Four young lawyers were honoured for their services to pro bono work at the Junior Lawyers Division (JLD) Pro Bono Awards last week.

The annual awards, presented by Lord Phillips of Sudbury in a ceremony at Chancery Lane last Thursday, celebrate outstanding pro bono work done by individual LPC students, trainees and newly qualified solicitors with up to five years’ post-qualification experience.

Bobby Kensah, a trainee at City firm Norton Rose, was named JLD pro bono lawyer of the year. LPC student Birchlyn Conte was highly commended for the same award, while LPC student Ben Spencer, currently working as a paralegal in the legal aid team at Cambridge firm Ginn & Co, won the international human rights award. Michael Spencer, an associate at magic circle firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, won the Wig & Pen prize.

Kensah was praised for contributing ‘countless hours’ to a number of pro bono initiatives, such as advising and supporting vulnerable individuals in police custody as an appropriate adult legal adviser. He also worked as a volunteer adviser, coordinator and organiser of the Norton Rose Tooting Legal Advice Centre. He is currently setting up a pro bono information website aimed at trainee solicitors.

Conte volunteered in the College of Law’s legal advice centre and employment advice team, the National Centre for Domestic Violence and the Royal Courts of Justice advice bureau.

Ben Spencer was a volunteer in the College of Law’s legal advice centre triage team and at the Royal Courts of Justice advice bureau, and worked on a special assignment for the Miscarriages of Justice Support Service. As an intern at the Law Society, he helped implement the international action team, a new project involving more than 300 law students, practitioners and activists. He supervised research into human rights violations around the world and the drafting of intervention letters requesting compliance with international law. He worked on 51 international intervention cases during the course of the year.

Michael Spencer spent three months on secondment at human rights organisation Liberty, assisting on several cases including the McKinnon extradition and the Sarika Singh discrimination case. As part of a team at Freshfields, he assisted in drafting a US Supreme Court amicus brief on the unconstitutionality of the death penalty for non-murder offences. He also took part in two Freshfields schemes at the Tower Hamlets law centre and the Royal Courts of Justice advice bureau.

Kevin Poulter, chair of the JLD pro bono awards committee, said: ‘Junior lawyers are consistently involved in undertaking pro bono work at home and abroad. The commitment and enthusiasm of junior lawyers in securing access to equality and justice and setting an example for future lawyers and the profession is to be commended.’

The entries were judged by solicitor general Vera Baird QC; Conservative shadow justice secretary Dominic Grieve QC; Linda Lee, vice-president of the Law Society; Liberal Democrat shadow justice secretary David Howarth; and Lord Sudbury.

The international human rights award was presented in honour of Nick Webber, a newly qualified solicitor at City firm Ashurst who died in a car accident in Malawi five years ago. He was working for a human rights organization at the time. The Wig & Pen Prize is awarded by the City of London Law Society and the City of Westminster and Holborn Law Society to a solicitor up to five years’ qualified in their constituencies who undertakes pro bono work.