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STREET LAW REVIEW

At first I didn’t know what to think of street law, I thought that the students wouldn’t take any of the lessons seriously or that it wouldn’t be any fun, well I was so wrong.

I was lucky enough to be selected for the street law programme in LYIT, this involved laws students travelling to secondary schools to teach young students on how the law may affect them in ways they have never thought it would affect them before. Each week different topics would be discussed to keep the students engaged and interested. The topics discussed with the students was assault and sport, a murder investigation, Human Rights and defamation, because of the street law programme I have expanded my knowledge of the law and also helped me to remember parts of the law that can be easily forgotten. The Street Law programme increased my confidence when speaking aloud to a class of students; this was evident when I had to give a PowerPoint presentation to a large class of law students.

My must enjoyable lesson that we discussed with the students would be the Michael Morton murder case. I was not the only person finding this murder case fascinating but the students as well. The students were informed on the day that they will be acting as investigators of a murder case and must look at all 22 pieces of evidence noting their relevance to the case or not.  The evidence was presented in the school’s sports hall in different sections. After the students had examined all the pieces of evidence they would have to determine his innocence or guilt. The majority of the students stated that he was 100% guilty, further evidence was presented to the students; this evidence was never made in to the court room due to the corruption of the prosecutor. The students once again examine the evidence and determine his innocence or guilt. The majority of the students then changed their previous verdict from guilty to innocent. The students then became very interested on how the new evidence was examined and the case reopened, it was due to the innocence project. Students then became interested on what happened to Michael Morton after being released from a prison sentence of over 20 years. Mr Morton was well compensated.

To other students that are interested in participating in the street law programme I would highly recommend it as it is great crack!!!!

Thanks for reading,

Paul Devlin third year law student

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