Pro bono

The Bar Council is proud to support Pro Bono Week 2022, which is taking place between 7-11 November. 

Find out more about Pro Bono week and their events throughout the week.

The Bar Council established a dedicated committee to support policy pro bono work in 2016.  If you want to contact the committee with a policy issue related to pro bono please get in touch. 

The Bar Council's Pro Bono and Social Responsbility Committee is responsible for:

• Collecting (and communicating) information about the Bar (and individual barrister's) pro bono and social responsibility activity

• Working with partners to support pro bono and social responsibility activity (and tackle any barriers faced by barristers interested in pro bono work)

• Supporting pro bono and social responsibility charities

To achieve these objectives, the committee works closely with Advocate: The pro bono charity of the Bar.

• Barristers provide pro bono support via different routes including: Advocate (formerly the Bar Pro Bono Unit) and day schemes like CLIPS; a solicitor client; legal advice centres; and direct access. 

• 3,846 barristers are currently Advocate panel members, just shy of a quarter of the Bar.

• Help given by the Bar through Advocate alone in 2018 equated to almost 11,000 hours of assistance (with an equivalent value of almost £2.3million

Barristers' Working Lives

In August 2021, the Bar Council published the latest in the series of surveys of barristers’ working lives undertaken by the Institute for Employment Studies and Employment Research Ltd for the Bar Council, building on previous surveys carried out in 2011, 2013 and 2017. The survey was designed to explore the lived experience of working as a barrister in 2021, and asked questions about the impact of the pandemic, their views on aspects of wellbeing and work-life balance, working hours and patterns, experiences of bullying, harassment or discrimination, practice development and working practices, and Bar Council services. This included questions of issues relating to pro bono work, and a detailed breakdown can be found on pages 46 to 48. Please see a summary below.

• 43.2 per cent of respondents to BWL21 (1,440) carried out some pro bono work, a decrease of 4.8 per cent from 2017 to 2021.
• Among all barristers (those who currently do pro bono work and those who do not), the most common reason cited for not doing any/more of this work is finding the time among paid work commitments (77.3 per cent). The second most common reason is political – feeling that pro bono work subsidises the government’s lack of investment in the justice system (46.8 per cent).
• 59.7 per cent of those barristers who had done pro bono work in the last 12 months were in private practice; 30.1 per cent were predominantly publicly funded.
• There are some regional pro bono deserts particularly in the East of England, North West, Wales, and Yorkshire and the Humber.
• It does not seem that the Bar’s ability to provide pro bono legal services has been notably impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic

• Advocate (formerly the Bar Pro Bono Unit) - News Page 

• Winners of the Bar Pro Bono Awards 2021
• Winners of the Bar Pro Bono Awards 2020

LawWorks' Richard Pitkethly talks to Greg Hodder, Access to Justice Foundation about pro bono cost orders, which provide vital funding for free legal help. Listen to it here.