Working in legal aid

YLAL’s jobs & opps is one of our most popular pages on our website. We post jobs and opportunities for our members to view, and it gives YLALs a chance to see jobs and opportunities in legal aid or similar in one place.

For those looking for work or experience in the legal aid sector, it may also be useful to keep an eye on the following:

Legal Action Group (LAG) lists adverts in its magazine (hard copy only). 

The Legal Aid Practitioners Group also has adverts of vacancies

LawCareers.net publishes paralegal vacancies, some of which are in legal aid work. 

AllAboutLaw offers free advice and guidance to young people interested in a career in law.

 

Notes for employers:

We are often asked by employers to advertise jobs and work placement opportunities. We will post them on our job adverts & opportunities page for members to access. Employers wishing to advertise vacancies on the YLAL website should email us

Please note that YLAL will only publish advertisements for jobs which specify the salary or salary range for the vacancy on offer. This is because we believe transparency is important and job applicants should be entitled to this information prior to applying for a vacancy.

YLAL is a not-for-profit organisation with very limited funds. While we do not charge for advertising jobs, we strongly encourage employers to make a donation of £50 to YLAL. In order to do this, please click here, or contact jobs.ylal@gmail.com for more information. 

 

Living Wage

At YLAL we strongly believe that all jobs should pay the real Living Wage, as assessed by the Living Wage Foundation. 

In the legal aid sector, we work hard to protect people’s rights and liberty, and to further social justice. However, far too often, junior lawyers in the legal aid sector are not paid a fair wage. Many jobs are paid below the real Living Wage. The problem is particularly acute for those in entry-level paralegal jobs, which are only rarely paid a real Living Wage. As a result, many are left struggling to make ends meet, or experiencing in-work poverty. This is unacceptable.

In this context, many of the jobs we advertise on our website pay less than the real Living Wage. After careful consideration, we have decided to continue to include these vacancies so that our members can make informed choices about job opportunities in areas of law which have traditionally been funded by legal aid. As part of our commitment to promoting pay transparency, we only advertise jobs that specify a salary or salary range. Meanwhile, we will continue to campaign for fair pay and conditions across the sector, and implore firms and organisations to commit to paying all of their employees the real Living Wage.