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Below you can find a report of our activities in 2011. From that it is clear just how much lawyers and their colleagues have done to support free legal advice centres by supporting the Trust.
All of you have been brilliant.
While advice agencies in London have been closing at a rate of one a month since the summer due to cuts, that figure could have been doubled had it not been for your efforts.
You have saved services for young people in poverty, homeless people, trafficked women and children, those with mental illnesses & older or disabled people needing community care. You have even helped to create new services in Boroughs where none existed.
A Huge Thank You to everyone for that.
Of course, the worst of the cuts are yet to come and the agencies will need us to work even harder if they are to maintain the help that they provide to the most vulnerable people in and around London.
We need you! We’ll need even more people Walking the Thames in darkest February (18th + 19th) and joining us at the London Legal Walk on May 21st. We have added a tandem skydive, a Halloween Ball and some extra running to our events calendar to enable even more people to join in the fundraising.
You can find more information by clicking on the names of the events above (although please excuse our website, we are currently having a new and more user friendly one created), emailing us any questions or looking at the full calendar of events here.
Please register for Walk the Thames or the Skydive now even if you only have one walker or jumper . We are also taking registrations of interest for the London Legal Walk.
Once again, please accept and pass on our thanks to everyone who made 2011 such a successful year. Lawyers (and their colleagues and families) really are wonderful.
Wishing you a very happy Christmas and a great New Year, we look forward to seeing and working with you in 2012.
Bob and Natalia London Legal Support Trust Our Year in 2011
Index:
Overview
Raising Funds in 2011
Supporting Legal Advice Agencies in London & the SE
– Direct Walk Funding
– LLST grants
– Other support for the agencies
The Year Ahead – 2012
Support from the top of the profession
Support in kind for LLST
Personal Thanks – interns and volunteers
Thanks to our event sponsors
Trustees and Staff
Overview
Welcome to the London Legal Support Trust’s annual review. The support that we provide for legal advice agencies in London and the South East has grown each year and we thank all of those who have contributed to this success. Sadly the need also grows annually and we regret that we have not been able to fund all those legal advice agencies who have asked for help.
By the end of 2011 legal advice centres in London were closing at the rate of one a month due to cuts. Had it not been for funds raised from the legal profession that figure could have been at least 2 a month.
That is the difference made by the funds you have raised and the result is that many thousands of vulnerable people have received help who would otherwise have been denied. You have funded a whole variety of services, from advisors working on a one to one basis with individuals and families providing legal case work, to funding capacity building such as the creation of new interview rooms, seedcorn funds for innovative projects to reach more people and funding pro bono advice clinics integrating legally trained volunteers and front line advice agencies.
Raising funds We raise funds primarily from lawyers and their colleagues in London and the South East and use those funds to support free legal advice agencies in the region. This year we have raised over £600,000 and have helped over 70 legal advice agencies. Our main sources of funding were:
The London Legal Sponsored Walk: With over 5,000 walkers this year’s walk (sponsored by the Law Society, Sony Ericsson and with drinks sponsored by Allen & Overy) raised £497,000. Attendance showed the scale and range of support from across the whole legal profession as you can see below. Preparations are already underway for the London Legal Walk 2012 which we hope will build on the great success of 2011 and be better than ever.
London Legal Walk Teams 2011:
 Walk the Thames: Now in its third year, Walk the Thames (sponsored by BPP) significantly added to our income with nearly 500 walkers undertaking one or two days of the 40 mile trek and raising a brilliant £85,000.
Local Walks: Alongside the London walk we hold walks in other locations in the South East including Guildford, Newbury (with thanks to Vodafone in-house legal department), Brighton, Eastbourne and Hastings. These raised over £20,000 between them, mostly for the benefit of their local advice agencies.
Running: A number of runners took part in the Asics 10k run in July and raised £1,600 for us.
Halloween Ball: The first annual Halloween Ball (sponsored by Lexacom) raised over £5,000 and a brilliant evening was had by all.
