Legal Aid Practitioners Group LALY awards honour access to justice lawyers
The driving force behind the Justice Alliance and the solicitor who successfully fought for a second inquest into the Hillsborough disaster, were among the winners at the 2014 Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year (LALY) awards:
At a packed central London ceremony earlier this month, Matt Foot, from leading civil liberties firm Birnberg Peirce, was named legal aid champion in recognition of his tireless campaigning against the legal aid cuts. Elkan Abrahamson, from Liverpool-based Broudie Jackson Canter, was honoured for outstanding achievement over a 30-year career, culminating in the quashing of the original inquest verdict into the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, which left 96 football fans dead.
In his acceptance speech, Abrahamson, who is acting for 19 Hillsborough families, revealed that cuts in legal aid meant that his team are reliant on free help from Liverpool University students. He said: ‘It has involved hundreds of thousands of documents, hundreds of hours of video tape, which all have to be considered in a short space of time. Despite the size of our team, we, frankly, have not been able to do this. We are still getting discovery coming in.’ He paid tribute to the students for their invaluable help on what is expected to be the longest inquest in history.
Matt Foot told the 400-strong audience that the profession could still win its battle against the legal aid cuts: ‘Where we’ve united together and stood together, we have put the government on the back foot. Where we haven’t done that, we’ve let the government in, and that’s what we need to learn the lesson on.’
Other lawyers honoured by the LALY 2014 judges included:
•Legal aid barrister: S Chelvan for working tirelessly to improve the rights of gay and transgender asylum-seekers.
•Criminal defence lawyer: Mike Schwarz for exposing the activities of undercover police officers.
•Immigration/asylum lawyer: Mark Scott for achieving a ground-breaking unlawful killing inquest verdict in the case of Jimmy Mubenga.
•Inquests/actions against state: Charlotte Haworth Hird who led the judicial review which prompted the government to set up an unprecedented inquiry into deaths of young people in custody, and also acts for the family of Connor Sparrowhawk.
•Social and welfare lawyer: Douglas Johnson, a shipyard engineer turned discrimination lawyer.
•■ For full list of winners in all 12 awards categories, see pages 15–18 of this issue.