New firm to back green campaigns

TWO high-profile civil rights lawyers have launched a law firm with the objective of working for free as often as possible.

EarthRights Solicitors, the brainchild of John Dunkley and ex-Leigh Day & Co solicitor Charlie Hopkins, is a public interest firm set up to help individuals, groups and green companies to use the law more effectively in their efforts to protect the environment.

Dunkley, who had previously worked for the Law Centres Federation, says: "If there is access [to the law], it's not for people wishing to protect the environment."

The new firm has been established to support the five-year-old charity EarthRights. Dunkley says it hopes to help environmental campaigners to operate more effectively and "not fall foul of the law".

Its work will range from "offering a lot of telephone advice, which is always free, through to representing people in court".