A brief timeline history of our first few years:

2017:  EGLAC is launched as a new LawWorks affiliated legal advice clinic in National pro bono week 2017.  We hold our first face to face session in November.

2018:  Our first full year of operations.  We are advising in family, welfare benefits, immigration and civil litigation matters.  We end the year with the London Faith and Belief Forum award for Improving Access to services in our community. In addition, we were shortlisted for the LawWorks Best new pro bono activity.

2019:  We continue to expand our areas of advice to include employment, housing, property and community care.  We advise over 120 clients using the skills of 10 solicitors across our clinic sessions.

2020:  The pandemic leads us to move our advice largely on line through email, telephone or zoom meetings. We begin to offer Wills and probate advice.

2021:  We are developing a hybrid model of advice through both in person clinic sessions and online/remote advice to clients.  We are seeing an increasing number of students wanting to volunteer at the clinic.  We are using pro bono barristers to assist particularly in family and civil litigation work.

2022:  We plan to make EGLAC sustainable for the future by establishing ourselves as a Charitable body and to recruit a Clinic Director.

2023: We now have a Clinic Director managing our operations and supporting our volunteers. We are recruiting new volunteers to meet the increasing demand in requests for help with a wide variety of legal issues.

2024: We are now signatory members of the Law Society’s Pro Bono Charter and have received funding from Royal Borough of Greenwich and the National Lottery Community Fund. We are able to offer an additional virtual clinic once a month, with advice being given on a range of legal areas by volunteers from Birketts.

‘I just wanted to drop you a note to let you know how much I appreciated your call last week.’

– welfare benefits client