PRO BONO: conference delegates back CPD points for appropriate free work


Conduct rules should be revised so that lawyers are obliged to promote and defend access to justice for all, Lord Phillips of Sudbury told delegates at the first Joint National Pro Bono conference last weekend.



'If we want to just get richer, then we should drop the word lawyer and call ourselves businessmen... we need to re-examine what we are on this planet for,' the solicitor peer said.



'The rules of conduct say nothing about access to justice [as they do in the US]... the US is well ahead of us when it comes to understanding that the role of lawyers is not just about serving the best-paying clients, but that lawyers do have an indispensable role in ensuring a fair society.'



Lord Phillips also said that far fewer poorer people were being represented than ever before in his lifetime and slammed the government's proposed reforms to publicly funded legal work: 'The legal aid scheme is imploding, slowly but surely.'



While noting that many lawyers undertake enormous amounts of pro bono work, Lord Phillips warned that the overall pro bono effort had dropped and that 'a third of firms discourage or prohibit pro bono work'.



At a session on what role frontline regulators should play in supporting the pro bono effort, lawyers - during an informal poll - voted against making it compulsory to undertake a set amount of pro bono work. However, delegates did overwhelmingly support allowing lawyers to claim appropriate pro bono work for CPD hours.



Law Society chief executive Des Hudson, a panellist, said he could not back making a certain amount of pro bono work 'mandatory' - particularly in the face of the funding squeeze on legal aid provision.



However, Diane Burleigh, chief executive of the Institute of Legal Executives, said she was interested in making pro bono work part of legal education or inclusion in CPD hours - as long as the Law Society was onside.

l A number of awards were presented during the week to junior, trainee and student lawyers for their commitment to pro bono work.



The winners of the Young Lawyer Pro Bono Awards 2007 were: Francesca Debenham of the Treasury Solicitor's Department (in-house); Fflur Jones of Darwin Gray in Cardiff (small firm); Jared Genser of DLA Piper (large firm); Katie Hutt of Advocates for International Development (trainee); Heather Gagen, Katalina Chin, Shrina Shah and Edward Mathison at City firm Lovells (team of young solicitors); and Tariq Al-Mallak of the London College of Law (student).



The winners of the College of Law's Pro Bono Student of the Year Awards were Tariq Al-Mallak (legal practice course), Joanna Brind (graduate diploma in law) and Eloise Kay (bar vocational course).



Jenny Gilthorpe of City firm Macfarlanes was the winner of the Wig & Pen Award, the annual pro bono award given by the City of Westminster & Holborn Law Society and the City of London Law Society.



Anita Rice and Jonathan Rayner