First intake of sponsored Justice First Fellowship legal aid trainees qualify as solicitors

The first group legal aid trainees to have been sponsored through their training contracts by the Legal Education Foundation’s Justice First Fellowship have qualified as solicitors.

The Legal Education Foundation is a charity launched in 2012 to promote legal education and understanding of the law. In 2014 it created the Justice First Fellowship, which funds the salary, supervision and associated costs of training contracts at selected social welfare organisations – a vital scheme to train new talent in a sector which is being mercilessly squeezed by cuts in legal aid funding. In addition to training as solicitors, Justice First Fellows also work on a project aimed at improving access to justice, which provides excellent experience as well as the opportunity to create an income-generating work that better enables the host organisation to retain its new solicitor on qualifying. Now eight of the first intake of nine Justice Fellows have completed their training and qualified as solicitors, with four being retained as social welfare solicitors by their host organisations (including Public Law Project, Coram Children's Legal Centre and Coventry Law Centre), one moving into private practice as an employment solicitor and three still finalising their post-qualification destinations. The ninth Justice First Fellow is due to qualify in July as she is studying the LPC part time, and she too is due to be retained by her host organisation.

Matthew Smerdon, chief executive of The Legal Education Foundation, said: “I would like to congratulate all the Fellows on completing their training – and for helping us pioneer the Justice First Fellowship. It is thanks to them and their host organisations that the scheme has exceeded our expectations, and is well on track to creating the social welfare law leaders of the future.”

Congratulations too to the nine Justice First Fellows from LCN on their outstanding achievements.