Cricket Match: The inter-firm cricket match between Linklaters, Freshfields, Clifford Chance and Allen & Overy raised over £3,000.
At both the cricket match and the Halloween Ball we ran silent auctions with prizes generously donated by Lord Clarke, Lord Justice Rix, Lord Justice Etherton, the Attorney General and actress Emma Watson.
Client Account Interest Scheme: In 2011 Allen & Overy and Weil, Gotshal & Manges raised over £20,000 by donating the extra interest earned by pooling funds deposited in their client accounts.
Donations from Law Firms and Chambers: We received a number of direct donations in 2011 either donated proactively or in response to appeals. Hogan Lovells, Dechert LLP, Maitland Chambers and the City of London Law Society all gave generous unsolicited donations for which we are extremely grateful. 39 Essex Street also donated all of the income from one of their seminars.
Individuals fundraising: Increasingly individuals are fundraising for us themselves – individual lawyers have used their marathon ballot places to raise money and the idea of our first ever sky dive in 2012 stemmed from one individual jumping for us on her own inititative in 2011.
Supporting Legal Advice Agencies in London & SE In 2011, we donated over £1/2 million to legal advice and help agencies. By “we”, we mean the firms, chambers, in house legal departments, judges and students that raise and donate funds. LLST is just a vehicle for these lawyers and their colleagues whose generosity is helping to maintain these agencies. LLST merely facilitates this and channels it to where it can best be used.
Direct Walk Funding: 67 groups benefited directly from the London Legal Walk, Walk the Thames and walks local to them. Nearly £212,000 went out to those groups. In addition, agencies received nearly £20,000 directly (i.e. donated to them as team sponsorship and not through LLST). Some of those such as Z2K received all walk funding directly.
LLST Grants: From the events, “pool funds” and other donations the Trust provided direct grants totalling nearly £1/4 million. These Included:
 Other support for the agencies: Throughout 2011 LLST also worked with a number of the agencies that we support financially to help them to become sustainable. This can involve garnering help in kind such as premises or file archiving generally from City firms but also extends to bringing in City firm expertise to help with business planning for agencies struggling to survive. That work is being developed as a specific project to try and make such help available on a regular and sustainable basis.
We have very strong links indeed, not only with firms and chambers, but also with the pro bono agencies such as LawWorks and the Bar Pro Bono Unit and with the agency networks (LCF, Citizens Advice and AdviceUK). This allows us to act as a conduit to try to ensure the best collaboration and co-ordination. Whilst there may be some overlap we hope that all of our efforts, both jointly and seperately, help to deliver greater access to justice for disadvantaged people.
The Year Ahead – 2012 The proposed changes to legal aid, released for consultation at the start of the year, have now provided a new challenge for us all.
If areas of poverty law including debt, employment and benefits are, as proposed, removed from the scope of legal aid, the task of ensuring the survival of advice agencies and access to justice will be enormous. Every bit of pro bono help available and every penny that can be raised will be needed to maintain any service at all.
We cannot possibly replace the enormous amount of money that is proposed to be withdrawn that has paid for specialist legal help for some of the most vulnerable people in our community. The legal aid cuts will be exacerbated by cuts in local authority funding and the loss will be enormous.
However, we will not give in to despair and simply abandon those who do not have the money to access law and justice. We will do everything we can to try and ensure that any individual, family or group, regardless of their income, can access the same rights before the law. We will redouble our efforts so that every bit of individual and corporate generosity in time and money that lawyers, their firms and chambers and supporters offer, can be channelled to maintaining a high quality (albeit shorter on quantity) service for people in great need.
Support from the top of the profession The support LLST has gathered for free legal advice and pro bono agencies from the highest echelons of the profession is something we are very proud of.
As ever, our patrons have taken a leading role in our events, both attending events and advocating our cause. Lord Judge and Lord Neuberger joined the London Legal Walk whilst Lord Phillips braved the cold in February, leading the 40 mile Walk-the-Thames and Lord Clarke led the Brighton Walk.
