Trustee

The London Legal Support Trust works to support law centres and legal advice agencies in London and the South East by providing them with grant funding and practical support. The organisations we support include Law Centres, Citizens Advice, and other legal advice agencies. These organisations help families facing homelessness, older people requiring community care, trafficked adults and children and women fleeing domestic violence, people with disabilities, refugees, people who are facing unemployment, discrimination and those with mental health problems.

LLST has four core strands of work in support of free legal advice services in London and the South East:

• Raising funds to distribute as grants
• Working collaboratively with others to raise funds for the free legal advice sector and work towards responding issues that affect the advice sector,
• Supporting the free legal advice providers through funder plus programmes, including the Centres of Excellence programme, the billing project, specialist advice forum,
• Helping to reduce costs and save money through pro bono or discounted schemes
• We do this by holding large fundraising events, most notably the London Legal Walk, and then delivering the funds raised to the agencies where they are most needed through grant rounds. We offer our knowledge and experience of the sector to help the agencies to become more sustainable and help to partner them with law firms and chambers who want to help them ensure that the law is fair. 

Our funding has never been more vital. Many vulnerable people cannot afford to pay for advice or enforce their rights. The legal advice agencies we support provide life-changing free legal advice to people who face issues such as housing, debt, domestic violence, immigration and benefits. Our advice sector funding and support enables these people to access the help they so desperately need.

Trustees play a key role in supporting the charity to achieve its aims and objectives through a professional staff team.

We are seeking to appoint four more trustees with a vision, energy and passion for access to justice. We welcome applications from people who share our passion and values, and we would particularly like to hear from applicants with the following experience:

• Fundraising and communications, particularly with individual and major donors' fundraising expertise
• Financial management
• Legal advice sector experience
• Corporate law firms' expertise – senior partners at law firms/barristers
• Judiciary

Having a board that reflects the diversity of the communities that our grants support is also important to us. So, we are particularly encouraging people from a range of backgrounds and experiences to apply. We particularly welcome applicants from Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic (BAME) and / or LGBTQ backgrounds, and from different socio-economic, age and educational backgrounds.

Closing date for the applications: Tuesday, 17th December 2024.

Initial interviews with shortlisted candidates: w/c 06th January 2025.