Western’s free legal clinic plans a late-December move closer to the London courthouse

Community Legal Services, the free clinic run by Western’s Faculty of Law, expects to move in late December to the fifth floor of Fanshawe College’s Howard W. Rundle Building on Dundas Street. Western president Alan Shepard and Fanshawe president Peter Devlin signed the lease on Monday. Until renovations finish, the clinic keeps operating from the Josephine Spencer Niblett Law Building on campus.

The new location is closer to the London courthouse, which officials say should make help easier to reach for low-income and marginalized people in London and Middlesex County. Law students gain hands-on experience with criminal law, small claims up to $50,000, tenant and housing disputes, provincial offences and family law. In 2025-26 they took on more than 600 cases and consultations.

Ryan McCarthy, an articling student at the clinic, began as an administrative assistant before applying to law school. He says even a simple housing issue can snowball and affect people for the rest of their lives.