Hi everyone and welcome to another issue of the People's Health Dispatch and today we are here to talk about the nurses strike in the United Kingdom which was a historic event actually in December last year. So we're joined here today by Anthony Johnson from Nurses United UK and we're going to talk a bit about what the strike is about what the nurses in the UK are asking for and what we can expect in the months and weeks to come. So hi Anthony and welcome welcome to the People's Health Dispatch. Thanks for having me on thanks Anna. So just you know to start maybe it would be useful to talk a bit about the reasons behind the strike so you know we've heard a lot of news about the cost of living crisis in the UK rising inflation and essentially you know what has been going on with the nurses and why what has led to the strike. Yeah sure I mean the reasons for the strike are pretty simple it's related to our patient safety you know for the last 12 years in the UK nurses or any NHS professionals at any healthcare professional in the UK hasn't had an inflation meeting pay increase so that means our pay has fallen we think by about a third since 2010 for the average nurse. That's meant that you've got about 50,000 nursing vacancies across the UK we've got about 135,000 vacancies across the entire of a health system so it's over roles and that ultimately puts our patient safety at risk. This year alone though inflation now is at about something like 14% in the UK so the government offering 4% when they'd already cut our pay substantially is a bit of a kick in the teeth and you know and it shows that they're you know throughout this process because obviously as you mentioned we've been taking industrial action they've refused to negotiate with us they've hidden by you know arms and bodies that they control and it's because they want to privatise the NHS that's what we know this is about this is you know people are trying to sometimes say that this is about just the cost of living but we know that this is about whether or not I'm going to have nurses with me on the shop floor at the end of the day helping to care for my patients whether or not I'm going to be able to do my job properly and whether or not the UK you know we're going to be able to keep our NHS which is something we're really proud of unfortunately this government doesn't seem to be pleased with it. And actually you already touched upon two of the things that I think health activists around the world have been discussing a lot and so that's the current state of the NHS which for such a long time was put forward as a bright example of how healthcare can function and how public it can be and how it can put health workers and patients first so maybe we could just spend a bit of time talking about what's actually happening in the NHS and what have you seen when it comes to privatisation strands there? Yeah sure I mean back in the day before I was even born the NHS has been trying to get privatised so I'm you know almost 30 now and since Margaret thought in the 80s there's been plans to privatise the NHS one of the I think he was a former chairman of the Conservative Party Oliver Letwin he wrote this playbook on how we would privatise the NHS and they followed it directly to have the Conservatives and unfortunately had had the Labour Party under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown as well so we introduced an internal market where we had to put services up for tender to potentially private organisations even though the NHS is the only body that can deliver it so we waste five billion pounds a year every year doing that you know we built hospitals with private money but the interest rates on them are so high that you know for an investment I think it was an issue of about 10 billion we're going to have to pay about 90 billion over the course of those loans and we can't renegotiate them because the government wills not there you know there's loads of things that has been brought into like you know a failure to put workforce planning so we don't have enough staff back when I in 2000 we were writing about how we had an age in population not just of patients but of our staff and now we're getting to the point where third nurses are about to retire in the next five years and that's about 150,000 the government is saying well we're going to train 50,000 and everyone thinks they want to hit 50,000 but even then they're just the aspirations from them are not there and it's because they're taking money from private interests they want to privatise the NHS I would argue globally ideologically if you're a private healthcare organisation it makes sense to try to take down the NHS because it stops other countries from moving towards us and I would say at the end of the day the NHS is in name only now it doesn't it doesn't provide a universal service we've got ambulances queuing on outside A&E with patients taking two days to be handed over to be able to get a bed you know we can't discharge patients out into the community once they're well enough to do that because there's no social care provision and no community provision and those are the things that have changed you know drastically over my lifetime and it's not what the NHS is supposed to be about it's supposed to be a universal system cradle to grave and I know don't look it but I'm actually Anglo-Indian and my grandma's one of the nurses who came over in the 60s to help build the NHS and you know she came over because of like the aspirations of what the NHS would be and I feel like how broken to be honest that I'm a nurse who got into the role because I wanted to make a difference got into the role to you know contribute to public service like people in my family have done and I I'm probably going to be one of the people who gets to see the NHS go out because the thing that's happening in the UK is and I think is going to be the thing is instead of destroying the NHS what they're going to do is keep it as a brand but make it so that the state is providing private healthcare and very similar actually to Medicare for all you know the aspiration for the US and the reasons I've always had concerns with that is well what stops the private sector putting up prices and making loads of profits and money the NHS that you know a universal nationalised system is the solution to that and unfortunately it has been attacked undermined and I just hope that people you know globally but also in the UK have the where we've all to fight for it because you know if it's gone I think it's going to take a lot of work to bring it back and we need to I think there's a responsibility in the UK for us to keep it as like this example of what healthcare should be and at the moment it's not doing its job properly. I think it's very interesting you should mention that because you know we've had I mean not a similar experience but we have seen similar trends here in the Balkans so you know starting from something that was a public and a universal health system back in socialism and now where we're moving gradually or not even so gradually towards privatisation and it's interesting to see how the people relate to the system which was once accessible to all and it you know it was supposed to provide them care opposed to the government which has essentially lost that perspective it's now presented as something that cannot be done anymore it's like they're saying oh you know it's too big of a problem for us we cannot solve it without the without the support let's call it that way of the private sector and that's of course you know something that you've been dealing with in the UK for quite a bit of time and through a couple of governments now so maybe also useful to know a bit more about how the government is reacting to what you are trying to do right now. Yeah I mean so the government's refused to negotiate and they're doing that in every single industry though they refuse to negotiate when we've got rail strikes going on the thing the government I would say is successful at is having very strong messaging to the point where they just won't answer questions or have any accountability from the press at the moment so despite the fact that pay awards in the UK for the NHS are awarded by a group called the NHS Pay Review Body it's supposed to be an independent body that sets our pay award the problem is is that when the government wants to put forward a pay award they say that it's not allowed to go outside our targets for inflation they set the budget for it they appoint the people on that body I think there was someone who used to be on there from like some farming company so I think there's only one person who actively worked in the NHS anyway so they're forced to award what the government wants them to award and even then once they did that the government refused to fund the meager pay award that they did the government are hiding behind this body now they're saying oh you know it was an independent body that decided your pay award and then they're refusing to negotiate with any of our trade unions they're refusing to talk about at the moment a story that's been going throughout the UK this week has been that our entire NHS is collapsing there's a massive outbreaking flu and Covid and so it's meant that you know the stories I was talking about there's people waiting two days to be able to get in hospital in ambulances which is something that we'd never saw in the UK before there's tons of critical incidents being declared all across the NHS and everybody you know across the NHS is seeing like the NHS is literally collapsing you know right this week and the government aren't doing anything about it and I personally think that's because they want to wait until the strikes take place again on the 18th and 19th of January and turn around and blame the strikes for it that's what they wanted it because they do that all the time you know in every single sector where especially even where they've privatised it they've created the problems they're the ones who set the policies but then they just wait for an opportune moment to blame workers in this case or members of the public depending on what service it is and that's again I think something that you know we can see in different countries because it's it's always when the health workers strike happens the the government is quite quick to say oh you know the nurses they're putting their patients behind they're leaving their patients behind they don't care about what happens the doctors are doing the same the ambulance drivers are doing the same when in fact we know that the health workers take industrial action when there's no no other option left so it's actually about protecting the health system and that's why it's important that you're still planning to to do industrial action over the next weeks could you tell us a bit more about that perhaps yeah sure so there's actions that gonna be planned so our main union for nursing is the Royal College of Nursing and actions planned if the government doesn't come to the table and they're already making signs that they want to give us another real terms pay cut with the 2023 award and I think that one of the important things that's been important in the UK but I'm sure globally is being like we've seen how little care there is from governments and sometimes institutions about health care workers even in a global pandemic where people are literally dying and there was about I think something like a thousand health workers in the UK who died because we were in bin bags a lack of PPE and because our government through cuts didn't put put any emergency plan preparedness so we know the cash out and we're going to keep doing it until we get the government to come to the table okay so thanks very much Anthony if maybe you want to add something or if you think that there's something that we should keep an eye out in particular over the next next weeks this is the time to do so yeah I