News

Welcome to our update of the latest legal aid and access to justice news from June and July 2018.

Housing Possession Court Duty (HPCD) scheme judicial review: On 23 June, the High Court handed down the judgment in Law Centres Network v The Lord Chancellor, a challenge to the new scheme which dictates how legal aid providers tender for a housing duty scheme contract. The full judgment can be found here.

Studying and working in law can be stressful for many reasons, and working in legal aid can be even more so. Clients are often in very vulnerable situations, or may have been through very traumatic experiences, and working in legal aid can mean that you hear about these experiences on a regular basis.

YLAL believes that in order to be able to look after your clients, you must also make time to look after you!

Subscribing to blogs (as well as getting involved with YLAL!) can be a fantastic way to keep up-to-date with what's happening in the legal world, the legal aid world, interesting cases and recent developments. 

If you know of any other blogs or helpful groups, then feel free to tell us, so we can spread the word! 

Here's a selection of blogs to get you started: 

General:

PUPILLAGE APPLICATIONS

Advice for completing pupillage applications 

Make sure work experience descriptions are concrete - would anyone reading your application understand what your role entailed? If it’s relevant to the areas of law in which you would like to practise, make sure you explain exactly what work you were doing e.g. drafting applications or witness statements, preparing court bundles and what areas/issues it covered e.g. debt, domestic violence. 

Unfortunately, even entry level and low paid work in legal aid often requires prior work experience, and due to the bottlenecks in the system you may find yourself competing with candidates that have worked for a number of years.

This page summarises specific scholarships and bursaries for aspiring and junior legal aid lawyers; at the bottom of the page is also a list of essay competitions.

If you know of any other relevant scholarships and bursaries, please let us know at ylalinfo@gmail.com

COURSE FEES

Law school scholarships

Law schools offer scholarships for both undergraduate and post graduate courses (those featured here are those which include professional course scholarships):

Welcome to our update of the latest legal aid and access to justice news from May 2018.

Criminal legal aid: The criminal bar’s action in response to changes to the way in which criminal legal aid work by advocates is remunerated under the reformed Advocates' Graduated Fee Scheme (AGFS), which came into force on 1 April, dominated the legal aid news in May.

On 12 June 2018, the Criminal Bar Association (CBA) announced the result of the ballot of its members on whether to accept the government's offer of additional investment in the Advocates' Graduated Fee Scheme (AGFS) and bring an end to the action which began on 1 April 2018 when the reformed scheme came into operation. 51.55% voted to accept the government's offer.