LawWorks Pro Bono Awards 2010
On Tuesday the 15th June we presented our annual Pro Bono Awards at the Gibson Hall, kindly sponsored by Harbour Litigation Funding Ltd and supported by Clyde & Co LLP and Mayer Brown LLP. Our annual Awards Ball was once again a great event, with this year’s theme: ‘A Night At the Movies’, emphasised by our very own Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart, Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara… Or cut out versions at least!
Nearly 60 nominations were received across the six categories and the winners were judged by an independent panel consisting of: Des Hudson, Chief Executive of the Law Society, Rabinder Singh QC, barrister at Matrix Chambers and Edward Fennell, journalist and columnist for the Times. Edward Fennell also presented the awards together with Rebecca Hilsenrath. The winners were:
- Best Contribution by an In-House Team
- Best Contribution by a Law Firm
- Winner - Mayer Brown International LLP
- Highly Commended - Charles Russell LLP
- Best Contribution by an Individual
- Winner - Bobby Kensah (Norton Rose LLP)
- Highly Commended - Alex McPherson (Hogan & Hartson (now Hogan Lovells))
- Highly Commended - Philip Watkins (Hogan & Hartson (now Hogan Lovells))
- Best Partner Level Engagement Within a Law Firm
- Winner - Clifford Chance LLP
- Best Contribution by a Regional Law Firm or other Member Organisation
- Partnership in Pro Bono
- Winner - Birmingham Central Library: DLA Piper UK LLP, Eversheds LLP, Hammonds LLP, Wragge & Co LLP and College of Law (Birmingham)
- Highly Commended - The Asylum Support Appeals Project (ASAP), Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Herbert Smith, Clifford Chance LLP and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP
- Outstanding Contribution to the Work of LawWorks (nominated by the staff of LawWorks) - Caroline Mayne
Samantha Kakati from Paul Hastings also went away a winner, after winning a meal for two at Midsomer House in Cambridge via our (also annual) ‘Yes/No’ game!
Thank you to everyone who attended the Ball and for making the event such a success!
Photos from the Ball are available here
In each of the photos below, Edward Fennell is on the right.
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| Gabrielle Phyo (Vodafone) |
Nicola McMahon (Charles Russell) |
Julie Dickins (Mayer Brown) |
Philip Watkins, Alex McPherson (both Hogan Lovells) |
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| Bobby Kensah (Norton Rose) |
Philip Hill (Clifford Chance) |
Joanne Davison (Muckle LLP) |
Judith Seddon (Clifford Chance), Paul Yates (Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer), Marie-Anne Fishwick (Asylum Support Appeals Project) |
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| Lorna Gavin (Wragge & Co) collecting the Award on behalf of the organisations involved in running Birmingham Legal Advice Clinic at Birmingham Central Library |
Caroline Mayne (LawWorks, volunteer) |
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100th LawWorks Member Clinic Celebration
Thursday 15 July 2010, 6.00pm at Wragge & Co, 3 Waterhouse Square, 142 Holborn, London EC1N 2SW
LawWorks would like to invite you and your colleagues to an evening reception to mark the launch of the 100th LawWorks Member Clinic, on Thursday 15th July at the London offices of our generous hosts Wragge & Co. The event will also celebrate all of the pro bono clinics that form part of the Clinics Network and which many of you have worked so hard to support.
The evening will include a short presentation by the Bethnal Green based not for profit social enterprise, Account3, and Wragge & Co. Together they have launched a new pro bono clinic, providing initial advice in areas of business law to third sector organisations and small business start-ups in Tower Hamlets. We will also have an opportunity to reflect on some of the other projects that have been supported by LawWorks over the years.
The launch of the 100th LawWorks Member Clinic is a real landmark, not only for LawWorks, but for all our members too. The achievement would not have been possible without the tremendous support that the project receives from its members, law school and advice sector partners, funders, the Law Society, staff members and trustees past and present but most of all to the individual volunteers who give their time and skills freely to help those who cannot afford to pay for it.
This is our opportunity to thank you and we do hope that you and your colleagues will be able to attend and celebrate with us.
If you are able to attend, please RSVP by Friday 9 July by email to richard.harrison@lawworks.org.uk, or by telephone: 020 7090 7356.
Successful outcome for LawWorks case
In 2008 LawWorks placed what has become a very important case on transgender issues and pension entitlement with one of its member firms, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP. The Applicant (“A”) underwent male to female gender reassignment and applied in 2002 for her pension to be backdated to her 60th birthday. Nothing happened and in 2006 she reapplied. The decision went against her and she appealed, but the tribunal decided that the provisions of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 prevented her claiming her pension as a woman. The case went to the Upper Tribunal and then to the Court of Appeal, which found that the UK had failed to implement Directive 79/7/EEC adequately. Article 4(1) of the Directive precludes any situation where there is no legal means to give recognition to a person’s acquired gender.
