A lawyer who has devoted her 28-year career to fighting for ‘the dispossessed and repossessed, the mentally ill and the poor’ has scooped the top award at this year’s Lalys.
More than 500 legal aid practitioners gathered in London this week for the Legal Aid Practitioner’s Group’s Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year (Laly) awards. Sue James, of Hammersmith & Fulham Law Centre, took home the top award for outstanding achievement. James runs two housing duty desk schemes and was the driving force behind the creation of Ealing Law Centre after the borough's main social welfare law provider collapsed in 2011.
As one colleague said of Sue: 'There can't be many people who work full time in a law centre and in their spare time set up another.' James also writes a popular column for the website Legal Voice, which brings her clients’ stories vividly to life.
These have included a woman who took her one lightbulb from room to room; and a mother penalised under the bedroom tax after her daughter died, leaving her with a 'spare room'.
The LALY judges said through her writing Sue had 'done more than many professional campaigners to spread the true story of legal aid to the unconverted or the unbothered'.
Kaweh Beheshtizadeh, of Barnes, Harrild & Dyer, a former asylum-seeker who was inspired to become an immigration lawyer by seeing how hard his own legal aid solicitor fought for him after he arrived in the UK in 2004, won the Immigration and Asylum law award. Baroness Doreen Lawrence presented the 12 awards.
The other winners were: Legal Aid Newcomer—Tom Royston, Garden Court North; Legal Aid Barrister—Philip Rule, No5 Chambers; Family Private (inc Mediation)—Mary Shaw, David Gray Solicitors; Family Public—Sheila Donn, Philcox Gray Solicitors; Social & Welfare—Stuart Luke, Bhatia Best; Public Law—Keith Lomax, Minton Morrill Solicitors; Criminal Defence—Graeme Hydari, Hodge, Jones & Allen; Children’s Rights—Solange Valdez-Symonds, Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens/Migrant Resource Centre; Legal Aid Firm/Not-for-profit Agency—Community Law Partnership; and Access to Justice through IT—Advicenow, Law for Life.
