Pro bono makes an important contribution towards enabling access to justice and LawWorks has a crucial role in supporting and facilitating its development across the solicitor’s profession and through universities. I hope from this newsletter you will see that LawWorks does more than that. You’ll see that we also help small, not for profit organisations who don’t have the funds to take legal advice, we are developing expertise in how best to increase the impact of specialisation in social welfare law and we give a voice to pro bono.
LawWorks can’t solve the problem of access to justice, but we can help make a real difference to lives and can continue to make the case that the rule of law, which underpins just about everything in our society, depends, in part, on equality of access to the law and its systems.
We should never be shy of celebrating and encouraging pro bono, extolling its value both for those who do it and those who are helped by it. Pro bono on the smallest scale can make a huge difference to one life. Pro bono on a larger scale can make society better. Many solicitors see it as a moral imperative to use their skills to help others who cannot help themselves and the profession should rightly be proud of this.
Whilst we are living in a world of big events – technological, political, environmental, etc., - it is still the case that everyone’s legal rights matter, irrespective of how much money they have. My ambition is that LawWorks will continue to do its bit to ensure that remains the case.
Alasdair Douglas, Chair of LawWorks