Our people
The Legal Advice Centre team works together to provide our legal advice service.
Caroline Hoyle
Caroline Hoyle joined The University of Manchester in 2014, and teaches undergraduate and postgraduate students in the School of Law. Caroline is a Solicitor and practised in the North West before deciding to follow an academic career. She is now a highly experienced lecturer having taught on a range of vocational and academic law programmes. Caroline's main teaching interests are in the field of criminal and healthcare law, and the law relating to medical treatment of children. She is the Joint Programme Director for the LLM/MA/PGDip in Healthcare Ethics and Law (distance learning), and Senior Academic Advisor for the School of Law.
Caroline is an academic Clinical Lead for the Legal Advice Centre and contributes to the development and delivery of training for student volunteers, supervising lawyers and receptionists, as well as providing direct supervision of LAC cases within her areas of expertise.
Dr Phil Drake
Dr Phil Drake is the Director of the Justice Hub, which co-ordinates all the pro bono and clinical legal education work, including the Legal Advice Centre, being undertaken at the University of Manchester. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a qualified non-practising Solicitor.
Prior to commencing his role he was the founder, creator and Director of the Legal Advice Clinic at the University of Huddersfield and prior to this a practising lawyer working in several legal practices. Whilst in practice, he gained experience of contentious and non-contentious work and his main practice areas were in civil and commercial litigation and corporate recovery and insolvency.
Phil has keen research interests in the pedagogical, sociological and ethical dimensions of clinical legal education, with a particular interest in values based learning and the conflicts and tensions that arise within this sphere.
Dr Jen Gibbons
Dr Jen Gibbons is a Clinical Legal Education Supervisor at the Legal Advice Centre at The University of Manchester. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a qualified non-practising solicitor.
Prior to commencing her role at the University of Manchester in 2024, Jen worked in a range of roles at The University of York, BPP Law School and in legal practice. Jen has a PhD in Educational Research and has academic publications in research areas including legal assessment design, the impact of reflective practice, and comparative legal education. Her main teaching interests are in the fields of employment law, public law and human rights.
Naomi Lumsdaine
Naomi is a Clinical Legal Education Supervisor at the Justice Hub and a qualified (but currently non-practising) barrister. Before joining The University of Manchester in 2024, she had a diverse legal career working as an in-house lawyer for human rights legal organisations and the Equality and Human Rights Commission, as well as a period practising at the independent bar.
She has held various advisory roles, including as a member of the NICE Committee for the development of the NICE Clinical Guideline for Mental Health of Adults in Contact with the Criminal Justice System, and independent advisor to the Ministry of Justice for a review assessing progress on addressing institutional racism in the prison system.
Her teaching interests reflect her specialist areas of practice, which were human rights, prison, public and equality law, with a focus on advancing access to justice for marginalised groups.