The London walk was led by an incredible array of senior lawyers, in addition to our patrons, including (in no particular order) the Presidents of the Law Society and ILEX, the Chair of the Bar Council, the DPP, the Official Solicitor, the Attorney General and Solicitor General, the Recorder of London, the Treasury Solicitor and the First Parliamentary Counsel. As there was a Family Division conference on the night of the walk the President, organised a walk at the conference which was nominally part of their team’s efforts in London and raised sponsorship towards this.
Many senior Judges walked including, of course, our star fundraiser Lord Justice Lloyd who again raised over £7,000 in sponsorship.
This incredible show of support from the most senior individuals in the legal profession sends a powerful message about how important the agencies and the work that they do is. It encourages others, at all levels of seniority, to get involved and greatly enhances our ability to raise funds. A huge thank you to all those senior walkers and to their staff who are invaluable in helping us.
Support in kind for LLST In addition to raising funds a number of law firms have helped the Trust in 2011.
- All of our design and printing is undertaken free of charge by Allen & Overy who also process our gift aid forms for us. This, along with other on-going support from Allen & Overy, saves us the cost of an administrator and is therefore worth over £20,000 a year.
- Simmons & Simmons also designed our calendar of events for 2012 and provided complimentary printing of this.
- Clifford Chance have hosted all of our receptions
- Hogan Lovells are assisting with our development plans
- and all of the major firms join in our social policy efforts.
Personal Thanks – interns and volunteers The Trust couldn’t possibly achieve all that it does with only one (now two!) staff member(s) and really cannot overemphasise our gratitude to all those who have helped throughout 2011. Our work would simply not be possible without you. There are really so many people to thank but in particular we would like to mention:
Luchia Wheble - currently an LPC student, we are very grateful for the time, effort and good humour she contributed throughout the year. Jonathan Charwat and Vijay Ray-Chaudhuri - two longstanding volunteers for whom we must credit the maps for and development of Walk-the-Thames. Prashant Sagar - currently an undergraduate law student, we are very grateful for the time he has volunteered throughout the year ensuring our website was kept up to date and helping with various other tasks.
London Legal Walk Organising Committee The members of this are crucial in helping with the on-going promotion, on the day logistics and running of the London Legal Walk. With thanks to: Kate Walmsley of the Law Society, Emma Turnbull from Allen & Overy, Sarah Cox and Martin Curtis from LawWorks, Rebecca Wilkie from the Bar Pro Bono Unit, James Banks and Toby Brown from the Access to Justice Foundation.
Many other volunteers help out on an ad hoc basis, for which we are very grateful, particularly the groups of law students and others who help as stewards at the walks.
Trustees and Staff Our Trustees make the difficult decisions as to which agencies receive grants from the funds the Trust raises. The amount applied for always exceeds the funds available and it is a very challenging process to ensure money is being placed both where it is most needed and will be best spent.
Our trustees at the end of 2011 are: Richard Dyton (Chair) – pro bono partner at Simmons & Simmons Graham Huntley – Partner at Hogan Lovells
John Dunlop – Partner at DAC Beachcroft Julian Clark – Partner at Campbell Johnston Clark Marc Sosnow - Partner at Teacher Stern Jeremy Thomas – Formerly Community Affairs partner at Allen & Overy Peter Gardner – Formerly IT Manager at the Big Lottery Joy Julien – Formerly Director of RCJ Advice Bureau Steve Hynes – Director of LAG(Legal Action Group) Emma Turnbull – Pro Bono and Community Affairs Officer at Allen & Overy
Our staff: Bob Nightingale MBE, our Chief Executive has over 35 years’ experience in running free legal advice centres and engaging volunteers from the profession. He has organised the walk since its inception and has developed the other fundraising activities of the Trust over the past 8 years. Natalia Rymaszewska joined LLST in October from the Bar Pro Bono Unit where she became involved in the London Legal Walk, helping to recruit chambers’ teams as part of her role. Alongside fundraising experience she brings technical finance and marketing skills to the Trust which we did not previously have in-house as well as many new ideas and enthusiasm.
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