DLA takes pro bono to Midlands and Liverpool

The Birmingham scheme will launch on 5 September and the Liverpool project is set to start at the end of October.
Birmingham managing partner Chris Rawstron and Liverpool managing partner Michael Prince will run the schemes. Both offices will have partners in every department in charge of taking pro bono instructions. Fee-earners will be able to record the hours they spend on legal pro bono work, which will go towards appraisal. But it will not count towards lawyers' target hours, said DLA national pro bono coordinator Elaine Radford.
Lawyers from the scheme will first concentrate on providing pro bono legal advice to unemployed or underemployed young business people for the Prince's Trust.
Manchester pro bono coordinator Nick Scott, who is running a similar scheme, said: "There's no reason why this approach couldn't be extended to other initiatives."