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In the first part of a series celebrating the 2025 Bar Pro Bono Award winners, Advocate introduces Iona Gallagher, Edward Fitzgerald KC, Adam Wagner KC and Da’aro Youth Project
The 2025 Bar Pro Bono Awards took place at Lincoln’s Inn on 6 May.
This year we received over 60 nominations across the different categories, paying tribute to all the extraordinary pro bono work happening across the Bar – from pupils to KCs through to chambers and cross-Bar initiatives.
Opening the ceremony, Advocate Chair Sharif A Shivji KC said: ‘Without the Bar’s commitment, the practical delivery of justice in this country would be severely diminished… Over the past year, barristers and clerks across the country have stepped up to offer their skills and support wherever the interests of justice have demanded it.’
Our many congratulations to this year’s winners for their outstanding work, and thank you to all this year’s nominees for their commitment to ensuring access to justice.
My practice focuses on children work in private and public family law proceedings. I have represented local authorities, parents and children. I signed up to Advocate in my second six. My first piece of pro bono work was providing advice to a parent on contact arrangements. I have continued to take on other cases with Advocate since then: the biggest case I worked on was a non-accidental injury (NAI) case in which I represented an intervenor.
I do pro bono work because I don’t believe access to justice should be dependent on someone’s financial circumstances. I feel very fortunate to be able to do this job and be in a position where a few hours of my time can assist people going through court. Significant and continued cuts to legal aid have, in my view, actually cost the state more in the long run: private law cases are litigated unnecessarily due to lack of legal advice and hearings are listed for longer due to unrepresented parties requiring more time. This takes up judicial time, causing entirely avoidable delay to the children at the centre of family proceedings.
To manage this work alongside my practice, I plan it like I would with any other case. I start by looking at the Advocate case list and request the papers for cases I think I could assist with. Once I have the papers, I will either accept or refuse the case. Sometimes I get papers and think that the work will take more time than I have available, and refuse the case. Based on the family cases I’ve done, some of the cases required 30 minutes’ preparation time and a 15-minute advice call. Some cases are for remote advice only that can be delivered by phone/video. I would recommend that anyone who is concerned about the time commitment should sign up and request case papers. You’re then free to only take the case if you decide that you have the time to do so.
The best part about pro bono work is the opportunity to challenge myself to do more complex cases. For example, the NAI case is not something I would ordinarily be working on at this early stage of my career. However, I did have two years’ experience prior to pupillage working at a law firm where I did a lot of work on different NAI cases. I also spoke with a senior colleague about the case. She encouraged me to take it and offered her support in the background. As part of my work on this case, I considered medical evidence, questions to experts, statements and an overall case analysis. It was a challenging but rewarding experience: I was able to secure the best outcome for my client working with very senior barristers on the opposing sides.
In addition to my pro bono work, I also run an annual Women in Law Day in partnership with The Girls’ Network, a charity that supports girls from underrepresented backgrounds. The day brings together girls and women in the legal profession with the hope of encouraging girls to pursue a career in law. I am passionate about improving social mobility and diversity within the legal profession.
I am delighted to have won this award, particularly considering the impressive profiles of all the other short-listed winners. I’m very grateful that New Court Chambers are such a supportive chambers and are so encouraging of pro bono work. I will continue to make pro bono work part of my practice, and I look forward to doing more cases with Advocate over the years to come.
I have always been prepared to work pro bono for clients on death row. This all started back in the 1980s with the London firm Simons Muirhead & Burton LLP and the Death Penalty Project, though I have worked with many other firms also on death penalty cases from the Caribbean.
As much as 30 years of my time have been spent working on pro bono cases in the Caribbean and elsewhere. More recently I have been involved in cases in Africa and Singapore.
