LALYs 2023: Lawyers unite to 'celebrate the power of legal aid'

A family solicitor with a long history of working with organisations supporting domestic abuse victims in south Wales and a prominent civil liberties firm that has helped Afghan nationals escape the Taliban regime were among the winners on the biggest night in the legal aid calendar.

Hundreds of lawyers gathered in central London on Wednesday evening for the 21^st Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year Awards, organised by the Legal Aid Practitioners Group (LAPG).

Opening the event, LAPG co-chair Jenny Beck said: 'This is the evening where we come together as one legal aid community to celebrating the power of legal aid to transform lives and to defend the rights of ordinary people.'

Victoria Jones, head of family at Bridgend firm RLE Law, received the award for family legal aid. Jones is a trustee of her local children’s contact centre. She told the event that the centre provides a process for parents or family members to re-establish contact with children.

‘Being able to see children is something that’s fundamental to the fibre of our core. But it’s not always easy. The contact centre provides a safe age-appropriate venue for parents starting on that journey of re-establishing contact with their children.’

Jones said the contact centre relies on many volunteers ‘getting out of bed on a Saturday morning giving up their time to facilitate that contact. It’s a really important but under-resourced service’.

Deighton Pierce Glynn won the award for legal aid firm/not-for-profit agency (the award sponsored by the Law Society). The firm was nominated for its work for Afghan nationals refused relocation to the UK through official government schemes. A man whose father worked with British authorities in Afghanistan said: ‘Now we are in a safe place in comfort and peace. The services of these powerful lawyers will be recorded in my life history.’

Christopher Johnson, who founded the Travellers advice team at his Birmingham-based firm, The Community Law Partnership, won the award for social welfare law. The team provides legal support to Gypsies and Travellers across England and Wales and Johnson was described as being at the forefront of legal challenges to local authorities using borough-wide injunctions against ‘persons unknown' to deny Travellers from camping on any public land.

Johnson told the event all that was needed were ‘stopping places’ for Travellers and praised his clients’ resilience.

The event was attended by shadow attorney general Emily Thornberry MP and Sir Bob Neill, chair of the House of Commons justice select committee.

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