Government cuts to legal aid means social welfare lawyers are a dying breed. So where will the next generation come from? Step up the Justice First FellowshipAfter two law degrees,several years of fixed-term jobs, volunteering roles and the birth of her first child, and Fanny Forest was working in a students union and had given up on finding a trainee law contract. “My teachers at university told me that going into legal aid work is career suicide at the moment. There is no money left. But I didn’t want to compromise and work in the corporate sector,” she says.
Forest had long wanted to pursue a career in social welfare law. In some countries it is referred to as poverty law because it covers legal areas such as welfare benefits, housing, and debt,community care and employment. Forest prefers to picture it as “the law of everyday life.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com