Contributors
Vicky Ling is a Chartered Quality Professional and management consultant. Vicky worked for the Legal Aid Board in the early 1990s at the inception of ‘franchising’, has experience of managing organisations with legal aid contracts and has written and lectured extensively on legal aid practice management.
Vicky is a founder member of the Law Consultancy Network, a team of highly experienced law firm management consultants and is an associate consultant at Infolegal, providing compliance and practice advice. She has advised over 200 firms of solicitors and not-for-profit organisations on all aspects of legal aid contract and quality standards.
Vicky is co-author, with Matthew Moore, of
The Solicitors Office Procedures Manual, now in its second edition:
www.solicitors-opm.co.uk.
Simon Pugh has extensive experience of legal aid practice management and contract compliance across the private practice and not for profit sectors and civil, criminal and family law. He has written and spoken widely on legal aid and related issues. He was previously head of legal practice at Shelter, the housing and homelessness charity.
Katie Brown is a partner and deputy head of housing and community care law at TV Edwards Solicitors LLP and is experienced in all areas of housing law. Katie is former co-chair of Young Legal Aid Lawyers (YLAL).
Richard Charlton is Director at Richard Charlton Solicitors and a specialist in mental health law. He was selected as the first Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year Awards (LALYs) mental health lawyer of the year and has held the posts of chair and president of the Mental Health Lawyers Association. He has previously been a senior peer reviewer in mental health for the Legal Aid Agency; and is the editor of the LAA’s ‘Improving Quality’ guide for mental health law as well as being a training consultant for the LAA regarding mental health practice. Richard is an assessor for the Law Society’s Mental Health Tribunal and Mental Capacity panels.
Anthony Edwards is a criminal law solicitor at TV Edwards LLP. He is a higher courts advocate and duty solicitor. He is a visiting professor at Queen Mary, University of London.
Anthony writes and lectures widely on criminal law. He is on the editorial boards of Criminal Law Review and Blackstones’ Criminal Practice, author of Advising a Suspect in the Police Station (Sweet & Maxwell), contributing author to Blackstone’s Criminal Practice, Magistrates Court Handbook, Police Station Handbook and Youth Court Handbook (all OUP), Criminal defence: a guide to good practice (with Roger Ede) (Law Society) and Criminal costs (LAG).
Steve Hynes is director of the Legal Action Group (LAG). Steve has written extensively and appeared in the broadcast media commenting on legal aid and access to justice issues. He is author of Austerity Justice and co-author, with Jon Robins, of The Justice Gap (both LAG). Prior to joining LAG, Steve was Director of the Law Centres Federation.
Solange Valdez-Symonds is a supervising solicitor accredited by the Law Society at Level 3 (advanced) and has worked at various law centres specialising in nationality, immigration and asylum litigation. In November 2012, Solange co-founded the Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens (PRCBC), a registered charitable company hosted by Migrants Resource Centre. PRCBC assists children with complex citizenship claims and raises awareness on children’s rights to register as British. Solange regularly trains and lectures on nationality, immigration and legal aid.