I have learnt a lot from working with lawyers in Belize, Trinidad, Bahamas and the Eastern Caribbean on death penalty cases and re-sentencing of lifers. There is a spirit of friendly cooperation, engagement, learning and mutual support which is unique in these types of cases. It seems to bring out the best in us as English lawyers. I have been able to work with English lawyers like Geoffrey Robertson KC, Louis Blom-Cooper KC, Ian Winter KC, Tim Owen KC, Ben Cooper KC, and more recently many brilliant juniors including Ruth Brander, Alison Seaman, Amanda Clift-Matthews, Pippa Woodrow and Daniella Waddoup. It has also been an opportunity to work with lawyers from the Caribbean, such as Simeon Sampson SC, Douglas Mendes SC, Godfrey Smith SC, Eamon Courtenay SC, Iliana Swift and Priscilla Banner, as well as leading lawyers from Australia, Singapore and Uganda. Almost all of our clients were spared the death penalty and many of them have since won their freedom and are living new lives.
Over the years, I also gave advice pro bono in many prisoner cases after starting with Liberty in the old days answering prisoners’ letters. That launched me on the path of prisoners’ rights litigation and particularly cases fighting for the rights of lifers. Again, there was a great spirit of comradely endeavour in that field. And I have learnt over the years from working with colleagues such as Tim Owen KC, Simon Creighton, Laura Janes and Pippa Woodrow.
I have also enjoyed working with Advocate on criminal appeal cases and other civil cases. My advice to any young lawyer would be that it is often the pro bono cases that are the most fulfilling, exciting and challenging. It is often the prisoners, mental health patients and those who have reached the end of the line seeking to challenge their original convictions that provide the most interesting and rewarding challenges.
I feel grateful for this award, which I feel is more for my work over the years than for any particular achievement in the recent past.
On 7 October 2023, 240 hostages were captured by the terrorist group Hamas from Israel. A few days later, Adam Rose, a solicitor at Mishcon de Reya and I set up a pro bono scheme to provide support to British relatives of hostages and British hostages.
We have represented seven families of British-linked hostages, including the two British citizen hostages, providing them with free legal advice and advocating for their cause to Ministers and others internationally. This work has impacted on ten hostages. It has led directly to the families benefitting from the set-up of a novel Foreign Office scheme to protect the interests of the hostages, now seen internationally as a model of hostage family support. After applying legal pressure to the government, Lord Cameron established the scheme, treating those closely connected to the UK in exactly the same way as British citizens. Labour agreed to continue the programme following further advocacy.
The legal team has facilitated regular meetings with key political figures, including Rishi Sunak, Sir Keir Starmer, Lord David Cameron and David Lammy. Through the team’s advocacy, the families met with Qatari negotiators in London and Doha, and senior US officials in London, ensuring they felt engaged and informed. We have given evidence to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, the APPG on Hostages and Arbitrary Detention, and arranged for the families to make submissions to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture’s inquiry into hostage-taking.
The key motivation was to be a voice for the voiceless – the hostages who have been confined to tunnels deep underground by a terrorist organisation, prevented from any contact with the outside world, tortured and starved. And, obviously, to try and effect their release. The work has been extremely rewarding and has more than lived up to my expectations.
On the evening of 19 October 2023, Stella Creasy, MP for Walthamstow, called me to ask whether I could assist, on a pro bono basis, one of her constituents whose elderly parents had been taken hostage from Kibbutz Nir Oz on 7 October. Stella had worked with some of my chambers colleagues on cases involving detention abroad. I said ‘I will see what I can do’, and started work from then. I had no hesitation in agreeing to act pro bono. I try to be careful with the pro bono work I agree to do, as I have to balance it with paid work. However, sometimes the work chooses me, as is the case here.
The most rewarding moment was accompanying Eli Sharabi, a released hostage whose family we had represented for over 18 months, and whose British wife and daughters were murdered on 7 October 2023, to meet Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer at 10 Downing Street on 7 March 2025. We had visited Downing Street more than once with the hostage families, and had promised to return with Eli, and we did. We continue to act for the family of Avinatan Or, who remains a hostage and is thought to be alive. Our client is his British mother, Ditza.
We have also attempted – and in some cases succeeded – to push the boundaries of the legal responsibilities of the UK towards hostages in other countries. We have also advocated for an expanded definition of who is a ‘victim’ of hostage-taking, to incorporate the family members too. This was accepted by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and we are working on other avenues to have this accepted in UK domestic law.
