Have you ever wondered what is like to represent a suspect at a police station, interacting with police officers and advising your client in a pressurised situation? If you were studying the Legal Practice Course (LPC) at the City Law School you would be wondering no more.

The Police Station Adviser Scheme is a joint initiative between the City Law School and City University London’s Centre for Investigative, Security and Police Sciences (CISPS). It gives LPC students the opportunity to step into the role of a criminal defence solicitor at the police station. It is not just the LPC students who benefit. Student police officers studying at CISPS and serving with either the British Transport Police or the City of London Police are, for the first time, given the opportunity to train jointly with future solicitors.

The collaboration is based at CISPS’s state-of-the-art teaching building, equipped with real suspect interview rooms complete with audio and video recording facilities and remote viewing. The building is so well equipped that in an emergency its resources could be used to supplement live investigations.

It is not just the environment that is true to life. Traditionally, the defence solicitor-police relationship is somewhat sticky; a problem that originates at a much deeper level than the adversarial nature of the job. The two professions just do not trust each other. Bob Pointer, a serving police officer with the City of London Police and lecturer at CISPS, explains: “There is a culture whereby police officers think that solicitors shield the guilty, whereas solicitors think that the police are seeking a conviction at any cost.”

Through our work on the scheme, we have discovered that much of the negativity that defines the relationship between defence solicitors and police officers is generated by external forces and based on unsubstantiated assumptions. Briefings before LPC student and student police officer interaction took place revealed that the officers genuinely felt that solicitors routinely made up defences for clients when in consultation in the police station. Meanwhile, LPC students placed the police officer role somewhere between Life on Mars, The Bill and CSI. It was very clear that neither set of students held a great deal of respect for the other profession. In contrast, at a debrief that took place after the LPC students and police officers had worked together, there was marked difference of opinion.

During training, LPC students are required to undertake the full criminal defence solicitor role. They read the custody record, meet with the interviewing student police officers to obtain disclosure, and advise their client about the offence and the right to silence before attending the tape-recorded suspect interview and intervening where appropriate.

The training climaxes with a police investigation and suspect interview, which is, of course, based on a real crime, complete with all the inconsistency and uncertainty of life - something that is so often absent from student class materials. The suspects are played by well-briefed actors. Before the day is done there are tears, anger, aggression and remorse.

Our LPC students cannot stop raving about the experience. Adam Ballard describes the scheme as “the best thing on the LPC”; Zonnie Burton enthuses about the “exciting” project; and Julia Haibach and Marie-Louise Orr praise the innovation for “effectively teaching professionalism” in a “real environment”.

The students also find a wider benefit that will be carried with them for the rest of their professional lives. They identify with the transferable nature of the skills learnt and recognise that the scheme builds confidence by removing you from your comfort zone and forcing you to think on your feet. The Police Station Adviser Scheme also improves our students’ interpersonal skills, including the ability to make someone feel comfortable in a difficult situation or being able to elicit information effectively.

The LPC students says that their perception of police officers has dramatically changed. Students hold a new-found professional respect for police officers and will in the future engage with officers as professional equals. The effect was not only limited to the LPC students. As PC Billy Martin, a student police officer serving with the British Transport Police, explains: “I began with a misguided preconception that solicitors were the enemy. This was shattered. In fact, I built up a rapport with the LPC students.”

We believe that by training LPC students and student police officers in a transparent and non-threatening environment, that students will be given the opportunity to safely challenge some of the assumptions that we all unintentionally bring to the job, so positively redefining the defence solicitor-police officer relationship. And maybe, just maybe, reducing miscarriages of justice.

The author is deputy LPC course director at the City Law School

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