Not only is this a successful outcome for A, but also a significant one in the area of equal treatment. A has been hugely grateful to Freshfields and their Counsel (Marie-Eleni Demetriou) for all they have done for her and for fighting her case all the way up – so grateful in fact that one of their solicitors, Andrew Skudder, was nominated by her (and shortlisted) for one of our Pro Bono Awards this year. LawWorks would also like to offer our thanks for the pro bono help delivered.
Member Firm of the Month - Wragge & Co LLP
What are the main areas of law practised at this firm?
Wragge & Co is a major UK law firm providing a full service to clients worldwide, including 27 FTSE 100 and 22 FTSE 250 businesses, hundreds of public sector organizations and thousands of large private companies.
When did the organisation start carrying out pro bono work?
Wragge & Co has always been involved in pro bono work but we formalised our corporate responsibility programme, of which pro bono forms a key part, with the appointment of a Director of community investment in the late 1990s. There was clearly a demand from within the business and the wider community which the firm was proactive in developing. In 2006, Lorna Gavin was appointed as Head of Corporate Responsibilty and, since then, the team has doubled in size and pro bono is now part of a much wider corporate responsibility agenda.
How are staff encouraged to become involved in pro bono work?
We offer a range of pro bono opportunities to ensure that there is something to suit everyone’s experience, expertise and time commitments. For trainees that might mean volunteering at the free legal advice clinic we staff at Birmingham Central Library (in partnership with three other firms) or at Bethnal Green in London. For partners it might mean providing bespoke training to community partners on aspects of legislation which affect them, or mentoring the chief executive of a charity. For other lawyers, it may be accepting instructions via the LawWorks Initial Electronic Advice Scheme.
Partners are very supportive of pro bono work and see it as both ‘the right thing to do’ and as a good opportunity to provide high quality work to develop the skills of the lawyers in their teams.
What type of pro bono work does the organisation carry out?
We provide advice across a range of practice areas, with the greatest demand being for employment, litigation and real estate advice. Our pro bono clients range from small, local charities to international humanitarian organisations such as Oxfam and The British Red Cross Society. Some instructions might be relatively small queries, others may involve hundreds of lawyer hours over several months. But in all cases, we seek to build lasting relationships with our pro bono clients which means that we understand their organisations and their concerns and can provide advice to meet those needs.
Please give details of a case that illustrates your organisation’s success with pro bono work?
We have a long standing relationship with Oxfam GB. We are one of three firms appointed to Oxfam's legal panel and have advised on various matters over the last few years. In one mediation matter, Wragge & Co recovered a sum sufficient to fund Oxfam's planned humanitarian work in Ethiopia for one year. Oxfam has supported communities vulnerable to drought in the Harshin area of Ethiopia, helping more than 8000 people meet their basic needs.
Our developing relationship with Oxfam has also seen us put in place an ongoing arrangement to provide trainee secondees to Oxfam’s in-house legal team, along with another of their panel firms. This is just one way in which we see ourselves as an extension of their own team rather than a separate entity, working together to achieve the client’s goals.
Corporate Responsibility Executive – Zoe Tromans
Head of Corporate Responsibility – Lorna Gavin
Did you know that LawWorks…puts materials and podcasts from our training sessions on our website
The Longest Mediation Ever?
LawWorks Mediation knows it has a fantastic panel of enthusiastic and dedicated mediators, but this week I received a report back from one who took a case from us in December 2008 and has been working on it ever since! That is an 18 month ‘mediation’ !
My mediator reported, “A sum of money was agreed upon between the parties but there was a sticking point with regard to a letter to be written on payment and this was never resolved despite repeated attempts including my drafting a letter!”
Many thanks for your determination.
Governor of the Month - Alan Mak (Solicitor, Clifford Chance LLP)
How long have you been on the governing body?
I have served as an LEA-appointed governor of Wellington Primary School in Tower Hamlets since February 2008. Wellington is a state primary school with 220 pupils, and is my local primary school.
I attended a state primary school myself and then was the first person in my family to go to university, so I know the value of a good education, especially during the early years. That's why I am passionate about raising aspirations, helping young people reach their potential and being an active citizen engaged in my local community. Becoming a governor was a perfect way to do this, allowing me to combine my passion for education with the ability to use my professional skills and experiences to become actively involved in the management of my local school and help the pupils and teachers as much as I can.