To someone who was thinking of taking on some pro bono work, I would say just do it! If you do a good job, you will be rewarded in other ways than financial, and you will never regret it. It was a very special moment to win the award. I did not do this work for recognition, but it has not been easy particularly in the highly charged political climate around the Israel-Gaza war, so it was gratifying to be recognised by my peers.
Da’aro Youth Project is a grassroots community-led charity supporting young, unaccompanied asylum-seeking and refugee youth from the Horn of Africa, aged 14-25. Our core mission is to ensure that these young people, many of whom arrive in the UK traumatised and alone, are not lost within a complex and often hostile asylum system. We offer youth clubs, activities, mentoring and casework services. Our holistic care spans legal support, housing, education, language learning, physical and mental health – all interconnected strands of care necessary for a young person to rebuild their life with safety, dignity, and hope.
The motivation to begin this work came from direct community need, where the Eritrean community was galvanised to volunteer and organise community initiatives upon hearing the devastating news of Eritrean teenagers dying by suicide in the UK. Through witnessing first-hand the structural gaps facing young asylum-seeking youth, often contending with homelessness, facing systemic barriers in education and health, all while navigating the asylum process alone, the community started to set up a wraparound model of care to support these young people. While legal representation was critical, it became clear that legal advocacy alone was not enough without a holistic approach rooted in care and compassion. Registering as a charity in 2018 allowed our organisation to implement systems, structures and departments that have streamlined over time to sustainably support as many young people as possible through our walk-in service.
Winning the Pro Bono and Social Responsibility Initiative of the Year Award from Advocate was a huge honour – not just for our organisation, but for the young people we work with and the community of legal professionals who volunteer their time, labour, and care. The Bar’s support has real-world impact, as when lawyers step up to offer pro bono assistance, it can be the difference between safety and destitution.
There have been challenging moments, particularly when systems feel immovable, and where the hostile environment intensifies, for example through the abhorrent racist attacks of Summer 2024 that place communities seeking safety in even more isolation and fear. But there is also immense fulfilment that comes with witnessing a transformation: when a young person begins to understand their rights, secures status, and starts accessing education or employment, there’s a palpable shift in their confidence and self-belief.
Volunteers form the backbone of what we do, and it is how our organisation originated. The tireless legal work that barristers and solicitors do help our young people feel seen and protected within a system that can otherwise feel overwhelming. Balancing this work with other commitments is never easy, for anyone involved. But the energy, enthusiasm and resolve of our volunteers keeps the momentum going, and our services running. Each case and each individual teaches us something new: about the resilience of young people, about the gaps in policy, and about the crucial importance of legal support as a lifeline to those in need.
To anyone considering volunteering, especially within grassroots, community-led initiatives and charities: your time and expertise can change lives. Our advice: approach it with humility, be prepared to learn as much as you give, and to not underestimate your impact. In today’s climate, where hostility towards migrants is growing and legal aid is under strain, volunteering isn’t just important; it’s essential. It’s an act of solidarity, and a way to uphold justice where systems are failing.
This award reflects the power of collaboration, between grassroots organisations and legal professionals, and reminds us that even in the face of growing challenges, meaningful change is possible when we work together.
Part 2 of this series will appear in the September issue of Counsel. See the full list of winners here, and read about all the shortlisted nominees here.
Advocate would like to give a special thank you to LexisNexis for being the Bar Pro Bono Awards headline sponsor, making the event possible for another year, to Instant on IT for sponsoring the drinks reception and to Lincoln’s Inn for generously hosting the event.
Find out more about Advocate and what we do here: www.weareadvocate.org.uk
The 2025 Bar Pro Bono Awards took place at Lincoln’s Inn on 6 May.
This year we received over 60 nominations across the different categories, paying tribute to all the extraordinary pro bono work happening across the Bar – from pupils to KCs through to chambers and cross-Bar initiatives.
Opening the ceremony, Advocate Chair Sharif A Shivji KC said: ‘Without the Bar’s commitment, the practical delivery of justice in this country would be severely diminished… Over the past year, barristers and clerks across the country have stepped up to offer their skills and support wherever the interests of justice have demanded it.’
Our many congratulations to this year’s winners for their outstanding work, and thank you to all this year’s nominees for their commitment to ensuring access to justice.
