Pro bono week: lawyers in schools
It’s National Pro Bono Week this week, and GLD is getting more involved than ever before.
We are launching a new GLD Volunteering and Pro Bono Network, and introducing a partnership with Rule of Law Expertise UK (ROLE UK). This supplements the partnership already underway with the Citizenship Foundation’s Lawyers in Schools programme.
Under the new partnership with ROLE UK, GLD lawyers will have the opportunity to contribute pro bono to capability building initiatives in countries across Africa, Asia and the Middle East with which the Department for International Development is working to improve the rule of law.
Through the Lawyers in Schools partnership, GLD’s legal trainees deliver sessions at Pimlico Academy to increase young people’s awareness and understanding of the law. The scheme also helps the 13 to 14 year olds (Years 9 and 10) to develop listening and communication skills, raise their aspirations and increase their confidence. In turn, our trainees share their legal knowledge and further develop their own communication, confidence and leadership skills, as well as benefit from the experience of inspiring young people to think about the law, and even a potential career in the law, in different ways.
The new Volunteering and Pro Bono Network launches this week with 2 sessions for GLD lawyers. Representatives of the Waterloo and Westminster Law centres, ROLE UK and some of our own people who are already involved in pro bono activity will discuss their experiences of volunteering and pro bono work and the opportunities that are available to people of all grades within GLD.
Stephen Braviner Roman is the Director General sponsoring GLD’s pro bono activities. He commented:
I am really pleased that GLD is stepping up our formal pro bono activity, and that we have a formal Volunteering and Pro Bono Network as well as two new partnerships, with Lawyers in Schools and ROLE UK, to help us do so.
Many of us in GLD are involved in pro bono or volunteering activities in our own time, but this new network and these partnerships will demonstrate just how seriously we take our pro bono commitments as the Government Legal Department. I hope that everyone who participates in the activities this week, and in the future, finds them stimulating and rewarding.