What are your particular areas of responsibility or interest on the governing body?
Most of my work is done as a member of the full governing body, where governors work with the head teacher and senior staff leadership team to set the school's strategy, manage the budget, and oversee every aspect of the running of the school, from teaching quality to managing the current construction programme under which many of our classrooms will be refurbished and new teaching facilities will be built.
In addition, I have also been elected Chair of the Curriculum & Standards Sub-Committee which monitors the quality of teaching at the school and works with the teachers to raise standards and hit our targets for exam results. It has been very satisfying and inspiring to see the progress that the children have made over the 2 and a half years that I've been a governor, and the dedication and enthusiasm of the teachers. I also sit on the Headteacher's Performance Review panel, where I work with our headteacher to ensure he is achieving the targets that he and the local education authority have set. I have also arranged for a class of Year 6 children to visit my former university (Cambridge University) as part of an access initiative to encourage state school children to apply to university, and in particular to consider Oxbridge.
I have led the creation of a school breakfast club, working with child nutrition charity Magic Breakfast. Magic Breakfast is small charity of which I am trustee, and we partnered with investment bank Morgan Stanley, to fund a breakfast club, which will allow 20 underprivileged children each morning to have a nutritious breakfast (bagels, cereal, fruit and juice) before they start school. Wellington serves a largely deprived inner-city community in East London, we have a high proportion of children taking free school meals, and we found that some children were coming to school without having had breakfast, which affected their ability to concentrate in class. I personally sponsored the cost of the milk for cereal for the first year to kick-start the project, and since we launched it in February 2010, the breakfast club has been a great success, and the children not only get a nutritious start to the day, but also start the learning day in a gentle way by playing numeracy and literacy games with volunteers from Morgan Stanley.
Working with a local credit union, I have also supported the creation of a school bank, which allows every pupil to start a bank account to encourage them to get into the habit of saving, which will stand them in good stead when they become consumers themselves. Only deposits can be made at the school (no withdrawals), so hopefully by the time each pupils leaves the school, they will have some savings as they move onto secondary school. It only takes to open an account, and I have said to the headtaeacher that I will give any child that needs it £1 to start their account if they promise to keep saving – so far the response has been good!
How has your firm supported your involvement with the school?
Clifford Chance works with the Governors One Stop Shop to encourage as many employees as possible to become governors, which is how I got involved myself. The Firm has allowed me to attend governors' meetings and read papers, and the time spent on school governor duties (and indeed other community and pro-bono activities) are taken into account during appraisals and calculating performance-related bonuses, so the Firm has been supportive of my work.
I have also arranged for senior staff from the school to use our meeting rooms for strategy planning (a quiet space to work away from the noise of a primary school), and I am also hoping to arrange for a class of Yr 4 and 5 children to visit our office (which is a 30-storey tower in Canary Wharf) to paint the view from the 30th floor, especially as we can see the Olympic Village and much of East London from there!
What have you learned from being a governor?
I have enjoyed working with the full range of people involved in running a school and making it successful, from parents and pupils to teachers and colleagues from the local education authority and local community groups and charities who support schools.
Being a governor means you are responsible for the long-term future of the school and everyone connected to it, especially the pupils and teachers. Schools are subject to large numbers of policies , law and regulation, but the experience of doing legal work certainly helped. My service as a governor has also helped me to develop my project management, finance and leadership skills, especially as we must take a long-term perspective on the decisions we make. Chairing committees, and leading projects where my colleagues are usually older than me has allowed me to draw on their experiences and ideas, and to be better at listening to a variety of views and opinions.
I am very interested in education policy, and look forward to contributing to the Conservatives' developing policy on schools and education, and being involved first-hand in a school has given me a much broader perspective on issues ranging from school standards and exams to school food and how schools in a local area learn from and support each (for example, Wellington is part of a network of similar schools in East London that work in partnership with secondary schools to share best practice).
What was the greatest challenge?
Our excellent headteacher left a year after I joined the governing body to take up a similar post at a larger school nearby, leaving the Wellington governors with the great challenge of appointing a successor. We felt that appointing the right headteacher was crucial to being able to achieve our long-term objectives which included maintaining the progress we had made in terms of exams results and school standards. We wanted someone who would lead and inspire the teachers, have the confidence of parents and pupils, and who shared our vision of raising aspirations, as well as being someone who would fit well into the school's fabric and get on well with all its community stakeholders. Thankfully, we found a great replacement, and the selection process reminded me of how important a strong and inspiring headteacher is to keep a school happy and successful.
Would you recommend it to others?