think that like obviously we really appreciate any support and solidarity so I can see my rooms getting a bit dark we really support appreciate any solidarity from anywhere around the world with these strikes and if anyone's got anything else going on we'd obviously want to support it too but the other thing to just remember is you know the government's behavior and the way that they're doing this the way that they're behaving affects people unfortunately globally like the government failing to train enough nurses because I was part of the campaign to try you know protect how many nurses we trained back like seven years ago has now meant the government's plan to hit its workforce targets is to hire nurses from the Philippines and from India and in these countries you know they obviously have a lower ratio of nurses to patients than we we do you know they have a worse ratio sorry and so ultimately that's the problem of like our fight is everyone else's fight we know that our healthcare systems are connected we know that we all need to be supporting each other because if we don't it's going to harm us all the six million nurses I think short globally and it shouldn't be the case that we're taking advantage of nurses from the global south and unfortunately because I work in Essex what you see is we're promising people a better quality of life and the ability to help you know send money back to their families and it's not the case inflation is so high that you can't like get by you're living in really inhospitable conditions and unfortunately because I would say the NHS is institutionally racist being treated like dirt as well sometimes you know the nurses who are international nurses with the nurses who've got moved to work in hot wards unfortunately because of how the NHS operates and that shouldn't have happened and that's the thing you know we need to make sure that we all stick together in this fight because everyone should have a freedom to be healthy basically. Thanks so much Anthony.


Hi! Yeah, Primal Scream! Like, yes! Did you see that? So we're gonna have some fun. I know you're all, you all took a midterm, correct? Yeah, okay, so like, do this. Like, just like, yes, okay. Take out your phones, iPad, laptop, whatever you have. We're gonna, um, hopefully the session's gonna be interesting and engaging and fun after what you just went through. If you have a phone, I want you to text the phone numbers 22333, okay? Like, you're dialing a friend 22333, and then in the text, LAWRWU.  Anyone having issues? Are you with me? Thumbs up? Like, good? If you're having an issue, just go like this so I know how many people are having issues. Yeah.  Okay. So, hand up means that you're engaged through text or the website? That's pretty good. That's pretty good. Raise your hand if you need another 10 seconds. Yes, Debbie. We're waiting for you. Make sure there's no space. LAWRWU is one word. That could be an issue. Do you have AT&T? If most of you have it, that's good enough. The rest of you can play along, um, in your heads. Okay, let's test it out. For those of you who are able to participate, let's test it out.  Go, A. Go, A. Go, A. You can do it. I cranky. We can work with cranky. We're used to it. I get the cranky, sleepy crowd. Okay, so you'll notice there's candy going around, and that's because we want you to not be sleepy. We want a little sugar high while you're in here. We don't want you to be cranky. We want you to stop thinking about your criminal law midterm and think about the cool part of law school, which is experiential ed. Okay? Krim. God. God. God. Out of your head. Experiential ed. Yay! Good stuff. Okay. All right, so we're going to do one more of these. How do you learn best? There's no cranky option on this one, okay? This is cool. You guys are doing a lot of reading about things, and you learn law, reading about it, but you don't learn how to do it until you do it yourself. So that's what we're here to talk about, the part of law school where you get in the trenches, where you roll up your sleeves, where you learn how to practice law, and that's what we're here to introduce you to. And that's because, right, becoming a lawyer is about so much more than you're doing right now, right? You're in doctrinal classes, you're in legal practice classes, and that's right where you need to be right now for the fall of law school for your first semester. But after that, it's time to get out there and start doing things, because that's how most of you learn best. And to us, that's really the critical part of law school, is getting in the field, really learning, like, how do you listen to a client? How do you make a client feel heard? How do you understand what your client's values are? What they want to do, not what you think is best for them, but what they want out of their legal case? Their values are consistent with their lifestyle and their whatever's going on for them, right? Developing professional judgment, you can't learn that sitting in a classroom, right? What's likely to happen in court? What's this judge like? What are your client's chances of prevailing if they take it to trial? What are the opportunities, you know, for settlement, right? That's all professional judgment. You can't learn that sitting in a classroom. Messiness of human relationships, the ethics, how close you can get to the line without crossing over an ethical line, right? All of that is what you learn in experiential education, and that's what we're here to tell you about today. So you've got a huge panoply of us up here, sort of the directors of all of the externship programs and the clinics, and we've got three fabulous two students and an alum who are also going to talk to you about their paths and what they've done experientially, okay? So there are going to be a lot of us switching around this microphone and keep passing the candy around. I'm going to turn it over to Andy Horowitz who's going to take us through the next little bit. Thanks. Thanks.  So what this slide is showing you is pretty much what we want to talk to you about for the next hour or so, right? You see the sort of progression from coming in as a non-lawyer and with some, maybe some, but maybe no experience or real connection to lawyering and what it looks like. And obviously at the end of the process, we hope and expect that folks are emerging from the law school experience ready to practice law. And so the sort of the pieces along the way are the things we're going to spend our time talking about, right? Already in the first year, you started to get exposed to a piece of what we consider experiential education in your legal practice class, right? Where in that class, you are placed into the role of a lawyer in a way that you're really not in your doctrinal classes. As you move on through your second year as part of the academic program, there are classes, many of them, that you can choose from that deal with simulation and role play, another form of experiential education, all still within the confines of the law school. At the same time you're on that trajectory, there are other experiences, pro bono experiences that you ought to start thinking about particularly as you get into your second semester of your first year. And certainly as we approach alternative spring break, something that many of you should be thinking about taking advantage of. You see at the bottom there's our Sea Grant Law Fellows Program which you're going to hear more about that can be a curricular activity, it can also be an activity that people do for pay, but a terrific opportunity for experiential ed. And then generally as you get into the second half of your second year and into your third year of law school, you can be thinking about our clinics and our externships which are for credit experiences that we'll describe in a little more detail later. And along the way, internships, right, let's just stop for a minute and talk about the difference between those two words as we use them so that hopefully the vocabulary doesn't get confusing. An internship is something that one does essentially on a volunteer basis. An externship is a very similar experience but it is for academic credit and it is handled through a series of programs that you're going to hear more about later today. So, right, this is what I've already started talking about. In your first year you have your legal practice class. There is a requirement for graduation that you take at least six credits of upper-level electives that fall into a category of experiential education. That's a requirement through the American Bar Association as well as our own internal requirement. These are some examples, but they're only a few examples of the very many upper-level elective classes that fall into this category. And then we have these other sort of versions, again we're going to spend time slowing this down and talking about each of them. You know presumably that we have a requirement for graduation that you do pro bono legal work. Most students, every student of course does that, but many, many I would say most students do far more pro bono work in their law school experience than is required by the graduation requirement. We're going to talk about the Sea Grant Law Fellows, externships and clinics. Those latter three on that list of four are second and third year experiences. So I'm going to turn it over and we're going to talk through the pro bono experiential learning requirement. That's you guys. There we go. Hi, I'm Eliza Vorenberg. I'm the director of pro bono and community partnerships. And I'm Susie Harrington-Steppin, the associate director of pro bono programs. And we are going to talk to you about one of your graduation requirements, the pro bono experiential law requirement.  So Roger Williams University School of Law is committed to giving back to our under resourced communities and to instilling in our law students an ethic of pro bono legal service. We believe that by engaging in pro bono service as part of your legal education you will develop an understanding of this professional responsibility and you will develop a muscle for continuing to do it in your career. So the pro bono experiential learning requirement is rooted in ABA Model Rule 6.1. ABA Model Rule 6.1 is the legal profession's way of saying that with the privilege of practicing law comes the responsibility to help those who cannot afford your services. At least 50 hours per year or less than an hour a week is the aspirational goal and one that we hope you all will not only meet but exceed when you're practicing attorneys. The number of hours is aspirational but doing pro bono is a lawyer's responsibility. So this statistic is reflects what we call the justice gap or the access to justice crisis. When people cannot get a lawyer to protect their basic human needs like food, housing and employment that's an access to justice issue. Even those who qualify for help from legal services organizations based on their income will most likely not get a lawyer. There are simply not enough lawyers providing legal service to low income clients. Because there's so many people right here in our community and all over the country who desperately need legal help and because we have talented students like you who are not only ready, willing but are able to help with appropriate training and supervision the bulk of the law school's work in pro bono clinics and externships is in our low income communities. I'll now turn it over to Susan. Okay, so each of you will do 50 hours over three years so you're not doing 50 hours a year so that's something I hope you'll remember today. So 50 hours over the course of the next three years and I'm sure many of you are thinking how am I going to do it? Some of you may already have ideas maybe you've gone to the street law info session or alternative spring break but others might be sitting here thinking how am I going to do 50 hours or free anything over the next