My practice focuses on children work in private and public family law proceedings. I have represented local authorities, parents and children. I signed up to Advocate in my second six. My first piece of pro bono work was providing advice to a parent on contact arrangements. I have continued to take on other cases with Advocate since then: the biggest case I worked on was a non-accidental injury (NAI) case in which I represented an intervenor.
I do pro bono work because I don’t believe access to justice should be dependent on someone’s financial circumstances. I feel very fortunate to be able to do this job and be in a position where a few hours of my time can assist people going through court. Significant and continued cuts to legal aid have, in my view, actually cost the state more in the long run: private law cases are litigated unnecessarily due to lack of legal advice and hearings are listed for longer due to unrepresented parties requiring more time. This takes up judicial time, causing entirely avoidable delay to the children at the centre of family proceedings.
To manage this work alongside my practice, I plan it like I would with any other case. I start by looking at the Advocate case list and request the papers for cases I think I could assist with. Once I have the papers, I will either accept or refuse the case. Sometimes I get papers and think that the work will take more time than I have available, and refuse the case. Based on the family cases I’ve done, some of the cases required 30 minutes’ preparation time and a 15-minute advice call. Some cases are for remote advice only that can be delivered by phone/video. I would recommend that anyone who is concerned about the time commitment should sign up and request case papers. You’re then free to only take the case if you decide that you have the time to do so.
The best part about pro bono work is the opportunity to challenge myself to do more complex cases. For example, the NAI case is not something I would ordinarily be working on at this early stage of my career. However, I did have two years’ experience prior to pupillage working at a law firm where I did a lot of work on different NAI cases. I also spoke with a senior colleague about the case. She encouraged me to take it and offered her support in the background. As part of my work on this case, I considered medical evidence, questions to experts, statements and an overall case analysis. It was a challenging but rewarding experience: I was able to secure the best outcome for my client working with very senior barristers on the opposing sides.
In addition to my pro bono work, I also run an annual Women in Law Day in partnership with The Girls’ Network, a charity that supports girls from underrepresented backgrounds. The day brings together girls and women in the legal profession with the hope of encouraging girls to pursue a career in law. I am passionate about improving social mobility and diversity within the legal profession.
I am delighted to have won this award, particularly considering the impressive profiles of all the other short-listed winners. I’m very grateful that New Court Chambers are such a supportive chambers and are so encouraging of pro bono work. I will continue to make pro bono work part of my practice, and I look forward to doing more cases with Advocate over the years to come.
I have always been prepared to work pro bono for clients on death row. This all started back in the 1980s with the London firm Simons Muirhead & Burton LLP and the Death Penalty Project, though I have worked with many other firms also on death penalty cases from the Caribbean.
As much as 30 years of my time have been spent working on pro bono cases in the Caribbean and elsewhere. More recently I have been involved in cases in Africa and Singapore.
I have learnt a lot from working with lawyers in Belize, Trinidad, Bahamas and the Eastern Caribbean on death penalty cases and re-sentencing of lifers. There is a spirit of friendly cooperation, engagement, learning and mutual support which is unique in these types of cases. It seems to bring out the best in us as English lawyers. I have been able to work with English lawyers like Geoffrey Robertson KC, Louis Blom-Cooper KC, Ian Winter KC, Tim Owen KC, Ben Cooper KC, and more recently many brilliant juniors including Ruth Brander, Alison Seaman, Amanda Clift-Matthews, Pippa Woodrow and Daniella Waddoup. It has also been an opportunity to work with lawyers from the Caribbean, such as Simeon Sampson SC, Douglas Mendes SC, Godfrey Smith SC, Eamon Courtenay SC, Iliana Swift and Priscilla Banner, as well as leading lawyers from Australia, Singapore and Uganda. Almost all of our clients were spared the death penalty and many of them have since won their freedom and are living new lives.
Over the years, I also gave advice pro bono in many prisoner cases after starting with Liberty in the old days answering prisoners’ letters. That launched me on the path of prisoners’ rights litigation and particularly cases fighting for the rights of lifers. Again, there was a great spirit of comradely endeavour in that field. And I have learnt over the years from working with colleagues such as Tim Owen KC, Simon Creighton, Laura Janes and Pippa Woodrow.
