Fighting a just cause

Victoria MacCallum meets the in-house lawyers at pressure group Justice, who say society can be changed for the better by legal work on human rights, asylum, and EU legislation

Atrait not commonly associated with the legal profession is that of altruism.

The public is all too ready to believe the worst about lawyers, but striving for the greater good? Unlikely.

However, the continued growth and expansion of Justice, the lawyers' human rights and law reform organisation, would seem to disprove this assumption and suggest that lurking beneath the average solicitor's pinstripe beats a genuine desire to do good.

Founded in 1957, Justice now comprises almost 2,000 members from the legal profession and judiciary (by contrast, fellow human rights group Liberty also has non-lawyer members).

In its early life, it was well known for highlighting miscarriages of justice and helping to establish the concept of ombudsman schemes, but with the establishment of the Criminal Cases Review Commission in 1995, which took over much of the miscarriages work, the focus of the organisation shifted.

'We now concentrate on four main areas,' explains Roger Smith, who left the Law Society last year to become the director of Justice.

'Criminal justice, which involves looking at projects such as restorative justice for offenders; the UK's justice system, for example, whether we should have a supreme court in this country; justice and home affairs in the EU; and finally human rights.'

Human rights, of course, is the organisation's raison d'tre, and the introduction of the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) into British law in October 2000 was, unsurprisingly, a huge event.

'The HRA has dominated our work for the last five years,' says Jonathan Cooper, a barrister formerly at London's Doughty Street Chambers and Justice's assistant director (legal).

'We have been involved in trying to incorporate the HRA into law as smoothly as possible, by running training courses and keeping members up to date with any changes and developments in legislation.'

Training aside, Justice is also running a forthcoming series of human rights seminars with University College London, where 'cutting-edge human rights issues' will be discussed with academics there, eventually leading to a publication.

Add to this the myriad of responses produced by Justice's staff to human rights-linked consultation papers, and it becomes clear that although the Act is now officially a part of English law, human rights work is by no means over.

'The increased threat of terrorism in the last six months raises major human rights points,' explains senior legal officer Roisin Pillay, an Irish-qualified barrister who joined Justice in January 2000 from the International Commission of Jurists, an association of judges and lawyers established in 1952 to monitor and protect the human rights of those working in legal professions.

'When the emergency anti-terrorism legislation was rushed through Parliament in October, we were one of the organisations raising major concerns about that.'

Justice is also one of the organisations campaigning strongly for the establishment of an independent human rights commission, similar to the one set up in Northern Ireland.

So human rights will always be with us.

'It's impossible to overestimate the impact of the HRA,' says Mr Cooper, explaining that it is a 'huge constitutional change for the UK, a peculiarly British Bill of Rights'.

And the reverberations from such mammoth constitutional changes are felt for years to come; Justice is on the lookout for human rights implications in legislation as it travels through Parliament, and occasionally intervenes in legislation as a third party, when it considers that a case raises public interest human rights points.

However, the organisation is keen to stress that it's more than just a one-trick pony.

Its 15 staff (eight of whom are full-time), employed in its offices behind St Paul's Cathedral, are mostly either barristers or solicitors and work on issues ranging from freedom of information to prisoners' rights, and racial and religious discrimination.

One of its recent major pieces of work was a research project into asylum laws in the UK and Europe.

Anisa Niaz, the legal policy officer in charge of the project, explained that the aim was to monitor the changing policies on asylum across Europe.

'The finished book is a snapshot of asylum laws in the UK, with comparative research from different European countries,' she says.

A law graduate who joined Justice two years ago, Ms Niaz was drawn to the organisation because of its emphasis on policy development; in her asylum work, she has submitted written responses to the House of Lords immigration committee, and given oral evidence in response to consultations on European directives.

Policy development is the backbone of Justice's work, and an element that also drew legal officer Gay Moon to work there three years ago.

'I was a solicitor at Camden Community Law Centre, but I've always wanted to get involved with policies, to see how they work and who they affect,' she says.

Ms Moon has been working on Justice's discrimination project for the past two years, looking at discrimination legislation as it impacts on race and religion.

'We examine EU directives as they come through, and when consultation papers are issued, we put out leaflets to organisations concerned with racial and religious discrimination.'

This aspect, translating legislation and policy to interested parties, is another vital aspect of Justice's work, and one that its director is keen to stress.

'Many practitioners can't see how detailed legislation passed down from Strasbourg will affect their practice in, say, east Sussex,' says Mr Smith.

'We offer practical, practice-orientated research where members can come to us and we can explain the legal points without them having to plough through acres of legal tomes.'

It is not just practitioners in east Sussex who take advantage of the team's expertise - Mr Smith recalls a civil servant telephoning him to ask about the legal procedures when an adult and child were charged in different countries with committing an offence together.

'He'd gone through the official channels and had no luck, but within 36 hours we had an answer for him.'

In that particular case, the swift response was thanks to contacts in the International Commission of Jurists.

Justice acts as the organisation's UK arm.

Mr Smith readily admits that Justice's pedigree helps to open doors.

'Because of our history, we have access to people and a real credibility,' he says, while admitting that it can be a double-edged sword.

'People will listen to what you have to say, but that brings a responsibility with it: you have to deliver results, and immediately.'

Previously the Law Society's head of training and education, for 12 years prior to that Mr Smith was director of the Legal Action Group.

'Working in a small organisation such as Justice is exciting, because you have no resources to waste, and you have to produce cutting-edge research on very little funding,' he says.

Justice's annual running costs of around 600,000 come from membership fees, income from training and education projects, charitable foundations (for example the Joseph Rowntree trust funded the recent asylum report), and an increasing number of large firms such as Irwin Mitchell, Lovells, Simmons & Simmons, Linklaters and Clifford Chance.

The support of big firms comes as no surprise to Mr Cooper, who left his public law practice because he wanted to work directly on the HRA and its implications.

'Many people become lawyers because they do care about society and want to make a difference to it,' explains Mr Cooper.

'Being in practice often takes you away from that, but Justice keeps it alive - we try to represent the reason and the spirit that people become lawyers in the first place.'

LINKS: www.justice.org.uk