three years. So I want to quickly describe the categories of the ways in which our students do the 50 hours, okay? The first one is alternative spring break and many of you already know about this program it's a really great way for those of you who want to get your 50 hours completed either quickly, do it during your first year or want to do it in a condensed way. You can get all 50 hours doing the spring break week and then there are some meetings before and after but it's a 50 hour project. We designed that opportunity to make it sort of compact so that's alternative spring break to do that any of the years that you're here. The second way is joining one of our pro bono collaborative projects. These projects we call it the PBC that's our acronym. These projects are law school run designed projects. For the most part we partner law students with community organizations and often times private law firms that want to do pro bono to provide legal services. So for first year students the two projects in the PBC that you can join are street law and then VITA the volunteer income tax assistance project but in your second and your third year we have a variety of projects ranging from civil legal clinics in our local prison we have a special education law project we have a guardianship project several immigration projects we have projects that help nonprofits incorporate and set up their 501c3 status. The PBC projects tend to be less of a time commitment but over several semesters. So if you're looking to do a little bit here and there a pro bono collaborative project probably makes sense for you if you want to work on a project for multiple semesters. The third way you can fulfill your pro bono is through a summer internship or an internship during the school year. Not an externship remember externship means you're getting credit an internship would be a volunteer experience and often times students will do a summer internship with a nonprofit with a government agency sometimes with a judge all of those count. We've tried to make our requirement broad enough to really capture all the potential interests that many of you may have. So think about potentially meeting the 50 hours through a summer internship. And then the third way is really creating your own project each year we have students who come in and say I want to do this how do I do it. It's not really an internship it's just something I feel passionate about. The beautiful part of the Feinstein center is we're really well staffed and we can do that like we can help you actually design a project and in some cases we've turned student ideas into pro bono collaborative projects okay. So we have a really broad way for you to meet this requirement and we want to make sure that it fits for each of you. I think this is helpful this gives you a snapshot of where the class of 2019 did their pro bono about half which is sort of the dark blue on the left side of the screen. Half of our students completed their pro bono through a law school facilitated project either alternative spring break or the pro bono collaborative and then the remaining pieces of this pie show you that students worked for judges they did government agency work public defender work some students even found private attorneys in the private sector who were taking out pro bono cases or classic pro bono. So that's I hope helpful for those of you who might be feeling a little bit anxious which you shouldn't because this is exciting. Okay logistics and this is important because unlike all the programs that you're going to hear about this afternoon all of you are going to do this you need to be certified. So before you start any project or internship that you think might be qualifying for pro bono you need to let us know and we use an online system called e-tree all of this information is on the Feinstein website you can just go there there's a wonderful student guide that talks about what counts and what doesn't count. Every rule every policy you can imagine is on our website that's really your best place to go to get answers to questions but just remember before you start something you need to log on to this e-tree system instructions online and let us know you're starting and then there's steps that you need to take at the end of the experience in order to be certified and have it show up on your transcript. Okay so two more small points and then I'll move on to the next person 100 hour recognition most students here wind up I think 55% of last year's class did 100 hours or more pro bono if you do that much pro bono you're recognized in the commencement program so it's important that you report your hours and you're keeping track of your hours so even if you do alternative spring break or street law if you go on to do summer experiences that qualify you want to keep track of those hours so there's graduation recognition and the last thing I want to mention is that New York state has its own pro bono requirement it's similar to ours but it's also different so if you think at some point in time and I really mean at some point in time you want to be licensed in New York stop by our office look on our website it's own pro bono rules and they are a little bit different I can help you identify an opportunity that will qualify for both so you don't have to do 50 hours for New York and 50 hours for Roger Williams you can find things that qualify for both but stop by my office so that we can make sure that you're picking the right opportunity I'm going to pass it over to Reed Porter thanks thank you Suzy I'm Reed Porter I'm the senior staff attorney in the marine affairs institute how many of you guys are marine affairs I want to do this as my career we got some right how many of you guys are marine affairs curious not really sure it sounds pretty cool and a lot better than you know some stuffy old alright I'm thinking that what you guys who are marine affairs groupies and curious are listening to me the rest of you should also listen to me as well because the Rhode Island Sea Grant law fellow program is not just aimed at people who are wanting to go into this as a career we have projects that cover a lot of different areas there's a beautiful word cloud which I made on the internet and it talks about some things that are marine affairs like the aquaculture regulation microplastics I learned recently that the average American eats 5 grams of plastic per day per week excuse me which is the same weight as a credit card so we're going to be working on that in the next year but there's also all these other issues like civil rights environmental justice local government and land use law and we do tons of those kinds of things so it may be that you have a particular interest in an area that we're working on even if you don't think of yourself as a marine affairs person so it's great to be interested it's not required so what do law fellows do anyway we help people make informed decisions about ocean and coastal related issues the marine affairs institute is home of the Rhode Island Sea Grant legal program which is one of only four Sea Grant legal programs in the country and as part of that we're nonpartisan we're partly funded by the federal government so we don't do any advocacy we're not in court we're not advocating for particular laws or legislation to be passed and so our role is really to help people understand what the law is and think through decisions about what they should do given that knowledge when can you be a law fellow well this is a little bit different from the other extracurricular type of experiential education programs that we're going to talk about today you will be able to apply to be a law fellow starting this summer once you've finished all of your 1L classes so summer of 2020 for those of you who have an outside work place lined up great come back in the fall every semester after that you'll be able to apply to be a Sea Grant law fellow and you can do it more than once in part that's because we actually pay you so that's a unique feature of our work so you can either get pay or you can get credit for this and you can do it every semester as long as you have either room in your course schedule or or I forget what it is a competitive program so some people you know if you don't get it the first time come back come sit with me come and talk about when it works for your schedule for the other things that you want to do while you're here in law school for those marine affairs groupies in the room there's tons of experiences that you're going to have to figure out what works and when come and talk to us and find out what works for you once you are a law fellow you're going to be working on a one specific legal research question for the course of a semester that's a 10 to 15 hour per week requirement for the amount of work that you are going to need to do to do that well in the summer it can be up to 40 hours so it depends on the projects that we have what's allowed you're going to be working on real questions for real outside organizations but under my guidance so that means you can ask stupid questions and I won't judge you and the clients won't have to hear them but they get all your brilliant ideas at the end so you can look really good and the course of that you're going to develop your legal writing your legal research your real world problem solving skills and also presentation skills so it's a great program stop by come see me and I'll answer any questions that you have okay so the next segment we're going to talk about our very extensive array of clinical externship programs so again the word externship means these are programs that we offer for academic credit right so what's the basic definition of a clinical externship it means that you as a law student are placed in some external office not working inside the law school which is what our clinical programs look like but outside in a judges chambers in a public interest office in a government office in a corporate council legal office a whole variety of programs that you're about to hear about each of these programs has a component that has a two credit seminar that is a mandatory part of the experience that seminar component is taught by a full-time member of our faculty and that seminar brings together the entirety of the experience sort of makes the connections that make it an academically oriented and rigorous experience while your field work is out working with another lawyer or another judge with that other lawyer or judge being the supervisor of that field work we have a variety of programs some of them run over the summer some of them run only in the spring semester some of them run in fall spring and summer so we'll probably touch a little bit on that there's also a prospect of doing at some point in your legal career an entire semester a semester in practice that is devoted entirely to an experiential externship program combined with the seminar for that program okay so now we're going to go through each of these individually and tell you a little bit about them and I'm going to turn it over to my colleague Nadia Humber okay so I am Nadia Humber I'm the director of two externship programs two clinical externship programs I'm going to tell you about both of them first I'm going to tell you about the corporate council externship program and then I'm going to tell you about the prosecution and government externship program I am the director of both so just to get a sense how many of you are familiar with what an in-house council lawyer is versus a lawyer that works at a law firm and works in the business sector so in-house council are you familiar with what that is raise your hands okay so for the most part I see that you are so for those of you who are not when you're working in-house you are working for a company you have one client when you're working for a law firm you're certainly working on different areas of business law but you have many clients and you're