CLOCK-WISE

CLOCK was created to develop a local innovative response to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act, 2012, building an academic, public, private and third sector project, developed through community legal education and our longstanding research on access to justice.

The Community Legal Companion role’s guidelines were designed by leading academic, legal, court and charitable experts within the CLOCK Steering Committee, informed by 'Voices of Experience', highlighting how vulnerable and marginalised individuals may be faced with a complexity of housing, welfare, children arrangements and personal safety needs, which make it extremely difficult to navigate access to services and court proceedings in these difficult times.

The Community Legal Companion is premised upon the McKenzie Friend Guidance, 2010 that a litigant has the right to assistance, in accordance with the fair administration of justice. We understand that procedural fairness, requires the consideration of whether there are exceptional cases for access to legal aid, with regard to Art 6 (1) of the ECHR, right to fair trial.

CLOCK activates an innovative three-dimensional ‘Transformative Methodology’ (Krishnadas, 2008) which established the importance of the intersection of rights between the subject and the state, to centre ‘voices of experience’ at the heart of the justice model. The CLOCK web portal facilitates the legal subject’s direct access and engagement with legal actors to assist, monitor and transform sites of justice.

CLOCK has been supported through the ‘Research Innovations in Social and Legal Methodologies’ (UK, India Education Research Initiative) ‘Strategic Legal Education’ Higher Education Academy and CLOCK International, Scale and Growth (HEFCE/UnLTd), to develop a rigorous and robust mechanism for long-term national and international transformative research for access to justice.

Krishnadas (2008), ‘Rights as the Intersections: Rebuilding Cultural, Material and Spatial Spheres of Justice– A Transformative Methodology’, in Cultural Practices, Political Possibilities. Dasgupta R (Ed.). Cambridge Scholars

Community Legal Research