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 take your details and a specialist worker will call you back to discuss your issue as soon as they are able. 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. We strongly advise you to telephone our enquiry line on 0114 273 1888 between 10.00 and 16.00.
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.
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 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 with you.
We prioritise advice to people on very low incomes or on benefits but we try to give some advice to everyone whose details we take. If we are not able to continue to advise you we may be able to give you contact details for other organisations who might be able to help.
Sheffield Law Centre predominantly assists those who live in Sheffield 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 disability project can advise anyone in South Yorkshire.
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. Confidentiality applies to every item of information concerning clients.
Workers do not disclose to a third party any information relating to any client or user of the Law Centre, unless there is express consent by the client/user to do so. This includes third parties within the Law Centre unless it is a professional conversation about the work. Breach of this condition of confidentiality may amount to professional misconduct. Given the nature of our work it is unlikely that there would be circumstances where we would wish to breach client confidentiality.
Sheffield Law Centre is funded by Sheffield City Council and the Legal Services Commission to give advice on housing, employment and immigration and asylum 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, as we have done with our disability project. 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 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.
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