really more of a subject matter expert for that law firm with many different business clients so that's the different so with the corporate council externship program what's really great is that you are getting exposed to an in-house council environment it's fast paced it's sort of you know get the job done really no excuses environment but it's really great because you get to see sort of active in-house attorneys doing their jobs and you get to see it from a different perspective you get the sense of what it's like having a business client and really sort of having their priorities at as your priorities right so so you get exposed to what their businesses and what their business plans are unlike how you wouldn't necessarily get that exposure working for a law firm so that's what's really unique about the in-house council externship program so also you get exposed to business right so it's not just contracts and that sort of thing transactional markets you get exposure to finance to accounting to taxes you know to certainly business organizations that sort of thing but you really get an insider perspective on how the business is run and that is your job to understand that insider perspective so that's what's really great about the corporate council externship program also you get a sense of who are you in that program you're sort of your professional identity in that space you want to be there versus if you want to work at a law firm doing business type work so some of our sorry so a lot of our students have been doing some really great work at different placements we have some really great relationships with some leading companies you can see the different companies here but they're working on license agreements with Swarovski and Fenway as well as contract agreements or construction agreements that go bane with it which is a construction company so really great work that they're doing at these very high profile companies IGTs where the head of gaming in New England and beyond and they're local they're international so you get sort of very large exposure to these companies and do so much work more than I can even talk about so that's the corporate council externship program if you have any questions about that let me know there's no prerequisites for this program but what I would suggest to you is to definitely take business oriented classes certainly contract drafting is a huge one I have never talked to a supervising attorney they didn't say that they really want you to get contract drafting sort of skills under your belt before you get to their placement so that's huge IP law is huge if you can get that business organizations of course so those sorts of courses will help you so moving on to the prosecution and government clinical externship program so similar to what I was saying before having that one client I direct this program because you also sort of have one client in a prosecution office you have one client in a government office as a prosecutor it is sort of the citizenry at large right the community at large and for a government office it's that unit it's that department so we have really great relationships and placements at many of these different offices the Rhode Island community general's office and use the attorney's office where you have sort of your one client and we're looking to expand some of these placements but really great relationships so far and great experiences with the students who are there now so come talk to me if you're interested in any of these programs Hello everybody I'm Julia Wyman I'm the director of the Marine Affairs Institute and also the Rhode Island secret legal program but I also run our environmental issues externship program and that's what I'm here to talk to you about today so I saw the hands for Marine Affairs it was a good group how many of you are interested in more broad environmental issues environmental justice okay we've got a few more hands so this is a great home for you the environmental and land use externship program and it's a great place for those students who are thinking about environmental work as well in this program you actually do get exposure to advocacy and litigation so that's one way that it's distinct from the law fellow program and also you are in a placement right so we have several placements already established we have the conservation law foundation here in Rhode Island we have the Providence city solicitors office we have the department of environmental management and we also have the Rhode Island Attorney General's environmental unit we're open to having more placements so if there's a land use or an environmental placement that you're interested in that's either here in Rhode Island or potentially in another state we have some students who are interested in going up to Boston or going to Connecticut come talk to me especially your first year we can start to sort of map out how to make that a placement for next year this program is offered only in the spring so you want to think about that when you're planning your schedule and especially those of you who may be considering one of our joint degree programs come talk to me and we can think about how to map out the courses that you need to take here to make all of that work together so what is environmental and land use what kinds of issues are you going to come across in these placements wide variety of issues ranging from zoning and land use so where in the city of Providence should we plan to put a new building how high can that new building be the Attorney General's office right now is working on a suit against big oil related to the effects of climate change on the state of Rhode Island coincidentally the conservation law foundation is also working on a concurrent suit against big oil related to the climate change effects issues related to wastewater treatment clean water in the state lead paint and lots of environmental justice issues so there's a whole different variety of issues that may come up in your placements in addition to the if you're interested in doing either four credits or eight credits you can do a semester in practice with this as you can with other externship programs so come talk to me if you're interested in that as well and you'll also need to talk to Dean Horowitz if that's something you're interested in and lastly I just want to touch on what we do in the seminar so in our seminar we do work on substantive issues related to environmental law and land use law so we work through lots of different scenarios that you may find out in the environmental law practice and then we also work on issues related to being in your placement and what does it look like to be an environmental attorney and how can you become the best attorney that you possibly could be so I'll be around for the rest of the session if you have any questions feel free to ask me hand it to Dean Yolanski Thanks so if your head is spinning and I know you're in exam mode I was thinking as I was sitting there there'll be a little quiz that I've been putting together as people have been speaking you're going to need to know the difference between an internship and an externship you're going to have to know what the PBC is you're going to have to know what the P-B-E-L-R is you're going to have to know what law fellows are you're going to have to know the difference between a clinic and a field clinic you're going to need to know the difference between in-house counsel and if there is such a thing out-house counsel you're going to need to know E-Tree you're going to need to know SIP which stands for semester of practice you're going to need to know the New York Pro Bono Scholars Program sometimes known as NYPBS so they put me in here because what I have to tell you is very simple in the judicial externship program you can work in a judges chambers you will work with a judge you will work with the judges staff you can work with federal judges you can work with state judges you can work with appellate judges you can work with trial judges you can work with judges in some specialty courts workers compensation immigration bankruptcy court so you know what judges are you know what they do because you're reading their stuff all the time that's pretty much what you're doing and that's the kind of work that you would be doing in chambers in addition to what they do so the judges can do what they do so thank you and I'm turning things over to who's next Roy Bennett we put him in for comic relief so the public interest clinical externship is the one that I teach in the fall and spring and Susie Harrington Steppen teaches in the summer this is the externship program for you if you want to work directly with low income clients this is the program where you're working with public defenders with civil legal services lawyers with folks doing immigration work at nonprofits this is the program where you will sort of be able to use a rule a student practice rule and get you can for other programs too but get into court and be able to represent clients this is a big program for using the semester in practice we've had a lot of students go far and wide through the public interest externship program this semester a student in Flagstaff, Arizona near the Grand Canyon apparently a lot of college kids go to the Grand Canyon on their breaks and they get drunk and things happen and they get arrested so he's doing a lot of those cases so we learn all sorts of things from our semester in practice students you're going to hear about the clinics in a few minutes but just if you're thinking well if I want to be a public defender I suppose I should either do the criminal defense clinic or I should do a semester in practice with a public defender the answer to that is you should do both because externships and clinics are completely different in a clinic you'll be taught by a full-time faculty member whose only responsibility is to supervise and teach you and your one of eight students in an externship program you'll be taught overseen by a busy public defender who probably has a hundred cases and you're the hundred and first thing on his to-do list okay and so what we do in the seminar is try to make up for that right you're getting trained in the field by somebody who's busy but as an expert in their field and in the seminar we're trying to teach you how do you manage up how do you get the supervision you need why how does somebody practice with a hundred cases instead of three cases right what's the impact and why is everybody in court a low-income person why is federal court so different than state court or district court right we're looking at institutional racism and the mass incarceration crisis and thinking about the new Jim Crow and so we're really digging in deep to sort of who ends up in these sort of poverty courts right housing court family court criminal court why and what can we do about it so that's the public interest externship in a nutshell and I think oh um here's your next poll everywhere excellent uh oh oh god I'm gonna switch okay turning it over to Dean Horvitz again all right I don't know if that makes my assignment to wake you up I'm not sure um so um we run a specialized version of semester in practice we've heard us mention it so far that really any of our externship programs can be done in a semester in practice format and can be done not here in Rhode Island but this is a particular specialized program that we run in Washington DC we have the good fortune of having a former tenured member of our faculty who left his faculty position to take a governmental lawyering position in the federal energy regulatory commission and that's where he works in DC but in the spring semesters he runs this program for us so it's a terrific opportunity for somebody who wants to do any kind of an externship in Washington DC and that can include government it can include an incredible array of not-for-profit organizations that are located in DC trade