What is the stereotypical image of students? More often than not, it involves visions of young things biding their time drinking and partying, perhaps attending the odd lecture until the real world comes knocking. However, for a group of law students who are putting their fledgling skills to the test in unsettlingly real situations, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Bristol University’s Innocence Project was the first of its kind in the UK; a dedicated student-led pro-bono legal clinic, which teaches law through exposure to 'live-clients'. Groups of students investigate individual cases of prisoners declaring their innocence, in pursuit of grounds for possible appeal and potentially, an application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC).

This is far from simply playing at being lawyers. They deal with real cases, real clients and real murders in a quest for often-unrealised justice – and all at the same time as completing a gruelling law degree at the University of Bristol.

The project, which has been running at the university since January 2005, soon attracted the attention of BBC producers. An hour-long documentary - reviving the ‘Rough Justice’ strand of programmes - followed, and was screened recently on BBC One, showcasing the students’ wide-ranging investigations.

Viewers saw the team of five aspiring lawyers – second year undergraduates, Jessica Wood, Madeline Williams and Amanda Bell, and finalists, Gabe Tan and Joseph Oppenheimer – wading through available documents, visiting the scene of the crime, meeting the convicted man in prison, and even attempting to find fresh witnesses; all in the hope of finding something that the solicitors have overlooked.

They were investigating the case of 29-year-old Simon Hall, found guilty for the 2001 murder of 79-year-old Joan Albert, a friend of his mother’s. He was convicted in 2003, largely on the basis of circumstantial and now highly contested flock fibre evidence.

The five students who made up the team working on the case were all attracted to the project for different reasons. For 21-year-old Londoner Joseph, it was "a combination of being disappointed at the amount of real juicy work I was doing, and the opportunity to really make a difference". Jessica, 20, has long had an interest in criminal law, fuelled by reading Stolen Innocence - about the wrongful conviction of Sally Clarke for murdering her two sons.

For third year student, Gabe, the project had particular resonance. "Being from Singapore where the death penalty still exists, I have always been very concerned about the problems and harm that capital punishment may cause; particularly to children and parents of prisoners that are on death row, or have already been sentenced to death."

A quote by Bishop Desmond Tutu on 20-year-old Madeline's Facebook profile (the social-networking website) sums up her enthusiasm for the cause: "If you're neutral about injustice you're on the side of the oppressor. If an elephant stood on the tail of a mouse, the mouse would not appreciate your neutrality". Meanwhile, fellow second-year student, Amanda, from Durham, switched courses from Psychology to Law and immediately signed up to the project. "I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know about miscarriages of justice. I didn’t know it happened. I didn’t know how many there were," she admits.

She regards it as an immense privilege to be working on such cases. "It is the best thing I do at university. I enjoy it so much that I am quite happy to dedicate a lot of time to it." That is despite most of the work unsurprisingly consisting of searching through reams of documents. "The fact that we are undergrads and have the ability to look at that stuff – that is incredible in itself", she enthuses.

The most poignant moment of the whole six months for Amanda was when she visited the convicted man in prison. "I just found it really emotional...It was quite a tough experience," she says. "Now, I’ll be out in a nightclub and I think – he’s there, just sitting in his cell. I hadn’t appreciated just what it was like being in prison." Both Amanda and Madeline were quickly reduced to tears. "Simon Hall said to us that ‘even if you guys aren’t able to do anything – you’ve given me hope. And that will help keep me going in here’".

The Innocence Projects now rolled out across the country have been a much greater success than a television drama of the same name - a glossy BBC One series that was dropped due to plummeting ratings. The real thing, however, appears to be going from strength to strength.

It all started in the US, where the first Innocence Project was set up at Yeshiva University in 1992. The first success story in this country was that of Alex Allan, who after being convicted of robbery, serving his sentence and with his legal aid exhausted, turned to students to help him. In 1997, he approached Northumbria University's Student Law Office; in 2001 he had his conviction overturned, and in 2003 he was awarded nearly £170,000 in compensation by the Home Office. Then came the first formal Innocence Project in Bristol set up by one of its law lecturers, Dr Michael Naughton, now described as the "spiritual leader" of the movement in Britain. That in turn sparked the creation of a further six projects across the country, from Cardiff to Oxford, with many more in the pipeline.

"The fact that we haven’t overturned a case at Bristol doesn’t mean that we’re not capable of it at all," Joseph insists. "It takes years and years to even get near to overturning a conviction. So it is still early days."

But in the meantime, the project has reaped very tangible rewards. Mr Hall’s case has now been picked up by the CCRC, and that appears to be at least partly thanks to the students’ investigations.

The project has clearly been somewhat of a triumph, even altering some of the students’ career plans. "I am now thinking about alternatives to going into commercial law, which is pretty much what everyone goes in to," says Amanda.

“It has not only given us as students knowledge about the massive problem, but it has also given us really fun and exciting experiences working on these kinds of cases,” says Joseph. “And many of us will go on to do this as a living, working in defence, and miscarriages of justice. That can only be a good thing.

"Watch this space," he adds. "I think the results are going to be very, very interesting."

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