qLegal Lecturer
In a challenging and ever-changing job market, the legal sector demands more than just strong academic credentials, it requires a certain level of presentation, confidence, commercial awareness, and dedication. qLegal looks to bridge this gap by providing students with an amazing opportunity to gain practical skills and prepare them for career success.
Postgraduate students within the Centre for Commercial Law Studies are given the opportunity to mirror work undertaken by legal professionals. qLegal students provide free support to start-ups through services such as 1-1 written legal advice, workshops, consultancy services, and more. qLegal is delivered by a team of practitioners, lecturers and learning facilitators but the team is also consistently engaging with new partners and expanding to ensure there is as much support as possible. Students are supported in each step of the way, with volunteers from legal firms such as CMS, Baker McKenzie, and in 2021 new collaborations were developed with Airbnb and Enterprise Nation.
With an expanded team, qLegal has allowed more spaces for students to join their programmes. In 2021 alone, over 200 students were given an opportunity to join qLegal, increasing from 144 students in 2020, and 77 in 2019. The number of places on the 15-credit bearing module doubled to 24.
qLegal ensures students who join their programmes can gain useful transferable skills and provide meaningful work which benefit start-ups in London. Students in the 2020/21 cohort have gained various skills and knowledge, some of these include critical thinking, legal drafting, time management, public speaking, presentation, resilience and many more. Students have stated that the experience has helped them to become a more ‘well-rounded and versatile lawyer’, ‘have confidence and conviction in my abilities’ and ‘portray commercial awareness in future applications’.
One of our LLM students provided this answer when asked what she had learned from delivering two workshops during her time with qLegal’s Public Legal Education Programme: “After completing the qlegal programme, I can confidently say that one the most valuable things that I learnt from it was the skill of active listening. Throughout the programme I learnt that it is essential to listen to understand rather than respond be it with the team mates, solicitors or even the audience or the qlegal staff. I am sure that this skill will benefit me in both my personal and professional life.”
qLegal has had a big impact for postgraduate law students, with a steady increase in demand every academic year, with more students, partnerships, and team members. Within a demanding and every changing job market, it is clear qLegal has both the dedication and resources available to ensure both current and prospective postgraduate law students can leave their programme with more confidence, knowledge, and having delivered useful and positive impact with local clients on their route to success.
In relation to client work, in 2020/21 there were a total of 66 advice letters sent, 17 legal workshops delivered, 5 large-scale consultancy projects carried out, including interdisciplinary projects, and 31 start-ups received in-house support, progressively increasing with more support and students signing up.
Examples of client satisfaction also demonstrate the positive impact of qLegal. One of our workshop host partners, a charity that supports artists, provided this lovely quote after a workshop on intellectual property that we delivered to performing artists: “The workshop met my expectations in diving deep into the different clauses of an artist contract and exploring the possible risks that artists are exposed to. It also met and exceeded expectations in discussing oral contracts and other informal ways of making contracts which was very relevant to our artists. I also really appreciated the interactive elements, amazing!”
Coming from an underprivileged minority group, qLegal gave me the confidence to move forward with my business. The advice I received has removed my fear of legal matters. It was explained in such a clear and concise manner.— Anonymous 1:1 legal advisory client from the creative sector
As a start-up with very limited funds, I had not realised how much legal advice costs. Ensuring I was GDPR compliant and protecting my IP was critical to safeguard my business. The whole process was professional, thorough and I felt in safe hands.— Barum Jeffries, Reclearn (recruitment and leadership training consultants)
The whole process was easy to navigate and the team captured our needs perfectly. The advice they provided has been incredibly clear, easy to follow, and most of all is practical so that we can now implement it internally. The work qLegal has done for Medical Aid Films, has been vital in allowing us to develop a vital new funding stream so we can continue to do our important work.— Melody Ambrose, Head of Production and Operations, Medical Aid Films
Eliza Platts-Mills (qLegal Lecturer)
I hold an LLM in Clinical Legal Education from Georgetown University and a JD from the University of Virginia. From 2008 to 2018, I taught and supervised law students in the entrepreneurship clinic at the University of Texas. I joined qLegal in 2019, first as a Teaching Fellow and then as a Lecturer. At qLegal, I lead on our for-credit Entrepreneurship Law Clinic module and our Public Legal Education programme. qLegal teaches LLM students how to interview clients, manage stakeholders, think broadly and deeply about new areas of law, solve problems, and provide client-centred, commercially aware legal services to entrepreneurs and start-ups.
Emily Wapples (Operations & Project Manager)
I gained my Law Degree from the University of Kent, before qualifying as a Solicitor with a City law firm. I subsequently started my own business and qualified as a Prince2 Project Manager. I joined qLegal in 2019. I am responsible for the daily operations of qLegal and I lead on our Legal Advisory Programme. qLegal students get first-hand experience of delivering legal support to real life clients. Our programmes mirror the world of work in the legal profession; students educate and support deserving start-ups and entrepreneurs and provide tailored legal advice and innovative solutions to our clients’ diverse legal problems.