associations government we've had people work with Senator Whitehouse we've had people work with Congressman Sicilini so much like every other externship program we have you're in your field work placement this is a semester in practice so five days a week you're in this program and you also meet once a week in a two hour seminar class that's located physically in Washington DC and taught by professor Zalonic you see at the bottom it says two things participation must be approved by me that is true for all of our semester in practice programs so if you are considering doing a semester in practice come to me as early as you can in your planning process because part of what that approval is really about is making sure that you're doing sufficient planning to make sure that all of your graduation requirements are covered that you're going to get up to the right number of credits and all that sort of stuff the other so there's the plan early note at the bottom which is consistent with what I just said Professor Zalonic is always available always happy to chat very very excited about running the program always looking to recruit new folks so that's the DC semester in practice program New York pro bono scholars lies you come to it that's okay so there is this wonderful program that New York developed I think about five or six years ago that permits law students in their third year to take the February bar New York bar and then spend the following semester their last semester of their 3L year providing pro bono legal service in either a non-profit setting or other settings where they're working directly with clients it's a full time placement 12 weeks and you start the placement immediately after taking the February bar the beauty of it is assuming you pass which of course you will you can start practicing by mid-summer after your 3L year you still graduate you don't actually get your diploma at the same time as your classmates but you walk and you get your diploma a week or two later when you've completed the program you can do your placement either in New York or here or anywhere in the country I think they are starting to have people do placements overseas as well the way that we do it here because our placement our students have all done placements in other states mostly New York I teach the class through what's called zoom it's video conferencing so while you're doing your placement you're also doing a 2-3 hour seminar once a week for credit what else do I need to say that's it did I miss anything okay it's especially good especially good if you want to practice in New York okay so that completes the section we're doing on our externship our clinical externship programs we're now going to switch over to the in-house clinic part of our academic program so what is an in-house clinic so the difference between an externship and a clinic really centers around who the attorney of record is in the cases that are being handled right so in an externship program as you've already heard you go to some lawyer who's got some other job that's not employed by the law school right a judge a lawyer in some other office in some other capacity that lawyer is primarily responsible for those cases and provides the supervision of you as you're in an externship that's an externship in a clinic we have three what we call in-house clinics there is one field clinic that Nasky talked about in an in-house clinic the director of the clinic so me for the criminal defense clinic which I direct is the attorney of record in each case and that gives us tremendous freedom freedom that a very busy lawyer in an externship setting doesn't really have to really turn over the reins of each and every case and the full responsibility for the client to the student so obviously there's intense intensive supervision because this is the full time job of all of us who run an in-house clinic we have the time and the bandwidth to be able to manage the case load and to provide very sort of significant supervision and guidance as you personally are handling the case teams in some settings handling the case or the assignment that is part and parcel of the clinical experience clinics the in-house clinics are eight credits each they meet as classes twice a week but it's not considered a separate seminar component it is one unified graded eight credit academic experience in each of our three clinics the field clinic is six credits and a slightly different model we'll get to that in a minute so one of our three in-house clinics is the business start-up clinic Professor Katie Ahern who directs that clinic is presently out on a maternity leave so I'm going to take the job of explaining to you what that program is about for the next couple of minutes so this is the place to go to the next slide if you are interested in the prospect of being a lawyer who works with or represents businesses what the students in this clinic have the opportunity to do is work with start-up businesses generally small businesses often not-for-profit businesses and they are providing the array of legal advice that folks in that capacity need from lawyers as you can see they are talking about entity formation should be a limited liability partnership should we try and incorporate tax issues, governance issues contract review and drafting so again very very useful if you're interested in this kind of lawyering or this kind of a program for you to take the class we offer in contract drafting and transactional lawyering there is a prerequisite you see of business organizations it's hard to describe to a client what kind of entity they might form if you haven't been exposed to the kinds of entities that exist in the legal world and that's a lot of what you're learning in business organizations so again it's an aid credit experience you would be assigned as a student attorney to work with one or more than one several I think often of these kind of business entities the criminal defense clinic is the program I run like the other three in-house clinics we take up to ten students each semester they're with me for eight credits and they're working predominantly in the Rhode Island state district court which is where our state misdemeanor criminal cases are prosecuted and defended and in the Rhode Island traffic tribunal which is our statewide traffic court a lot of what we're doing at the traffic tribunal are cases involving people who've been arrested for driving under the influence and have been asked to submit to a chemical test a breath test or a blood test and they have refused that is a civil charge in Rhode Island at least for the first defense but it carries very substantial penalties so we do some of that work in my clinic we also do the general sort of variety of misdemeanor criminal charges that exist here in Rhode Island a substantial percentage of our case load are crimes involving domestic violence we do a fair amount of drunk driving cases plain old assaults that are not domestic in nature disorderly conduct, resisting arrest possession of marijuana over an ounce some prostitution or solicitation cases a variety of misdemeanor offenses when you are a student in my clinic you are doing the interview of the client I'm not there by design very consciously because I want you to be able to be the one to form the attorney client relationship with the client so my job is to stay out of the way and behind the scenes as much as possible you do the interview, you investigate the case because we don't just rely on what the police reports have to tell us you negotiate, you counsel with the client, you negotiate with the prosecutor after you figured out what the client is and is not interested in or whether this case can be resolved without going to a trial and if the case needs to go to a trial we try it and when I say we I mean you with me sitting next to you maybe jabbing you in the ribs or passing notes and occasionally calling a time out the overwhelming majority of the trial work that we do in the criminal defense clinic is in front of a judge not in front of a jury so that gives us a little more freedom so that the judges are aware of what's going on and give us a little latitude when we need but it's a terrific way to begin to practice law to really be the lawyer in a case under a very guided heavily supervised scenario where we're making sure that the clients are very well served and in fact I always feel confident that our clients are in fact very well served there is a prerequisite for the criminal defense clinic you need to have taken trial advocacy before you can be in the program and our third clinic I'm going to turn over to my colleague Debbie Gonzalez to talk to you about the immigration clinic thank you I'm Deborah Gonzalez I'm the director of the immigration clinic who cares about what's going on at the southern border yeah that's right everything that's going on at the southern border is an injustice and we at the immigration clinic are doing everything we can to fight that with the people that are either living here or actually at the southern border I just received an email today asking for help for us to fill out asylum applications over the weekend I don't know that we're going to be able to do that this weekend but maybe next so a lot of the work that we do at the immigration clinic is representing indigent immigrants who can't afford a lawyer unlike in criminal cases although immigrants have the right to a lawyer they don't have the right to a free lawyer we are along with the attorney at the immigrant coalition the only organization in the state of Rhode Island that provides free services for immigrants in removal proceedings so we need your help at the immigration clinic students at the immigration clinic do just about everything that Andy just talked about in the criminal defense clinic except we do it in the immigration context so at the immigration clinic I treated as a law firm you are my law associates the senior partner you are the one meeting with the client you are developing the strategy of the case the theory, the client's goals preparing pleadings going to court making arguments talking to trial attorneys who may not always be nice but that's what we do it's okay Amy is laughing because she's in my clinic now she's suffered a couple of trial attorneys who haven't been so nice but she's a trooper doing all of those things there's a class component there's no prerequisite I'll teach you everything you need to know while you're at the clinic you'll also have a community service component so at the immigration clinic law students go to the Wyatt to do consultations with the detainees that are in there it may mean that we take the case it may not so what we're really doing is just doing a consultation and trying to figure out is there a claim and if there's a claim can we take the case can we find somebody to do it and we work in conjunction with the immigrant coalition which is a coalition of 30 NGOs in the state of Rhode Island working for the benefit of the immigrant community and through the coalition we got DACA legislation passed in the state of Rhode Island so there's a lot of great work being done with the coalition and with our clinic as well one of the other things that immigration students do in my clinic is to collaborate with the Rhode Island PD's office does not have an attorney that does immigration consultations right so when there is a defendant who has a criminal case or criminal component or an immigration component to their case they don't have anybody to do those consultations the law students at the immigration clinic actually do that work so they will be working in conjunction with the PD's office in Rhode Island to figure out what are the consequences of a certain plea for whatever the criminal case might be and also taking into account any past criminal history that the client may have it's really sexy work I hope you join us okay so I know you'll be excited to learn this is