YLAL Membership FAQs

To become a member of YLAL you must be committed to working in, or supportive of, areas of law that have traditionally been funded by legal aid, such as social welfare, family, crime, public law and immigration; and committed to working for clients whose cases are funded by the legal aid system.

Do I have to pay a fee?

No – membership is free.

Is there an age limit? Do I need to be a lawyer? 

No. We welcome students who intend to work in the legal aid sector, and lawyers currently working in the sector, up to 10 years PQE or “call”.
Don’t be put off by the “young” in our name, this is a group for all ages and some of us are no longer that young! What we share is that we are at the start of our careers. 

What do I get as a member?

We hope that you can get as much from YLAL as you like, whether that is dipping into information about legal aid news, support from our mentoring scheme, or being at the heart of our campaigning, lobbying and organising.
We will email you about our YLAL meetings and opportunities to get involved with our work.
You will have the chance to play a crucial role in helping us achieve our objectives by helping with our campaigns and we will ask ask for your views and input for our briefings to Parliament and other public bodies, responses to government consultations and other original research. 

How do I join?

If you would like to join YLAL please complete our online form
Please note that you will NOT receive an immediate confirmation email after you register. Don’t worry; we aim to process membership applications within 10 days and you will receive a welcome email when you have been added to the YLAL mailing list. 

Not getting our emails?

YLAL is free to join and we have no ongoing membership fees in order to make it open to those on low incomes. The downside is that we do not have funds to have an unlimited address book.
The members’ email service we use says people are inactive if they are infrequently or not reading emails. If it says this about you we will assume you are not interested in membership for now and we will unsubcribe you, so we have room to add the new people who sign up. But of course we would love to see you back when you have time!
If you find you haven’t had an email for a while (and we send at least one a month), check your junk mail, and then either email us at ylalinfo@gmail.com if you want to check your membership status, or just re-subscribe via the link above.
We hope you understand this way of managing the email list is to ensure that people who do regularly read emails can continue to receive them and so we don’t have to charge all members fees.

Moved job or uni? Changed email?

Please tell us if an email address you are registered with changes (e.g. if you leave college or a place of work where you signed up). That means we can update our email system and ensure there are no duplicates. This is again to keep enough room for new members. We would also be grateful if you can only register with one email address.

Stay in touch

Remember you can also follow us on Twitter (@YLALawyers). If you ever have any questions after joining please email us on ylalinfo@gmail.com and we will get back to you as soon as possible. 

What do we do with your information? 

We will use your email address to send you emails about YLAL’s work. We will store information you provide us with when you join, including your name, current stage, your place of work / study, your postcode (so we can put you in touch with your local YLAL group), and the reason you joined YLAL. 
We will not ever share your information with a third party, unless you give us specific and express permission, in advance. If you have any queries about this email or the way we process your data, please do not hesitate to contact us: ylalinfo@gmail.com. You can also read our full privacy policy.