Last week I attended the inaugural annual lecture at the LawWorks Annual Pro Bono awards given by Shami Chakrabarti CBE, the Director of Liberty.
This was the first time I had attended an event where Shami was speaking and I sincerely hope it isn’t the last.
Liberty’s slogan is ‘Join Us. Be Heard’, a very simple but powerful message for us all. Liberty does not just focus on our human rights in times of adversity and in war zones, it empowers us to defend our human rights at school, at work, in courtrooms or wherever our human rights are not being observed.
Shami spoke about how it was an honour to celebrate the work done by pro bono lawyers ‘in the dwindling field of legal aid’. Reminiscing about the time when a citizen in the UK ‘could get the legal advice and representation they need rather than the legal advice and representation they could afford’.
The great Joshua Rozenberg interviewed Shami asking her opinion on the Investigatory Powers Bill and the need perhaps for the powers to gather intelligence to be put on a statutory footing. Shami’s response in short was that she agreed on the need for a new Bill but not one that allows for mass rather than targeted surveillance.
Whether you feel that the criminal law is there to deter criminal activity and to punish those who choose to break the law or consider that the criminal law is more about being a code that reflects societal values and should be used as ‘a last resort’, may depend upon whether you have been affected by the unlawful acts of others.
There is no doubt that with Shami at the helm, the vulnerable will be heard and those with power may well be made to feel uncomfortable about decisions they make that affect people’s lives.
I cannot help but make a small comparison in how the message behind the ‘join us be heard’ slogan resonates with how I feel about the Paralegal Profession. There are an estimated 200,000 Paralegals in the UK, rise up and be heard- you all make a real difference to the lives of those who cannot afford high legal costs.
We are in the process of looking at how members of the PPR can be involved more actively in the provision of pro bono work. If you are interested in taking part in a discussion about pro bono work then please get in touch as we are looking for ambassadors to help us take this forwards.
Rita Leat