the very last of the programs we're going to describe the bad news for you today was there was a lot of stuff to go over but the good news for you today is look what an amazing array of opportunities we have for you and that's something given where I come from that's just something I'm very proud of so Professor Wiener can't be here because she's actually teaching her class in the Veterans Disability Field Clinic right now so this is what we call a field clinic because it's a bit of a hybrid between a clinic as we've described it and an externship as we've described it Dana is a Roger Williams alum a terrific lawyer who works full time at a law firm called Chisholm Chisholm and Kilpatrick that law firm happens to be located in Providence, Rhode Island but is the nation's leading firm doing this niche of really important work on behalf of disabled veterans the overwhelming majority of what that firm does is appeals for disabled veterans who have applied for disability benefits and either been denied or gotten some percentage because they use a percentage basis there they've been called 25% disabled when in their view they're entitled to a more significant disability benefit so that's the work the firm does it's I think the fourth largest firm in the state of Rhode Island Dana is a lawyer in that firm but she runs this program for us as an adjunct member of our faculty so it's got that combination the reason we call it a field clinic it's not located at the law school like our other in-house clinics and the director is not a full-time member of our faculty she's an adjunct member of our faculty with a different job on the other hand she is the attorney of record in the cases that you are handling so in that aspect and she's also the person who teaches the seminar component of the class in that aspect it looks and feels like a clinic it's a terrific experience for people who want to help veterans for people who are interested in appellate law because it's an entirely appellate law experience and or for people who want to get a sense of what a significant law firm looks like and feels like because in this program that's what you're doing you're placed in this law firm and you're getting a sense of how that firm operates in some of the law firm culture okay so that's the veterans disability field clinic program you want me to flip it or you want to flip it okay and I'm going to hand things off let's do it anyway what? put H so alright yeah it's rigged, Andy said it's rigged okay so we are coming to the best part this is to keep you awake so I'm going to ask our students and one alum to move their chairs to the middle this is the best part okay and I have really good news for you we are running ahead of schedule ahead ahead of schedule and if there's any candy left start passing it around or bring it back up here that's all I have to say so we have a fabulous panel of students and one alum who are going to help you through different paths and how they've used experiential education okay and we are going to do this quick down and dirty and then we'll have some quick time for questions and you'll be out of here before before 3.30 I promise okay so I'm going to start with Amy I'm going to question Amy and we're going to bring up other professors to question the other two so Amy, who are you where are you from and why did you come to law school and why law school what's the plan so there's a lot of reasons I'm here but basically it's because I wanted to be able to be a more direct advocate for the community that I had been serving as a public librarian and as a policy advocate for many years before okay experiential education has absolutely enhanced my experience for two major reasons the first was I had a general idea that I wanted to do either more public defense oriented work or civil rights oriented work and I wasn't quite sure where I would fit so experiential learning gave me an opportunity to test the waters and see what I thought of these different ways of serving and the other piece of it is it gave me a chance to figure out well I should say I knew what I was passionate about but I wasn't sure how my strengths could best be used to serve and so I also used experiential learning to have a chance to see what my strengths were and how I could be the most effective lawyer that I could be so the way that I did that was first first year second semester I did alternative spring break I worked for a civil rights project at prism and found myself involved in a police brutality trial at the Rhode Island Federal District Court in front of Jack McConnell Judge McConnell excuse me and and so I had a chance to help out there which was a great experience to test my civil rights mentality see what I thought it wasn't quite the right fit for me and but so I over the summer I tried a holistic public defender office as an internship came back from that still not quite the right fit and so since then I have been able to join the immigration clinic with Debbie which is an amazing experience I highly recommend it learning about law like really complicated law that's changing literally every single day having to stay on top of it because the stakes are our clients ability to stay with their families and their loved ones and to have rights in this country and so it really makes our learning mean something so you're learning at a high rate of speed Debbie's an awesome professor super rigorous it's hard work but at the end of the day you can better serve your clients so I really appreciate that opportunity and it gives me a chance to figure out what I think about being a super nerd but also a super advocate in the immigration court so I found an H there and the last thing I'll say real quick is as a 1L I did street law it gave me a chance to get out into the community to hang out with young people which is one of my favorite things to do and to remind myself who I'm here to serve it gave me a chance in the grind of 1L year to remember why I'm here when it feels like well you know what it feels like so and then second year I continued on to be a mentor in the street law program so I highly recommend that as a 1L it's not a heavy heavy lift but it's a chance to remind yourself why you're here and it's a shining light amidst you know so yeah Amy what are you doing in this room? Oh I forgot I'm a New York pro bono scholar so I'll be taking the bar in February yeah so that's happening but then after that once I survive that part then I'm going to be in Virginia at the Northern Virginia Capitol Defender Office capital defense is what I would like to eventually do I did at this past summer as an internship with the public interest scholar stipend public interest stipend and that was sort of post-conviction work so next spring I get to be at the front end of the work on the trial end. So I'm brief for those of you guys that don't know me I'm also a third year here I'm from Providence Rhode Island I decided to go to law school it's actually been my plan since the fourth grade I'm not being that dramatic person it's literally been my plan since fourth grade I actually sent applications and letters to Yale University, Roger Williams when I was in the fourth grade to tell them I was coming when it was time for me to come so I've always planned on being here my background is in entertainment business so theater music those are all the things that I grew up doing my masters is also an entertainment business I specifically wanted to go to law school because I knew that there were injustices happening throughout the world especially for people that look like me people that are of different color of brown skin specifically black people but for me it was black people in the industry I saw that there were a lot of things that they were being mistreated when it came to their contracts if they were a musician if they were an actor they weren't getting paid as much they weren't getting jobs as much that wasn't okay for me I started off as an actress as a singer as a flutist a pianist and then I decided to go the other route and said I think my people need me more than I need to be doing this I don't need to be another person on stage dancing in front of a bunch of people I need to make sure my people are getting paid like they need to be still want to do the same thing I participated in a lot of different programs going through criminal defense criminal law classes all the classes that you guys have I've learned a lot of different things but I've learned how to apply those things to what my interests and what my passions are the experiential learning definitely has helped a lot with shaping exactly where I want to go I never really thought about I always want to just do contract drafting law school has put me more on the route of trademarking copyright and patent law which I've been finding now is more of my interest than I thought the contract drafting would be so first year I participated in VITA that was my first time doing pro bono and the reason why I wanted to do that is because I wanted to still stay on the business route but I wanted to get into the community I think honestly that might have been one of the volunteer income tax assistance program I did it and then my second year I was a program leader for that and the reason why I wanted to do that is because I was helping people in Providence within my own community that needed help doing their taxes that didn't know how to properly do them when you have clients that are coming in that owe money to the state or to the federal government and they're crying because you've helped them even though they owe money you did a bang up job because that is not something to make somebody smile about but they appreciate you and as long as you're doing something that someone appreciates you for what not be a part of everything they offer I'm in business startup the business startup clinic this year there's no one here to whoop whoop for my group so whoop whoop for the business startup clinic we do copyright trademark all the cool stuff don't forget about us and then next semester I'll be doing the corporate council clinic whoop whoop again I got you don't worry so be a part of everything one thing I noticed that a lot of law students because everyone's so bogged down about being busy one all year you don't participate in enough stuff you don't go to enough events I literally was at the women's Massachusetts bar association gala last night and some attorneys were telling us oh students don't know how to do motions students don't know how to file or register trademarks and copyright and literally every student that I was sitting with that have done any of the clinics or externships we've told them all the things that we were doing and they literally told us you guys have a hand up and you have no idea that you have a hand up we've had attorneys that were there that were telling us we would take you right now because of what you've done because our interns right now have never done this stuff before participate in everything network and everything do it it's great it's fun it's a lot of work I'm not going to say it's easy it's not but it's definitely worth it I'm soft spoken so can you all hear me what up I'm Callie Longwell I'm originally from Massachusetts and I got my undergrad degree in marine biology and started working at a diabetes clinic and wanted to get back to my roots so I was drawn to Roger Williams because of the marine affairs institute because they have the ocean and coastal law program and everything and I wanted to get back to that great wonderful so you came here to do marine affairs but while we were here you did a few experiential opportunities can you tell us what those experiences were yes I did three of the many that were listed I did the Sea Grant law fellow program after my 1L year which was awesome and I would totally recommend it because you no offense don't learn anything you learn the law but you don't know how to do