Like many other organisations, YLAL members have mixed feelings about the government’s announcement of a Review of Civil Legal Aid (RoCLA) earlier this year. If the review is a recognition that the current system isn’t working, that’s a good thing, but people are wary of devoting significant time and resources to engaging in good faith if, like the recent reviews of criminal legal aid, it doesn’t translate into positive outcomes.

While the review will inevitably dominate our policy conversations over the coming months (and perhaps years), we are also excited to be working on other initiatives. So far this year, we have: contributed to LAG’s own 10 years of LASPO event, which took place on 27 March 2023; run a meeting dedicated to the crisis in immigration legal aid (more on that below); and heard from our members about the work they would like to see YLAL do to campaign for a more sustainable legal aid sector.

In February, YLAL brought together our members working in immigration and asylum to discuss the crisis facing that sector specifically. The crisis in immigration and asylum legal aid mirrors that facing all legal aid in many respects, but has been arguably made worse by the government’s rhetoric against migrants and the lawyers representing them.

The meeting was both a space for our members to come together and vent about their experiences working in the sector, and a forum to start thinking about ways in which we can organise to lobby for change. There was plenty of doom and gloom, but it was, above all, inspiring and hopeful to be in a room full of young practitioners who are committed to the work they are doing, despite the many challenges.

YLAL will soon be publishing a report by Public Law Project’s Dr Jo Hynes on the ‘overburdened and unsustainable’ reality of young practitioners working in immigration and asylum. We hope that this report will add to the growing chorus calling for urgent reform in this area of legal aid (as in all areas) and we aim to use it as the foundation for ongoing campaigning efforts.

Of course, it would be foolish to ignore the RoCLA – and our members’ meeting held in parliament on 14 March gave it significant airtime – but we were very keen to consider the broader policy picture too. At the meeting, we heard from a great list of speakers with fantastic experience of campaigning for legal aid reform and representing practitioners. Attendees left with a good sense of the hard work involved in collating in-depth submissions to formal consultations as well as the many other creative options available to organisations like YLAL. Any projects we do take forward will be driven by our members, so anybody who is interested – please get in touch!

We also know that the crisis in legal aid is having an impact on social mobility and diversity within the legal aid profession. In 2021, in partnership with the City of London Law Society and BARBRI, we launched the Social Welfare Solicitors Qualification Fund (SWSQF) to create a more sustainable route to qualification for young legal aid lawyers. SWSQF provides full funding for the Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE) and the BARBRI SQE prep course, and we’re delighted that the initiative has gone from strength to strength. At the end of February, we informed our second SWSQF cohort of 34 prospective young legal aid practitioners that they had been successful in receiving funding. We’re grateful to our partners for their ongoing commitment to SWSQF and hope this is the latest in a long line of cohorts to come.

In summary, at YLAL we are excited to see this year as a chance to make change. This is not only regarding the RoCLA, but multiple initiatives such as focusing on helping the immigration and asylum sector, improving social mobility via our SQE work and organising social events for our members. Ultimately, YLAL cannot do this work without our members supporting our events and getting involved with our projects. We want to both thank our members for their work so far and send a call out to all young legal aid lawyers or students who want to help improve the sector. This is a year for change and, as young lawyers, we are hopeful for the future.