Manchester University students create legal advice centre app

An app has been developed by law students at Manchester University that allows users to find help when legal advice centres are closed.

As reported by Legal Futures, the app was created by three second-year law students as part of the university’s legal tech and access to justice course which was launched last year. The course is in collaboration with a number of law firms including Freshfields, Weightmans and DWF Ventures – the national firm’s research and development entity – with more partner firms announced last month.

The app is designed to take the details of clients during hours when the legal advice centre is not open, and redirect their enquiries elsewhere if necessary, hopefully lessening the workload of advice centre workers.

Professor Claire McGourlay, director of learning and teaching at the school of law said, “The app reduces the amount of preliminary work for people in the advice clinic,” she said. “I’m not saying everyone will use it. We deal with disadvantaged people and some of them are not comfortable with using the Internet or a smart phone.

“But it gives clients one way of finding out if we can help with a legal problem, or whether they have one in the first place.”

Development of the app is still in progress, but it should be ready well before the start of start of the new academic year.