I have also enjoyed working with Advocate on criminal appeal cases and other civil cases. My advice to any young lawyer would be that it is often the pro bono cases that are the most fulfilling, exciting and challenging. It is often the prisoners, mental health patients and those who have reached the end of the line seeking to challenge their original convictions that provide the most interesting and rewarding challenges.
I feel grateful for this award, which I feel is more for my work over the years than for any particular achievement in the recent past.
On 7 October 2023, 240 hostages were captured by the terrorist group Hamas from Israel. A few days later, Adam Rose, a solicitor at Mishcon de Reya and I set up a pro bono scheme to provide support to British relatives of hostages and British hostages.
We have represented seven families of British-linked hostages, including the two British citizen hostages, providing them with free legal advice and advocating for their cause to Ministers and others internationally. This work has impacted on ten hostages. It has led directly to the families benefitting from the set-up of a novel Foreign Office scheme to protect the interests of the hostages, now seen internationally as a model of hostage family support. After applying legal pressure to the government, Lord Cameron established the scheme, treating those closely connected to the UK in exactly the same way as British citizens. Labour agreed to continue the programme following further advocacy.
The legal team has facilitated regular meetings with key political figures, including Rishi Sunak, Sir Keir Starmer, Lord David Cameron and David Lammy. Through the team’s advocacy, the families met with Qatari negotiators in London and Doha, and senior US officials in London, ensuring they felt engaged and informed. We have given evidence to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, the APPG on Hostages and Arbitrary Detention, and arranged for the families to make submissions to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture’s inquiry into hostage-taking.
The key motivation was to be a voice for the voiceless – the hostages who have been confined to tunnels deep underground by a terrorist organisation, prevented from any contact with the outside world, tortured and starved. And, obviously, to try and effect their release. The work has been extremely rewarding and has more than lived up to my expectations.
On the evening of 19 October 2023, Stella Creasy, MP for Walthamstow, called me to ask whether I could assist, on a pro bono basis, one of her constituents whose elderly parents had been taken hostage from Kibbutz Nir Oz on 7 October. Stella had worked with some of my chambers colleagues on cases involving detention abroad. I said ‘I will see what I can do’, and started work from then. I had no hesitation in agreeing to act pro bono. I try to be careful with the pro bono work I agree to do, as I have to balance it with paid work. However, sometimes the work chooses me, as is the case here.
The most rewarding moment was accompanying Eli Sharabi, a released hostage whose family we had represented for over 18 months, and whose British wife and daughters were murdered on 7 October 2023, to meet Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer at 10 Downing Street on 7 March 2025. We had visited Downing Street more than once with the hostage families, and had promised to return with Eli, and we did. We continue to act for the family of Avinatan Or, who remains a hostage and is thought to be alive. Our client is his British mother, Ditza.
We have also attempted – and in some cases succeeded – to push the boundaries of the legal responsibilities of the UK towards hostages in other countries. We have also advocated for an expanded definition of who is a ‘victim’ of hostage-taking, to incorporate the family members too. This was accepted by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and we are working on other avenues to have this accepted in UK domestic law.
To someone who was thinking of taking on some pro bono work, I would say just do it! If you do a good job, you will be rewarded in other ways than financial, and you will never regret it. It was a very special moment to win the award. I did not do this work for recognition, but it has not been easy particularly in the highly charged political climate around the Israel-Gaza war, so it was gratifying to be recognised by my peers.
Da’aro Youth Project is a grassroots community-led charity supporting young, unaccompanied asylum-seeking and refugee youth from the Horn of Africa, aged 14-25. Our core mission is to ensure that these young people, many of whom arrive in the UK traumatised and alone, are not lost within a complex and often hostile asylum system. We offer youth clubs, activities, mentoring and casework services. Our holistic care spans legal support, housing, education, language learning, physical and mental health – all interconnected strands of care necessary for a young person to rebuild their life with safety, dignity, and hope.
