Advance High Quality Thinking

Specialist courses in Employment Law and Family Law

Grant: £12,000
November 26, 2014

A project to establish a series of intensive training programmes for lawyers in corporate law firms before they commence providing advice in legal advice centres. The intention is that the programme of courses should eventually be self-funded from charges for the provision of the courses.

Criminal Justice Initiative & for CCA University Partner Profiles

Grant: £40,000
November 26, 2014

The Centre for Criminal Appeals is a new “access to justice” initiative, currently in its pilot phase. As a non-profit, specialised law practice, the Centre for Criminal Appeals aims to address the drastic shortage of quality legal representation for prisoners seeking to make applications to the Criminal Cases Review Commission and the Court of Appeal. The Criminal Defence Initiative is a partnership between The Centre for Criminal Appeals and a cohort of universities in England and Wales that aims to train the next generation of lawyers who will prosecute and defend people accused of crimes, and transform the way such cases are approached, both by the system and by individual lawyers.

Administrator for 3 Years

Grant: £19,000
November 26, 2014

For almost 20 years CLEO has been providing encouragement, expertise and support to develop clinical legal education in UK law schools. This has been done primarily through workshops, one-off events, and the sharing of individuals’ experience. As an informal organisation CLEO encouraged legal clinicians to share their experiences and best practices and facilitated the emergence of new clinical legal education initiatives in a large number of universities. Once the organisation is formally incorporated, this funding will allow an administrator to be appointed to ensure the network and activities are maximised.

The JUSTICE Student Human Rights Network

Grant: £40,000
August 8, 2014

JUSTICE is an all-party law reform and human rights charity working to strengthen the justice system – administrative, civil and criminal. Its vision is of fair, accessible and efficient legal processes, in which the individual’s rights are protected, and which reflect the country’s international reputation for upholding and promoting the rule of law. This includes “promoting education and conducting research into the law, including current proposed practices and administration and reform of the law”.

The Foundation’s grant will enable the charity to build a dynamic student website to arm students with the necessary skills and experience to engage with law reform when they enter practice.

Legal Advocacy Support Project

Grant: £50,000
August 8, 2014

Providing legal advice and representation to vulnerable people to ensure all people have access to justice and legal redress. The project will provide volunteer law students with valuable client facing experience, including drafting, collation of evidence, hearing preparation and advocacy.

A unique feature of the Project is that law students are trained to work on a single type of legal matter so that training need only cover a narrowly defined area of law in case preparation saving caseworker time and improving the client’s chance of a fair outcome. Tasks include:

• Preparing appellant’s statement;
• obtaining medical, witness and other evidence;
• Preparation of legal submission;
• Pre-hearing advice to client on the hearing procedure, the key issues in that case and the evidence they need to provide at the hearing; and representation at the appeal hearing.

Creating the Lawyers of Tomorrow

Grant: £90,000
August 8, 2014

qLegal provides legal services to technology start-ups and entrepreneurs by postgraduate students from CCLS. qLegal has recruited and trained an excellent group of postgraduate student advisers, supported by a strong network of collaborating professional partners. Demand has grown and this funding will allow qLegal to facilitate an expansion with UK-wide engagement of law students focusing on the legal requirements of some of the UK’s most exciting emerging technology-based start-up companies. This is a unique project that allows students to access hands-on experience to commercial law and benefits the entrepreneurs of technology.

Development Officer

Grant: £50,000
November 27, 2013

For the cost of funding a sales person to sell the training service to major law firms.

City Legal Education Clinic

Grant: £20,000
November 27, 2013

To enable City Legal Education Clinic to establish two more university law clinics to support entrepreneurs and start-ups. This process forms an innovative educational model for law students in commercial law and creates job opportunities for law students in start-ups.

Development officer

Grant: £3,120
October 1, 2013

To pay for the organisation to develop and market the programme of training to be delivered to those volunteering to work in law centres.

Initial Set Up Costs

Grant: £5,900
October 1, 2013

Fully funded by LEF, this new charity was set up in 2013 by trainee lawyers David Dowling and Oliver Hyams. Their mixed experiences volunteering led them to identify the need for a structured training programme that provides Law Centres and other advice agencies with volunteer law students, trainees and qualified lawyers who possess the knowledge and skills to help meet the demand for pro bono advice. The pilot training course saw 29 students receiving certificates and completing volunteering assignments with a variety of Law Centres and advice agencies. Pro Bono Community is now offering the course to law firms, barristers’ chambers, law schools and universities. The scheme will become self-supporting by charging the organisations to put groups of up to 30 students through the training programme and helping to place them with advice agencies. The course concludes with a formal assessment, which students are required to pass in order to receive their Pro Bono Training Certificate. It intends to create different versions of its training programme focusing on employment, housing, debt and family law in the near future.