anything and it's a great introduction into legal research and writing and Professor Porter is like he said you can ask him really stupid questions and he won't judge you I didn't know how to do types of citations and I got help with that and it just helped me and all of my other experiences after that another one I did was the public interest externship the Rhode Island Attorney General's office in the environmental unit which you don't really think those two things overlap but they really do because when I first started there I was doing lead paint advocacy which is obviously an environmental issue because it's lead and you don't realize how that affects mostly low income people who are living in the housing that has that and then I stayed there for another semester and did the environmental and land use externship to then get experience and learning the seminars are really different where in that seminar I was able to learn more about what an environmental attorney would have to do and got a lot of experience with the research and regulations that you really need to know it's a really challenging area of law it reinforced what I wanted to do but it also changed a little because I came into law school not caring about people at all and just the environment and environmental health and I really kind of learned that environmental health and human health really go hand in hand and they both need to care about each other so you can get a heart through our heart I came to law school and got a heart it's usually the opposite How did you graduate? I took the bar exam in July and I am awaiting my results very anxiously probably sweating right now and I am at conservation law foundation which I had done not as an externship because I wanted to get paid and I'm back there now waiting my bar results and once I get them I will hopefully have a job as an environmental attorney in an environmental attorney's office Yes, yes So if you have sort of a couple pieces of advice for these one I would definitely recommend that you try and do everything you can and if you came to law school with a specific interest they obviously offer something for you here but know that you can branch out and maybe find that something else overlaps with your interest and you enjoy doing that as well and it opens up way more opportunities for you instead of focusing on one thing because after graduation you're going to have to broaden your horizons and look for lots of jobs Any questions for these fabulous people up here? Okay, they told you everything I'm not going to ask if you have any questions for us because you can find us any time and it's 3.15 Enjoy your extra 15 minutes You're welcome You're welcome Thank you


So it's the 23rd of May 2009. We're in Bodrum, Turkey, attending the fourth conference of the Property and Freedom Society. On this occasion, my name is Robert Grötzinger and I am interviewing Sean Gabb, the director of the Libertarian Alliance of Great Britain because of the scandal involving expenses in the UK Parliament and all the background concerning that from his point of view as what I perceive as an astute observer of British politics. So Sean, give us your view of what has happened in the last, is it two weeks now, every day a revelation about expenses that should not have been made on the taxpayers' billing. There's been talk of it being a historic event, seeing for example that the speaker has resigned for the first time before the end of the term, for the first time in 300 years or so. Sean, what is your view? Okay, we need sort of the background to this general situation. Just looking at the news reports in themselves makes for an entertaining scandal but not for much else. I think what we need to begin by understanding is that the British Parliament is the most theoretically supreme legislative body in the world. It is unrestrained by any written constitution. The British Parliament could, if it so chose, declare that I was a woman. It could divorce me from my wife. It could repeal the Government of India Act that gave India independence and send out a new vice-troy. He might not be received a new Delhi but it would be good law in the British courts. The British Parliament could pass a law sentencing every red-headed man to have his right hand cut off and this would have to be accepted and enforced by the courts. There are no limits to the power of the British Parliament or rather the legal phrase is the Queen in Parliament. As long as a bill goes to the House of Commons through the House of Lords and is signed into law by the Queen, it cannot be questioned in any British court. Now this means that any government which is accountable to Parliament might be in considerable difficulties. What has happened during the past few generations is that the Executive has neutralised the authority of Parliament by filling it with people of very limited moral character, very limited moral and intellectual character. The government is formed by the dominant party in the House of Commons. The members elected to Parliament to represent that party are chosen by the party leaders and so the government uses its ability to choose candidates to make sure that Parliament is not filled with the kind of people who in the past made such trouble for the authorities. I am thinking of the 17th, 18th and even 19th centuries. So that is part of the background.  Now the deal put to them is that they will rubber stamp whatever their party leaders put in front of them. They will not raise fundamental difficulties that endanger the stability of a government or the viability of its programme. In return for that they will be allowed, indeed encouraged to have as much sex as they want and to take as much money in bribes and in fraud as takes the fancy. They have been encouraged to act which in the rest of us will be punished as fraud or tax evasion or both. When do you think did this start? Did this start consciously by some government or was this some kind of gradual erosion of morals which then the government thought with people in government realised that is quite a good thing from their point of view? And how was it when did it start to happen and how did it happen in your point of view? There is no defining moment before which we had a functioning parliamentary democracy and after which we haven't. It is a gradual process. You might say it began as far back as the 1880s when the modern party systems came into being. So not the modern parliamentary parties that they predate this by quite a long period but the party structures as they emerged in the 1880s gave leaders the ability to select candidates. Now this is a power that grew during the 20th century. It was the power of the executive of the parliament was greatly increased in 1911 partly by the fact that the House of Lords was muted and partly by the fact that for the first time members of the House of Commons were paid a salary. Before then they had been unsabred which meant that parliament was effectively shut to ordinary people or people without independent means and of course once you have people in positions of considerable potential authority without independent means they will be tempted to take rights. I'm not saying it started then but that was a step towards it. That was loading the problem or loading the gun so to speak and now the trigger was pulled and now we've discovered the smoking gun. If you want a real villain I would put Ford Margaret Thatcher's name as a candidate. She regarded the House of Commons with probably well-narrated contempt and what she did was to make sure that only the right people would be selected as conservative candidates i.e. that the only people who would be selected for the Conservative Party to stand in elections were the kind of people who would be trusted to vote for her measures Margaret Thatcher put before them and then you had the rise of new Labour. Until the 1990s Labour MPs were traditionally rather rebellious, often rather free spirits generally in the wrong respects but they were persons of individuality. With the rise of new Labour that was ruthlessly stamped out and the Labour majority that came in 1997 was made up very largely of two legged sheep who were offered the deal and took it with both hands.  You can take bribes, you can solicit for bribes as indeed several Labour peers were found to be doing a few weeks ago or you can simply pad out your expenses, change your second residence for your first residence, claim your parliamentary allowances, do things which as I said would in the rest of us be regarded as fraud or tax evasion. It's something that crept up on us but now it is a solidly established part of the constitution.  There was anecdotal evidence but now it's all been drawn out into the public. The question for any observer is why now and why by the Daily Telegraph or the Telegraph Group which previously has not been famous for attacking the establishment whether left or right. It seems that the left or the Labour Party of course being in government is harmed much more at the moment and Cameron is on top of the crisis as much as he can be so it seems on the face of it that it is an attempt by the Daily Telegraph to help the Conservatives to power. But at the same time it is very harmful of the right of power. The reputation of Parliament as such and that is something that the Daily Telegraph is not famous for doing previously. Indeed. The question of why the Daily Telegraph got hold of that list of expenses and then published day after day is well worth asking. The most obvious answer is that it is the function of the media in a parliamentary democracy or it is the function of the media in a liberal democracy to hunt out and expose wrongdoing in high places but the British media hasn't been very good at doing that and the Daily Telegraph has never been particularly good at doing that. The idea that this is fearless investigative journalism with nothing but the public interest at heart is probably one of the more bizarre conspiracy theories. The other conspiracy theories are much more interesting. Let's go through the most obvious conspiracy theories. One is that this helps, this helps the career of Boris Johnson. He is Britain's most senior politician who is not also a member of the House of Commons. He is the Mayor of London. He resigned from Parliament last year after being elected Mayor of London. He will hold that office until I believe 2012 after which he may stand again or he may decide to return to Parliament. He is known that he would like to return to Parliament. Indeed that he would like to become a Conservative Prime Minister. Now to see these revelations as assisting in the struggle between the parties is unrealistic. It really is like trying to an a trench battle with an atom bomb. This is something that has damaged Labour politicians very badly but it has also damaged a number of concerted politicians and it seems to have been a very random process. Indeed among the Liberal Democrats one of the people who has been damaged by the revelations is somebody who has been campaigning for many years for greater transparency of members' expenses. So it is difficult to say that any particular group of politicians has been worse hit than any other except that as you said Labour is in power so they have been raking the majority of the corrupt gains. But Boris Johnson is known to be a long term friend of Benedict Brogan, the assistant head of the David Telegraph who has supervised the publication of these revelations. Boris Johnson indeed used to be a journalist employed by the David Telegraph. Now it might assist his own ambitions if every other concerted politician were to some extent to be tainted with these corruption scandals. Boris Johnson is out of Parliament and so he has no expenses to claim at the moment. However he was a member of Parliament between 2001 and 2008 and the David Telegraph has not published anything about his own expenses. It may be that