December Quarterly News
For those of you who have not yet subscribed, here is a copy of our December 2020 quarterly newsletter.
A Message from Our Director:
While the continued lockdown has presented many challenges, both for the legal world and the teaching community, Leducate has managed to continue to make steady progress in supporting our schools with the widest possible range of services we have offered to date. We have more material than ever on our brand-new online learning environment, delivering the most interactive content we have ever produced to our partner-schools. We, alongside our partners In2 Law, have supported students from our partner schools in their applications to University over this UCAS application window; providing mock interviews and application workshop webinars. The Executive Team at Leducate took part in the Virtual Legal Walk and we are very grateful to all the very kind support and donations we received as a result. We all wish you and your loved ones a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. We’ll be working extremely hard over the break to get even more material ready for delivery in the coming term and are hopeful to be able to provide even more interactive and informative events throughout the calendar year.
⚖ Legal News ⚖
⚖ In Legal news this month, like everyone else we’ve been fascinated by outgoing President Trump’s legal crusade to undo his rival Joe Biden’s electoral victory in the presidential election last month. We were fascinated to read that the number of criminal cases waiting to go before the Crown Courts could reach a whopping 195,000 by 2024 according to one new study. With Netflix’s The Crown dominating our November screen time, we’ll be keeping an eye on Lord Dyson’s independent inquiry into exactly how Martin Bashir secured an interview with Princess Diana in 1995 following her divorce from Prince Charles. Finally, we were sad to read of the passing of Lord Kerr, a Supreme Court judge of no less than 11 years, and the only representative of Northern Ireland on the court, and will remember him fondly.
📺 Looking for your next watch? 📺
Here at Leducate, Anya has been watching Trial By Media, a documentary exploring famous court cases influenced by media coverage. Take the Subway Vigilante, a man named Bernhard Goetz who shot and murdered four men in 1984 on a subway arguing that it was in self-defence. Whilst his identity was unknown before he revealed himself, the public turned him into the ‘subway vigilante’ a hero who had the right to defend himself. This incident sparked a nationwide debate on crime and the legal limitations of self-defence. Not only is this an interesting series to peruse during lockdown, it’s also fascinating from a legal perspective to see how the media reporting of cases can have influence in the application of the law. We only have to look to recent news, to the Johnny Depp v. The Sun trial to understand the power that media has in the courtroom.
✍️ Justice Diaries ✍️
We were so excited to speak to The Secret Barrister for our latest edition of The Justice Diaries. Our favourite masked lawyer told us all about his latest book Fake News and what inspired him to write it in this of all years. We also asked him about the role of education in understanding the justice system, and - of course - what he’s asking for this Christmas. Read our interview here.
🙌 Volunteers 🙌
Our volunteer of the month is Richard Carruthers. Richard is a current County Court Advocate and an aspiring barrister hoping to focus on crime and public law. Traditionally this combination would be considered unusual but with his knowledge and passion he is able to make it work seamlessly. Richard has been very busy over the last couple of months helping Leducate build our new curriculum resources. He single handedly completed all the research for our new crime curriculum (coming soon) which our team of curriculum curators have been hard at work on turning it into lessons. Richard has also written articles for us, all completed whilst being ‘stuck’ abroad in Zambia. Thank you Richard!
Pro Bono Week:
In November, we celebrated our wonderful team during Pro Bono Week. Our volunteer team helps us to deliver public legal education to young people up and down the country, from our website to our Twitter to our classroom support, and we wouldn’t be able to deliver public legal education without all of them!
We also celebrated the launch of our brand new educational platform designed with our partners to create a truly immersive learning experience for our students. Our online lessons are now available for anyone to use, and more are being created every week. We’re so excited for our schools who are trialing the platform already! Be sure to check it out using the link above.
🎄 Merry Christmas 🎄
Lastly, with Christmas just around the corner and as we all prepare for what might be a very different festive period, we remain optimistic about the calendar year ahead. We know that things might not be back to normal right away, but with the new year comes the opportunity for a fresh start, and we’re ready to build on everything we’ve achieved over the course of this turbulent year to start bigger and better in 2021.
P.S - Did you know, if you’re shopping on Amazon you can nominate Leducate as your chosen charity and Amazon Smile will donate to Leducate with every purchase you make, at no cost to you! Click here to nominate us.
You can also earn donations to us through shopping at sites such as ASOS, Curry's, Pandora and many more here!
Love the Leducate Team x