After five years, Amsterdam Law Hub expands its focus to include climate justice
The Amsterdam Law Hub celebrated its fifth anniversary on Thursday. What is happening in the hub? “We want to show that, as a law student, you don't necessarily have to go to a law firm, but can also go into business for yourself.”
Many a UvA student has walked past it several times in their life: located at the beginning of Nieuwe Achtergracht on the Roeterseiland campus, the “Amsterdam Law Hub,” the name written in grandiose letters on the windows. Behind it, the Law Hub team, researchers, and law students are busy at (flex space) workstations “creating a more just society.” But above all, entrepreneurs - legal entrepreneurs, that is.
The idea for the hub came from a former dean of the law school, André Nollkaemper. He wanted to create a so-called “incubator at the UvA,” where UvA law school students could work with civil society organizations on innovative legal projects. Five years after its grand opening by Mayor Femke Halsema, the communications advisor at the Amsterdam Law Hub, Gabriela Petralia, would like to illustrate how the idea was implemented.
“'We work both inside-out and outside-in. This means that we combine the knowledge of researchers, students, and civil society organizations and translate it into concrete solutions. The citizen is always central to this. Also, almost all Amsterdam legal clinics are represented here, where citizens can go for free legal support from law students.”
But students can also go into business on their own in the hub, right?
“Right. Many of those students come to the hub from our master's course Justice Entrepreneurship. There they devise and develop innovative legal ventures. Some students catch on and then come to us. We then support them for a year and some start-ups also have a chance to get start-up capital.
Isn't starting a legal business after your studies a somewhat underrated topic at law school? Few law students choose to go into business after college.
“It is indeed not obvious for law students to go into legal entrepreneurship. Therefore, we also want to show with this that after law school you don't necessarily have to work at a law firm or legal institution, but can also go into business yourself and innovate in law. Our team is largely made up of entrepreneurs: Director Nathalie Dijkman, my colleague Frances Singleton and I have all owned businesses. As a result, we have the right mindset to support students in key areas of entrepreneurship, such as marketing and making an impact.”
Could you give an example of an influential project that has come out of the Amsterdam Law Hub in the past five years?
“The women's legal clinic - an initiative we started together with Bureau Clara Wichmann and the municipality of Amsterdam. Women can go there for legal advice. It quickly became clear that the project was very much needed because it immediately caught on. We won the Access to Justice Golden Hourglass with it. After three years, we transferred the leadership of the project permanently to Clara Wichmann.
Why, actually?
“This is in line with the core of what we do: We set up projects to serve society. As soon as they can operate independently, we hand them over. Incidentally, we don't always completely withdraw from projects. A colleague of mine is still involved in the Women's Law Clinic, for example.”
What else can we expect from the Law Hub? What projects are underway?
“Recently we founded the Dutch Association of Law Shops. It encompasses all law stores in the Netherlands - 110 in total – so they can share knowledge and experiences. Previously, that hardly ever happened. In addition to improving access to justice, we have recently expanded our strategy to include a focus on climate justice. We have been working on this behind the scenes for some time, but will soon go public with these projects in concrete terms. Our collaboration with the Climate Museum during our fifth-anniversary celebration is already a result of this.”
