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The Bar & pro bono

03 November 2023 / Nick Vineall KC
Issue: 8047 / Categories: Opinion
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Nick Vineall KC explores the difference pro bono can make to the community & barristers alike

Pro Bono Week (PBW), running this year from 6 to 10 November, is an opportunity for the legal professions to highlight and celebrate the fantastic work done for the ‘public good’.  As a past chair of the Free Representation Unit (FRU), I have seen what a difference law students and young barristers can make by providing representation in tribunals. I did my first ever cross-examination while doing the law conversion course, in the Industrial Tribunal (as it then was). My client was a cleaner on the tube, who had been sacked for declining to wear a hi-vis jacket—which, he said, he was allergic to. He was reinstated. Beginner’s luck: I wish every case I had done in the intervening 35 years had had such a satisfactory outcome!

FRU has a long history. In 1972, students at Bar school decided to set up FRU having recognised both the complexity of tribunals and that those who didn’t

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MOVERS & SHAKERS

DWF—19 appointments

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Knights—Ella Dodgson & Rebecca Laffan

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NEWS
In this week's NLJ, Steven Ball of Red Lion Chambers unpacks how advances in forensic science finally unmasked Ryland Headley, jailed in 2025 for the 1967 rape and murder of 75-year-old Louisa Dunne. Preserved swabs and palm prints lay dormant for decades until DNA-17 profiling produced a billion-to-one match
Charlie Mercer and Astrid Gillam of Stewarts crunch the numbers on civil fraud claims in the English courts, in this week's NLJ. New data shows civil fraud claims rising steadily since 2014, with the King’s Bench Division overtaking the Commercial Court as the forum of choice for lower-value disputes
Bea Rossetto of the National Pro Bono Centre makes the case for ‘General Practice Pro Bono’—using core legal skills to deliver life-changing support, without the need for niche expertise—in this week's NLJ
Charles Pigott of Mills & Reeve reports on Haynes v Thomson, the first judicial application of the Supreme Court’s For Women Scotland ruling in a discrimination claim, in this week's NLJ
The Supreme Court issued a landmark judgment in July that overturned the convictions of Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, once poster boys of the Libor and Euribor scandal. In NLJ this week, Neil Swift of Peters & Peters considers what the ruling means for financial law enforcement
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