Community and charity

We encourage our lawyers to spend a proportion of their working time on pro bono work to provide individuals and charities with legal advice where they can’t afford it. As signatories of the Pro Bono Charter, an initiative from The Law Society, our firm is committed to improving access to justice. We offer opportunities for our lawyers to participate in pro bono work through Bristol Law Centre and legal clinics at Manchester and Salford Universities, among others. We’re members of the UK Collaborative Plan for Pro Bono through which law firms collaborate with each other to improve access to justice through pro bono in the UK.

An example of our pro bono activity this year is our work with UK Finance (a UK banking and financial services sector trade association) on Project Safeguard, designed to understand the legal landscape surrounding economic abuse, and resulting in a new report ‘From Control to Financial Freedom’. Our team provided legal and regulatory support to UK Finance, helping them to explore some of the obstacles experienced by victim-survivors of domestic abuse when regaining financial control.

"TLT's donation of time and expertise has ensured Depaul UK partner agreements are clear, concise, and legally sound. We have always found TLT to be efficient and timely. Crucially, their work helped to provide safe emergency accommodation for 600 young people last year" Ian Foster, Senior Nightstop Network Manager at Depaul UK, a homelessness organisation supporting young people.

We give all colleagues up to 35 hours of paid volunteering leave each year to use for an opportunity organised by TLT or one they organise themselves. This year over 1300 hours have been spent volunteering. We have two key strategic volunteering partners who offer opportunities across the UK: Business Volunteers and Belmont Estate. In addition, our charity committees work closely with their regional Charity Partners to take up volunteering opportunities where possible, as well as organise fundraising activities to raise important funds. We have £255,000 under management with Quartet Community Fund, to support local charities and community groups.

We’re increasing access to the legal sector by connecting with young people and raising their aspirations. We support Bristol-based charity, Ablaze, who tackle inequality of opportunity for young people, by volunteering in their reading partners and mentoring schemes to improve the literacy skills of primary school children and prepare Year 9 pupils for employment. This year we’ve partnered with London charity The Switch where our colleagues support primary school pupils in Tower Hamlets with their reading comprehension, speaking and listening skills.

"The volunteers engaged extremely well with the pupils and as a result they made excellent progress with their reading. As well as improving confidence with their reading, the pupils also improved their decoding and fluency." Tori Dorse, School Coordinator, Ablaze Reading Programme