he was perfectly honest in his claiming of expenses but it might be interesting to ask why his name is on one of those lists. Indeed. Another conspiracy theory is the timing a few weeks before the European election where polls are in a way that the UKIP is on the rise, even the BNP is on the rise, Labour is on a downward trend and the other two established parties aren't doing too well. That the Telegraph or whoever is behind this revelation would like to cause as much damage in this election as possible because this election is not relevant in a direct way to British politics but is of course the result would put enough fear into the established parties to do drastic things that I don't know what but so what do you think of that possibility? It is possible that there is a European dimension to this. I am entirely ignorant of who and why. Who gave these details to be published and why? I don't know. I have given one guess as to who did it. Let me give now a guess as to why it was given over. Though I don't presume to join up for the who and the why. It may be an entirely inconsistent theory but let's imagine this. The person who handed over these details to the Telegraph or the person who initiated the publication of these details perhaps is not in favour of European integration perhaps he would like Britain to leave the European Union. Look at this thing. The Lisbon Treaty will only come into force once it has been signed into law in every one of the 27 member states. David Cameron, the Conservative leader, has issued a very ambiguous promise. He has said if the Lisbon Treaty has not been ratified when we come into office we will hold a referendum on it in this country and we will recommend a no vote. Every time someone has asked Mr Cameron what would you do if you came into office after the Lisbon Treaty had been ratified? He won't answer that question. Now in the normal run of things there would be a general election about a year from today, next May, May 2010, as everyone would be behind the time, there would need to be an election on May 2010. The Czech president, Václav Klaus, is refusing to sign that there has been treaty into law in his country. He is under great pressure to sign it. I believe the Polish president has also refused to sign it. The Irish rejected the treaty in a referendum earlier this year and they may accept it in a second referendum later this year. Now President Klaus has said that he will keep the issue open until after the elections in Britain, but the question in terms of the Czech politics and the pressures that we put on the Czech president by the Germans, the French and other pro-integration governments is how long can he keep the issue open? Now if the Brown government were to be severely destabilized in Britain, if Gordon Brown were forced to go to the country in, shall we say, September, October, or even for an emergency election in July, it is highly likely that the conservatives would win. The only question for those is how big would the conservative majority be? And so the sooner the election, the more likely it is that the Lisbon Treaty will be destroyed. And so those people who say this is a European plot to taint Parliament, this is a European plot to undermine British institutions, I don't see the benefit in that, whereas this might well be an anti-European conspiracy, but by whom and for what reason, those are questions I can't at the moment answer. OK, this crisis being of historic dimensions would normally be a chance for, now looking at constitutional dimensions here, for the Queen to step in and throw out some of the Prime Minister, not that way, but she would ask him to leave more or less, ask him to hand in his resignation. I would suspect that a clever palace staff could leak this to the public, and from that moment on, Gordon Brown would have no choice anymore. The public is so furious about him and about Parliament that he would have no choice, he would have to leave. I expect you don't expect this to happen, why is it not happening? It would be a chance for the Queen to assert a little bit more power again and to recreate a new kind of checks and balances in British politics. Has she not got the stamina to do, the courage to do this? Has she not got the historic view of this, or why is this not happening? I was until a few years ago a very strong supporter of the monarchy. The argument I put forward was that the Queen was the ultimate safety valve in the Constitution. It is regrettable that from time to time governments are elected, which promise to do very bad things, but the rules of the game mean that the Queen should not stand in the way of a government which has a democratic mandate. But I did argue that there might be circumstances in which a government would behave despotedly. In that case the Queen would step in and restore the Constitution. The problem is that the present Queen has now been on the throne since 1952 and so far as I can tell she has been very happy to sign every piece of paper ever put before her, except perhaps personal checks. She signed the European Community Act in 1972, I think, without a protest. She signed the Civil Continuances Act into law in 2005. Could you just explain that specifically? Yes, the Civil Continuances Act allows government ministers to declare a state of emergency in which they can suspend virtually any law they please, they can imprison people without trial, they can take property without compensation. It allows the government to declare a police state, and it can also, I believe, pull off elections. Now this is rather like, is it Article 48 in the Weimar Constitution, the enabling, the state of emergency that Hitler used? I don't know the exact number. Anyone who uses the Nazis as an example is deemed to have lost the argument, but the Civil Continuances Act is an extraordinary, dangerous weapon in the hands of the bad government and the Queen signed that into law as well, and the Queen signed the Nice Treaty on European Integration into law without a protest. She was deluged with letters begging her not to sign the Lisbon Treaty, not to sign the Act incorporating the Lisbon Treaty into British law, and here she had a very good case for calling the Prime Minister in and saying, I won't sign this act, I'm sorry, I won't sign this bill into law, and the reason she was given was that four years ago, every party leader, every main party leader in Britain promised that before the European Constitution was ratified by British Government, there would be a referendum. The European Constitution was then repackaged as the Treaty of Lisbon, exactly the same content, different form. The Government thereby claiming that it's not the Constitution, therefore we don't need to worry about the referendum. The Conservatives tried to force the referendum, but they didn't have enough votes in Parliament. Now it would have been perfectly acceptable for the Queen to say to the Prime Minister, call a referendum or I will not sign this, because you have a contract with the British people, and I'm here to make sure that you keep your contract with the British people. And again, she just signed the bill incorporating the Treaty into British law. She has done absolutely nothing by the way of doing her duty, and so for the Queen now, now that she is 82 or 83, suddenly after 57 years of doing nothing to stand up and start behaving like Queen Victoria or William IV or George III, is a little much to expect. I don't think this came from a palace. If it did, I have seriously underestimated the monarchy. No. Last question, basically, what do you think is the likely short-term outcome of this crisis regarding the rules of expenses? What is going to happen in that sense, and also what's going to happen after the next election whenever it is? As far as the expenses go, there will be a great parading of clean hands by the senior politicians, and new rules will be announced which may make expenses more transparent. It may compel members to publish their expenses online, but after a few years it will become apparent that these people are defrauding the taxpayers in other ways. In other ways that I can't yet imagine that the deal is still on the table. Do as you're told, and here's the reward, and a reward will somehow be found. The short-term effect on the European elections, it may damage the Conservative vote because all of the main parties have suffered in these scandals. Many people will not vote here at all. Others will vote for UKIP or the BNP. I'm no good at predicting the outcome of the elections. I generally get them wrong, but before this scandal broke I was willing to think that there might be one BNP member in the European Parliament. Now it might be four or five. Before this scandal broke I was rather worried that UKIP, the United Kingdom Independence Party, which wants to leave the European Union, the party for which I vote, I was rather worried that UKIP would lose many of the 12 seats at one of the last European elections. I think UKIP will keep those seats. It may even gain a few. In the longer term the Conservatives will probably recover faster than Labour, and we are now looking, we're now simply looking at a general election result which may be a landslide for the Conservatives or may be a record landslide. The Conservatives may win the sort of victory that outdoes what Tony Blair managed in 1997. It may then outdo the great Liberal victory of 1906 where the leader of the Conservative Party actually lost his seat. And that would not necessarily be good for liberty and democracy in Britain as a strong, super strong governing party has no, without any strong opposition can do whatever it likes. That's true and I just don't regard the Conservatives as significantly better than Labour. They are better than Labour. I'd be foolish not to agree with that proposition, but they will not be significantly better. That being said, if we had a Conservative government next time with a majority of 45 or 60 and a strong, effective Labour opposition, every time those of us in the wider Conservative movement said, hang on, you can't do that. That's awful. Conservative governments aren't supposed to do that sort of thing. You'd have the government supporters coming up and saying, well, you've got to support us because if it's not us it will be Labour. And you wouldn't want Labour back, would you? Now it looks as though that argument will not be open. If the Labour Party suffers a catastrophic defeat at the next election and the Conservatives have a super majority, yes, they can do whatever they like in legislative terms, but they'll also have a very unwieldy majority, a majority which was sucked in large numbers of members who are not persons of no consequence. It will lead to factionalism within the Conservative movement, within the Conservative Party, and it also means that those of us in the wider Conservative movement can attack bad Conservative laws with much more confidence. It will not be like in the 90s where every time we did something to undermine the major government, the last Conservative government, we always knew the back of the lines. We meaning the Libertarian Alliance? Libertarian Alliance. Any kind of other fringe organisation on the fringe of the Conservative Party? Well I should define what I mean by the wider Conservative movement. The wider Conservative movement includes organisations like Libertarian Alliance, the United Kingdom Independence Party, the Bruges Group, all the other anti-European organisations, the Taxpayers Alliance, No2ID cards, all of these organisations which are not directly affiliated to the Conservative Party but which are part of the wider movement. If there is no Labour opposition, we shall with much greater confidence be able to attack the next Conservative government and give these people 45 seats as a majority, give them 200 seats as a majority, they will still do some very bad things. Okay, thank you very much. Well thank you.