The Law Society charity throws a financial lifeline to a host of organisations, yet all that could change in a post-Clementi world, reports Jon Robins

One unexpected victim of the Clementi revolution could be the Law Society Charity. This will come as a surprise to many lawyers who are unaware that the profession even has such a charity.


However, the Law Society trustees have been quietly making grants to a disparate collection of organisations – from pressure groups such as Asylum Aid to those offering support for lawyers, such as LawCare, as well as bigger names such as Voluntary Service Overseas – for more than three decades now. More than £5 million has been handed out to 200 charities.


If anything were to happen to the charity as a result of a reduction in the non-regulatory role of the Society, then it would be a serious blow for groups that have benefited from the profession’s largesse over the years. ‘If it’s the case that by some side-wind of Clementi the charity ceases to be viable, I would strongly hope the profession would find the money from some other pocket or purse,’ comments Lord Phillips of Sudbury.


The solicitor and Liberal Democrat peer set up the influential Citizenship Foundation in 1989 with money from the charity. The foundation, which successfully campaigned to put citizenship on the national curriculum, was established following a Law Society project to develop teaching materials to introduce students to their legal rights and the role of law in a democratic society.


Lord Phillips says that without the backing of the profession, it would be ‘no exaggeration’ to say the foundation would not exist. ‘The tradition of philanthropy is a very important one to the image of the profession, let alone the beneficiaries of that bounty,’ he argues. ‘In an age of the reawakening of interest in pro bono, it would be a pretty sad irony if this sort of funding was lost and not replaced.’


So what does Sir David Clementi’s review of regulation in the legal profession have to do with solicitors’ charitable efforts? The Law Society Council is currently deciding what role it should have outside of regulation in a post-Clementi world. As a result, Chancery Lane is looking at the sum of some £21 million a year it devotes to law reform and representation as in future the income from practising certificate fees may be devoted solely to regulation. A fraction of the money spent on non-regulatory activities at the moment is directed towards the charity and redistributed through a series of grants.


‘The future of the charity must be in doubt,’ admits council member Nigel Dodds, who has been chairman of the charity for the past five years. ‘There are huge financial pressures on the Society.’ Mr Dodds says they are in talks with Chancery Lane at the moment about the current grant. ‘The issue for the charity to look at now is whether it wants to become a fund-raising organisation as well as a recipient and distributor of grants,’ he continues. ‘That is something we are looking at as a matter of urgency.’


However, Mr Dodds expects a ‘reasonable interregnum’ between these discussions and the restructuring of the Society’s finances.


The timing of this uncertainty over the charity’s future is ironic given that last year there was a major drive to raise its profile to mark its 30th year. But still many in the profession – let alone the outside world – are unaware of the charity’s existence.


It was set up by the then treasurer of the Law Society, Sir John Stebbings, in 1974 as a way of funding the Society’s educational role. ‘The Law Society’s revenue-earning functions attracted tax, and its profits were covenanted to the charity enabling it to recover tax,’ explained Sir Richard Gaskell, chairman of the charity from 1982 to 1992, in a brochure published last year.


The charity has always been a lifeline for groups such as LawCare, which provides help for solicitors suffering from stress, depression, alcohol and drug abuse, and the Solicitors Benevolent Association (SBA), which supports those members of the profession who find themselves in need. In 2003, the SBA helped more than 375 beneficiaries, from elderly solicitors in residential homes to students in law colleges.


The charity has always stood at arm’s length from Chancery Lane. Before Sir Richard left, there were attempts by the Society to bring the board and the responsibility for appointing his successor within its remit. ‘This would have compromised the independence of the board, which still selects its own members and advises the Society of its choices,’ Sir Richard said. ‘Robust independence needed to be proved.’


How does the charity decide which groups should benefit from the money? Deborah Annetts is chief executive of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society and non-council solicitor member of the charity’s board. She recalls her surprise at seeing the first bundle of applications which ‘stood two inches thick’ when she joined in 2003. She says the board members view themselves as ‘agents of change and agents for the good’.


Ms Annetts adds: ‘We are looking for those groups which do work that ranges from directly feeding into the profession – for example, involving the training of solicitors and improving core skills – through to those promoting the dissemination of the law through access to legal information.’


Grants are distributed to groups as diverse as Book Aid International, which supplies some 10,000 law books to some 60 partners in 22 countries a year, and the pressure group Fair Trials Abroad, a non-government organisation (NGO) that supports Europeans facing criminal charges outside their own country.


She would like to see the charity raising its profile: ‘It is important that the organisations we could be supporting know about our work,’ she says. ‘It’s a force for the good, and the more publicity we can get for it the better it is for everybody.’


It was the Law Society charity that first enabled the Solicitors Pro Bono Group (SPBG) to get off the ground. In the early days, the money it received from the profession gave the group the ‘kick-start’ it needed to get up and running, says acting chief executive Robert Gill.


If the funding to the charity were to be cut, how would it hit the group? Mr Gill reports that the SPBG is presently waiting ‘on the promise of a grant’ to support its ‘seniors project’, which is an initiative aimed at using the experience of solicitors close to or past retirement to benefit a variety of schemes. ‘It is just starting to get off ground and that money would be severely missed,’ he says.


So far the group has received £15,000 for the project – but it is hoping for a further sum to secure a co-ordinator to match suitable candidates to pro bono work. ‘Like most charities we don’t put all our eggs in one basket,’ Mr Gill says. ‘We would be sad if the funding wasn’t available but we would have to try and find other ways of supporting the project.’


It would be ‘absolutely terrible’ if the charity were to be hit by the reform of the profession, says Stephen Jakobi, the solicitor who set up Fair Trials Abroad. He describes his group as ‘dependent’ on the charity because, ‘although it isn’t huge sums of money in the grand scheme of things’, the grants have kept the small organisation afloat.


‘Organisations like us which fight for individuals citizens’ legal rights – in the same way as solicitors and barristers do in British courts – are very dependent on lawyers who know what the problems are,’ Mr Jakobi argues. ‘The Law Society Charity is representative of those people and it constitutes the type of pro bono work that isn’t really done anywhere else.’


Lord Phillips describes the charity’s support to the foundation as ‘crucial’ in several respects. Firstly, the charity is unusual in that it provides core funding for groups such as the foundation – as opposed to discrete project funding – and that, the peer says, is always the most the difficult support to find.


Mr Dodds echoes this. He points out that the charity will, for example, make grants to assist with clerical support for death row prisoners in the Caribbean. He says: ‘It might be relatively easy to get the high-profile silks to do things here, but it’s much more difficult to provide those who do the spade work,’ he says.


Lord Phillips explains that the charity provides more than just financial support. He says: ‘It is an outward and visible sign of the connectedness between the profession and the Citizenship Foundation. We would be devastated if anything got in the way of that.’



Jon Robins is a freelance journalist