in human rights, Susie emphasises the magic ingredient you’ll need. “I wanted to make a difference to people’s lives,” she says. “You have to be very passionate about it – it would be too difficult if you weren’t.”