Absolutely. Schools, especially in our inner cities, depend on volunteers for their governors, so all lawyers, non-lawyers, parents and school staff can and should feel encouraged to get involved. Professionals of all backgrounds have a huge amount to offer in terms of expertise, contacts and ideas. Aside from their legal skills which will help in understanding and implementing the many policies that schools are subject to, lawyers in particular bring substantial project management, team-work and leadership skills to a governing body giving lawyers a fantastic platform to make a valuable contribution to their local school and the life chances of young people in their local communities.
Alan is raising funds for the Magic Breakfast by running the Royal Parks Half Marathon later this year. If you would to support him please visit http://www.justgiving.com/alanmagicbreakfast
LawWorks Choices First Birthday
The Choices project was launched on 10th July 2009 to provide volunteering opportunities for solicitors made redundant during the recession. As we approach the first birthday, here are some of our volunteers’ key achievements:
- Over 3000 pro bono hours completed, at a value of over £678000
- 25 individuals assisted through the mediation and individual casework projects
- Volunteers at 24 clinics across England and Wales
- Over 600 applications to become volunteers
A big thank you to all of our volunteers for the hard work you have done. Your efforts are really appreciated by LawWorks, and all of the individuals and community groups you have assisted.
A benefit of the Choices projects for volunteers is the Guaranteed Interview Scheme. Where a volunteer completes 40 hours of pro bono work, and apply for an advertised roll within a participating firm, they are offered a guaranteed interview if they meet the roles specification. If any LawWorks member firm would like more information on the scheme, please contact Lorna Heselton; lh@lawworks.org.uk
For more information about the project, please see: www.lawworkschoices.org.uk
Volunteer Supervising Solicitors sought for London Bridge pro bono clinic
Kaplan Legal Advice Centre (“KLAC”) runs every Thursday evening at Kaplan Law School, near London Bridge.
The KLAC runs from 6-8pm and currently we see 6 clients per week and give advice on virtually all areas of law excluding immigration, asylum, conveyancing and employment matters already in the tribunal process.
No advice is provided on the evening itself; our student volunteers conduct research based on the information provided by the client during the interview. Initially we send the client a letter to clarify what was discussed at the interview and highlighting any further documents that are required. Once these documents are received we then aim to send the client a letter of advice within 14 days. We may also offer to conduct further work for the client depending on the nature of the case.
We are currently looking for qualified solicitors to supervise our student volunteers who are a mix of GDL/LPC/BPTC students. The supervising solicitor would be asked to attend Kaplan Law School on the evening of the clinic to meet with the students and provide support and guidance; helping to ensure the students are asking the most pertinent questions and not giving any legal advice. The supervising solicitor will usually be sat in on the interview with the students, but should not need to get involved with asking questions. To date the most common queries we receive relate to housing, debt, contractual disputes and employment.
We ask that the supervisor is available to check the letter of advice prepared by the student (this will be done via e-mail and our online case management system). Any comments are encouraged and the supervisor can be reassured by the knowledge that the centre supervisor will check all letters before they are sent to clients.
There are occasions when students are not able to attend the clinic during the academic year. In these circumstances we ask the supervisors to interview the clients and prepare an attendance note, but the research and letters of advice can be prepared by the Clinic team if the supervisor is unable to do this themselves.
If a client’s problem continues past the initial advice stage then we may ask the supervising solicitor to check the correspondence and forms that are prepared on behalf of the client. We are anticipating that solicitors would be volunteering perhaps once a month and will be supervising 2 clients (as we intend to have 3 supervising solicitors per week).
If you are interested in this opportunity or would like some more information, please contact Bob Ashcroft, Pro Bono Coordinator, Kaplan Law School, Palace House, 3 Cathedral Street, London SE1 9DE; T: 0207 367 6436; E: b.ashcroft@kaplanlawschool.org.uk or visit our website at www.kaplanlegaladvice.org.uk
Quiz Corner
There was an error (another one?? – Ed.) in last months newsletter quiz when I said that we would be packing boxes for the move in June… In fact it’s July when that will happen, with our move scheduled for the end of the month. Apologies to the all the readers let down by that mistake. I await the flood of complaints from both my regulars.
So instead of the ‘guess when we move’ quiz, I’ve decided to alter the challenge.
With a new coalition in power, there are some new characters involved in the justice sector. As ever in Quiz Corner we deal with the important issues.
Whose shoes are these? Clue: Two people - one male, one female.
Answers, as usual, to Martin Curtis (martin.curtis@lawworks.org.uk) by Wednesday, 14 July 2010.
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It was lovely to see so many of you at the awards evening last month – thank you so much for supporting the event and (of course) the dancing – and many congratulations to the winners.