The aim of this post is to give you an insight into Advocate, the bars national charity. It will also explain how and why you should get involved.
What is Advocate?
Advocate is the bars national charity. It is the only Pro Bono charity to offer free legal assistance in all areas of law, across all courts and tribunals in England and Wales.
Advocate was founded as the Bar Pro Bono Unit in 1996. Peter Goldsmith QC founded the charity having recognised the importance of free legal assistance being accessible to everyone, especially those who could not afford to pay for representation themselves.
The Bar Pro Bono Unit started with only 350 volunteer barristers, rocketing to 2,000 barristers by 2019. Today, Advocate works with over 4,000 brilliant, volunteer barristers.
Pre-Covid, applicants would usually be referred to Advocate through another legal service, for example Citizens Advice. Due to various coronavirus restrictions, Advocate’s application process no longer requires a referral. Additionally, the process, for the most part, has moved online. This means that Advocate is now more accessible than it ever has been before.
This is a huge positive for the access to justice. However, it does mean that the number of applications which Advocate has received since the pandemic has significantly increased.
In turn, the charity is currently tackling increased workloads. This means that there really is no better time to get involved with Advocate.
How can you get involved?
Whilst Advocate does offer full-time, paid roles (which they are currently advertising for), the best way to get involved with the charity is to volunteer as part of the casework team.
As a casework volunteer, you work at the pre-review stage. This means that you are the first person to take a look at an application and decide whether it is ready to be reviewed by a barrister, requires additional information, or has to be rejected. Applications are rejected if they do not meet the eligibility criteria, or their deadline(s) are less than three weeks away.
Upon taking a look at these applications, you will be required to look at the documents which an applicant has sent to the charity and create an organised, electronic bundle. Additionally, you will be required to write a succinct and accurate case summary from the applicant’s application form and the documents which they have provided.
Once these tasks have been completed, the application can be sent to a barrister who will review the case and decide whether the case is suitable for help from one of Advocate’s volunteer barristers. This will include, but is not limited to, an assessment of the merits of the case.
Advocate recruit’s casework volunteers three times a year:
1. Academic Year 1: one day a week from October – February. Recruitment opens in August.
2. Academic Year 2: one day a week from February – June. Recruitment opens in November.
3. Summer Volunteering: four days a week for one month in either June, July, August, or September. Recruitment opens in April.
If you are interested, I strongly recommend keeping an eye on the website during the recruitment times highlighted above. The application process is pretty straight forward from there.
Many volunteers are law students, but it is not a pre-requisite for volunteering with Advocate!
Why should you get involved?
As mentioned above, due to the increased workload at Advocate, there really is no better time to get involved. There are so many people seeking the charities help at the moment. It is therefore extremely rewarding as a casework volunteer to know that with every case you send to review, one more person is a step closer to finding the legal help they desperately deserve.
Additionally, in my view, it is a great way to be involved in Pro Bono work at an early stage in your legal journey. I for one will certainly be taking Pro Bono cases throughout my career and it has been so amazing to be able to get involved now and consequently have a greater understanding of Pro Bono assistance.
Also, you will gain a greater understanding of procedure in various areas of law including family, crime, employment, landlord and tenant, wills and probate. The “real life” legal knowledge that you can gain from volunteering with Advocate is invaluable.
Lastly, there are so many transferrable skills to be taken from volunteering as a caseworker. I am not going to bore you with those. However, it has most definitely given me the confidence and the skills to attain other legal roles, for example, working as a paralegal.
I strongly recommend getting involved, especially if you are an aspiring barrister. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time volunteering with Advocate and will forever be in awe of the hard work displayed by each volunteer, the volunteer barristers, and every member of the Advocate team.
Until next time,
The Woman on a Mission
Comments