Pro bono: good enough
The unseasy relationship between volunteer legal activity and access to justice
The second entry in the Justice Gap series published by Solicitors Journal and produced by Jures in association with the Legal Action Group, Pro bono: good enough continues the theme of access to justice.
The first collection of our 'justice gap' series, 'Closing the Justice Gap', was a call for radical exciting and innovative ways to reform and improve access to justice. In that collection, we invited a number of respected authors to provide a positive and different contribution to a debate that's stuck in something of a rut caught between government intrasigence (as lawyers and those working in the advice sector might see it) and professional self interest (as non-lawyers and ministers might see it).
This second collection continues the project by looking at the pro bono movement and its relationship with 'access to justice' in the same spirit.
Featuring a range of essays focusing on the central theme of the relationship between pro bono and 'access to justice', this entry in the Justice Gap series makes great steps in examining and addressing the difficulties of access to justice while presenting some new thinking and raising important questions worthy of larger debate.
Essays include:
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Lord Phillips of Sudbury, co-founder of the Solicitors' Pro Bono Group (now LawWorks), evaluating the change in legal aid over the last 50 years and how tenous access to justice has become
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Sir Geoffrey Bindman, founder of Bindmans, offering some updated thoughts on how to resuscitate the ailing legal aid system including a levy on the wealthiest City law firms to create a fund backing social welfare projects (first published in Closing the Justice Gap)
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Michael Smyth CBE, former Clifford Chance pro bono partner, tries to find the best way to maximise the value of the contributionthat lawyers acting pro bono can make towards the delivery of specifically social welfare law advice and representation to those who cannot afford to pay
Other contributors include:
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Roger Smith OBE, director of JUSTICE
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Andrew Holroyd CBE, managing partner at Jackson & Canter and former Law Society president
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Steve Hynes, director of the Legal Action Group
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Neil Kinsella, chief executive at Russell Jones & Walker
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Yasmin Waljee, pro bono manager at Hogan Lovells
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Toby Brown, Access to Jutice Foundation