The motivation to begin this work came from direct community need, where the Eritrean community was galvanised to volunteer and organise community initiatives upon hearing the devastating news of Eritrean teenagers dying by suicide in the UK. Through witnessing first-hand the structural gaps facing young asylum-seeking youth, often contending with homelessness, facing systemic barriers in education and health, all while navigating the asylum process alone, the community started to set up a wraparound model of care to support these young people. While legal representation was critical, it became clear that legal advocacy alone was not enough without a holistic approach rooted in care and compassion. Registering as a charity in 2018 allowed our organisation to implement systems, structures and departments that have streamlined over time to sustainably support as many young people as possible through our walk-in service.
Winning the Pro Bono and Social Responsibility Initiative of the Year Award from Advocate was a huge honour – not just for our organisation, but for the young people we work with and the community of legal professionals who volunteer their time, labour, and care. The Bar’s support has real-world impact, as when lawyers step up to offer pro bono assistance, it can be the difference between safety and destitution.
There have been challenging moments, particularly when systems feel immovable, and where the hostile environment intensifies, for example through the abhorrent racist attacks of Summer 2024 that place communities seeking safety in even more isolation and fear. But there is also immense fulfilment that comes with witnessing a transformation: when a young person begins to understand their rights, secures status, and starts accessing education or employment, there’s a palpable shift in their confidence and self-belief.
Volunteers form the backbone of what we do, and it is how our organisation originated. The tireless legal work that barristers and solicitors do help our young people feel seen and protected within a system that can otherwise feel overwhelming. Balancing this work with other commitments is never easy, for anyone involved. But the energy, enthusiasm and resolve of our volunteers keeps the momentum going, and our services running. Each case and each individual teaches us something new: about the resilience of young people, about the gaps in policy, and about the crucial importance of legal support as a lifeline to those in need.
To anyone considering volunteering, especially within grassroots, community-led initiatives and charities: your time and expertise can change lives. Our advice: approach it with humility, be prepared to learn as much as you give, and to not underestimate your impact. In today’s climate, where hostility towards migrants is growing and legal aid is under strain, volunteering isn’t just important; it’s essential. It’s an act of solidarity, and a way to uphold justice where systems are failing.
This award reflects the power of collaboration, between grassroots organisations and legal professionals, and reminds us that even in the face of growing challenges, meaningful change is possible when we work together.
Part 2 of this series will appear in the September issue of Counsel. See the full list of winners here, and read about all the shortlisted nominees here.
Advocate would like to give a special thank you to LexisNexis for being the Bar Pro Bono Awards headline sponsor, making the event possible for another year, to Instant on IT for sponsoring the drinks reception and to Lincoln’s Inn for generously hosting the event.
Find out more about Advocate and what we do here: www.weareadvocate.org.uk
In the first part of a series celebrating the 2025 Bar Pro Bono Award winners, Advocate introduces Iona Gallagher, Edward Fitzgerald KC, Adam Wagner KC and Da’aro Youth Project
Chair of the Bar sets out a busy calendar for the rest of the year
AlphaBiolabs has announced its latest Giving Back donation to RAY Ceredigion, a grassroots West Wales charity that provides play, learning and community opportunities for families across Ceredigion County
Rachel Davenport, Co-founder and Director at AlphaBiolabs, outlines why barristers, solicitors, judges, social workers and local authorities across the UK trust AlphaBiolabs for court-admissible testing
A £500 donation from AlphaBiolabs is helping to support women and children affected by domestic abuse, thanks to the company’s unique charity initiative that empowers legal professionals to give back to community causes
Casey Randall of AlphaBiolabs discusses the benefits of Non-Invasive Prenatal Paternity testing for the Family Court
Philip N Bristow explains how to unlock your aged debt to fund your tax in one easy step
Come in with your eyes open, but don’t let fear cloud the prospect. A view from practice by John Dove
Timothy James Dutton CBE KC was known across the profession as an outstanding advocate, a dedicated public servant and a man of the utmost integrity. He was also a loyal and loving friend to many of us
Lana Murphy and Francesca Perera started their careers at the Crown Prosecution Service before joining chambers. They discuss why they made the move and the practicalities of setting up self-employed practice as qualified juniors
As threats and attacks against lawyers continue to rise, a new international treaty offers a much-needed safeguard. Sarah Kavanagh reports on the landmark convention defending the independence of lawyers and rule of law
Author: Charlotte Proudman Reviewer: Stephanie Hayward
