We cannot give immediate advice to anyone who telephones or drops in to the Law Centre with a new enquiry. If the Law Centre is able to help with your issue the reception worker will either make you an appointment with the appropriate specialist adviser or, if we are fully booked, will let you know when we will next be booking appointments. If the Law Centre is not able to help we should be able to signpost you to someone who can. It makes no difference whether you come into the Law Centre or telephone; we use the same system for both.
If you are a current client and want to see your caseworker please telephone to make an appointment. Please do not just drop in, as the caseworker will probably not be able to see you.
We use the same system for all people who need advice. You may think that you only need a quick piece of advice but this will still need a specialist adviser to speak to you and it may be more complicated than you think. If you need to speak to someone immediately our reception worker will be able to give you contact details for other organisations who might be able to help more quickly.
We are not able to provide an interpreter at your first appointment so you will need to bring someone along who speaks English. If you qualify for free legal advice we will be able to arrange and pay for an interpreter. We need to assess if you will qualify for free advice so we will ask you questions at your first appointment about your income and circumstances. When you contact the Law Centre for the first time please arrange for someone to be available who speaks English to help us make arrangements for your first appointment.
Although we prioritise advice to people on very low incomes or on benefits, we do offer advice services to everyone, irrespective of their income.
Nottingham Law Centre predominantly assists those who live in Nottingham but we may be able to take on your case if you live elsewhere. It is usually more convenient if you contact an adviser nearer your home and details of these can be found on the Community Legal Advice website.
Our employment discrimination advice project can advise anyone in Nottinghamshire or South Derbyshire.
All our workers, paid and unpaid, are aware of the strict duty of confidentiality in respect of all persons who are advised and assisted by the Law Centre. Breach of this condition of confidentiality may amount to professional misconduct.
However, it is condition of our funding that files funded by the Legal Services Commission may be requested for audit. Individuals carrying out audits are bound by the same strict duty of confidentiality.
There are also some circumstances where we would have a statutory duty (we are required by law) to disclose information. These include:
Nottingham Law Centre is funded by Nottingham City Council, the Legal Services Commission and the Equalities and Human Rights Commission to give advice on housing, employment, welfare benefits and debt issues. We have lots of clients who need help in these areas of law and sometimes we are so busy we cannot take on new clients. If we want to do work in other areas of law we will need to raise funding from somewhere else to do this. We hope to be able to do this in the future but at the moment we can give you contact details for other organisations who should be able to help.
Supporting someone to do work experience or a short term placement at the Law Centre takes a lot of time and organisation from our staff. As a charity we have limited resources and we do not think that it is the best use of these to support students in this way. We do have volunteering opportunities available for those who are able to offer a longer commitment, please see our volunteering page.