Legal industry workers across England, Scotland and Wales will take to the streets throughout the summer, starting Monday, to raise money for specialized legal aid charities working to meet a skyrocketing need brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Over 400 teams, made up of attorneys from law firms big and small, in-house legal teams and barristers' chambers, as well as workers in local judiciaries and members of the public, have signed up for their local Legal Walks, a series of 5K and 10K walks organized by the London Legal Support Trust and the Access to Justice Foundation.

"The more money we raise, the more money can go to grantees and the more people they can help," Laura Cassidy, Access to Justice Foundation development director, told Law360. "It's a way to support access to justice for those who can't afford it."

Started in 2005 by London Legal Support Trust's fundraising chief Bob Nightingale, the walks are coordinated in greater London and southeastern England by LLST and in the rest of England, Scotland and Wales by the ATJF.


In 2020, 130 local pro bono legal services providers across the U.K., specializing in discrimination, labor, immigration, housing and other areas of the law, were at risk of closing due to the pandemic, an analysis by the ATJF found.

At the same time, agencies were seeing demand for their services reach new heights, with some reporting caseloads had doubled. Over 46,000 people were homeless in the U.K. and almost as many were at risk of losing their home, with some landlords evicting tenants despite a moratorium, the Guardian reported in November.

Housing is just one problem people may face, and many clients experience multiple interconnected struggles that require legal advice from multiple specialists, Cassidy pointed out.

"Clients will go into these agencies and they don't have just one legal problem," Cassidy told Law360. For example, someone who needs support dealing with domestic violence may also be having housing instability or need help preventing the abuser from getting custody of their children.


Last year's Legal Walks were canceled because of the pandemic, but the ATJF raised £11.5 million in emergency funds which it distributed among almost 200 pro bono legal services providers throughout the U.K., including the Islington Law Centre, Refugee Action and the Children's Law Centre of Northern Ireland. LLST paid out over £800,000 in grants to legal advice agencies in London and southeastern England in the same year.

The Legal Walks will return this summer and fall, with social distancing measures in effect to comply with current COVID regulations. Teams will be limited to six people, and participants are encouraged to follow routes of their own creation to avoid crowding.

Walks will be held in June in Preston, Derby, Doncaster, Northampton, Sheffield, Brighton, Eastbourne, Tunbridge Wells, Hastings, York and Guildford. More will follow in July in Southampton, Oxford, Reading, Bedford, Leeds and Chichester. The event in Leeds will be virtual. In the fall, more walks will take place throughout Scotland and Wales, as well as big English cities such as London, Manchester and Birmingham.

Funds raised from walks in each city go to legal advice agencies in their respective local areas.

"We have been really encouraged by the support so far for all of our walks and we hope to keep building on that enthusiasm," Nightingale said in a statement. "We talk to free legal advice agencies on a daily basis, and there is still not enough funding available to help even those in greatest need. The Legal Walks are a fantastic way to help raise desperately needed funds."

--Editing by Brian Baresch.

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