Supporting Social Justice Solicitors
The Challenge
Our mission is to improve people’s lives by increasing the availability of quality legal advice and support. We can’t achieve this without dedicated solicitors helping people in some of our most deprived communities to tackle issues around domestic violence, housing, and employment every day. Their vital advice keeps families safe, with a roof over their heads and much more.
However social justice remains one of the least secure and poorly paid sectors within the legal profession and the frontline free legal advice organisations that rely on these professionals cannot match the salary, study support, and supervision afforded by many commercial firms or public sector.
Talented and passionate lawyers are being forced to quit and move to better paid roles as they struggle to meet the triple challenge of:
- Studying for their SQE1 & 2,
- Maintaining their well-being, AND
- Serving people, places and communities most in need.
Securing the future of social welfare advice
The Social Welfare Solicitors Qualification Fund (SWSQF), is a partnership of the City of London Law Society, BARBRI and Young Legal Aid Lawyers which has successfully raised funds to pay for the Solicitors Qualification Exam’s preparatory course and assessment fees for 69 social welfare solicitors from 2022 to 2024. Their ambition is to continue to offer more in the years ahead.
While the burden of the fees has been eased for those successful candidates, the pressures to work, study and prepare for exams remain intense.
Supporting Social Justice Solicitors will provide funding to the free legal advice employers of SWSQF solicitors to help them support their staff as a whole and specific support for the SWSQF solicitors.
We want to give the solicitors the flexibility and freedom to balance the demands of work and study – and ultimately achieve success without burn out.
The Opportunity
By supporting the SSJS Fund you can increase access to justice for the people, places, and communities most in need.
Advice charities are seeing a huge increase in demand for their services.
At the same time social welfare solicitors face low pay and debt – as well as the demands of qualification.
Recruiting and retaining more solicitors in frontline advice organisations will help to close the gap between current provision and the increased demand on services caused by the cost-of-living crisis.
A rural law centre shared their experience of a staff member studying the SQE:
Maria* is a full-time caseworker at the centre, and a carer for a family member, who bravely decided to take on the challenge of SQE study.
She received SWSQF funding for her tuition but could not afford to cut back her hours at the law centre, so continued to work full time alongside her studies. The law centre did not have the financial or staffing resources to give her any study leave.
Maria struggled balancing her full-time role, the SQE exams, and her caring responsibilities, and ended up failing one paper in SQE1 and the whole of SQE2.
* Name has been changed
- We want to ensure that this does not happen, and that students are given the opportunity to reach their full potential.
- By providing grants to organisations hosting SQSWF recipients, they will have the resources to give trainees like Maria the flexibility and freedom to balance the demands of work and study.
With your help we want to offer funding to give:
- Aspiring social welfare solicitors stability, flexibility and improved chances to qualify and stay in their chosen field, AND
- Support their employers at the same time.
The Access to Justice Foundation has committed £100,000 to this essential work to increase the viability and sustainability of social welfare advice.
We are looking for funding partners to scale this up and make a bigger impact.
We are asking Law Firm to contribute to the Supporting Social Justice Solicitors (SSJS) Fund.
This could support social justice lawyers and their advice charities across the country to ultimately improve the quality and consistency of essential advice to people in marginalised communities.
A grant to a legal advice charity employing one or more lawyers awarded SWSQF support will be spent on:
- Directly supporting SWSQF funded employees as they study. This could include covering unpaid leave to study, or to pay for travel and accommodation to take the SQE.
- Providing general support to the organisation. This could include staff costs to cover unpaid study leave, training across the team, increased supervision and support for students, and the administration of the grant.
Get in touch
If you would like to make a donation or have any further questions, please contact: Charlotte Duthie, Development Officer
