Going to the territory - taking legal expertise to those who need it

ON Christmas Eve 1884, Henrietta and Samuel Barnett opened the doors of Toynbee Hall in Whitechapel, London. Theirs was a radical vision, to understand the needs of the poor in that area and develop practical solutions that would improve their lives. Toynbee Hall set the model for similar initiatives worldwide. Its “smoking room debates” brought people together across class lines, encouraging free thinking and mutual understanding.

Fourteen years later, Dr A E Western established the Poor Man’s Lawyer service, enabling the poor of the East End of London to seek legal assistance they could not otherwise afford. Western’s initiative evolved into Toynbee Hall’s Free Legal Advice Centre. Toynbee Hall sowed the seeds for extraordinary, positive social change. Clement Attlee became its president in 1945, the same year he became Prime Minister, leading a government which oversaw widespread social reform, including the foundation of the National Health Service.

The principle Toynbee Hall established in 1898, that legal expertise should travel to those who need it and not the other way around, has taken longer to reach Scotland. That is so, despite pro bono legal services having been part of the Scottish legal landscape for centuries.

A recent Act of the Scottish Parliament has reformed and consolidated the regulation of legal services in Scotland. The 2025 Act sets out, with admirable economy, what the law has always expected of its practitioners: independence, integrity, the interests of the client above all, and the duties owed to the court. These are ancient obligations. What has changed is who can now deliver them, and to whom.

The 2025 Act also includes measures to protect the public, and ensure people receive the help they need by amending s26 of the Solicitors (Scotland) Act 1980. As originally enacted, s26 prohibited solicitors from providing legal services (such as undertaking court work) “upon the account or for the profit of” any unqualified person. A breach of s26 was, and remains, a criminal offence, punishable by a fine. This provision was amended over time to allow solicitors to provide legal services to law centres and citizens advice bodies. However, a charity was an “unqualified” person until 5 March 2026.

Further, the 2025 Act confirms that legal privilege applies to communications between a charity and its client in the course of providing legal services. Now that charities can employ solicitors to provide legal services, they can provide legal assistance to those who could not otherwise afford to pay for that help.

We are also on the cusp of another long-awaited development. Section 9 of the Civil Litigation (Expenses and Group Proceedings) (Scotland) Act 2018 allows for the making of payments to the Access to Justice Foundation in Scotland in lieu of expenses in pro bono cases. Those payments can then fund further pro bono work. There was no time in the last session of the Scottish Parliament to bring s9 into force. Now that the Scottish Parliamentary elections are over, that ought to be attended to imminently.

Ralph Ellison, whose 1986 book inspired the title of this piece, believed in what he called 'the random working of the democratic impulse.' So, it turns out, did Henrietta and Samuel Barnett, whose Christmas gift reached people where they were, not where lawyers found it convenient to be. Lawyers in Scotland are now much better placed to improve lives in the communities they serve.

 

This first appeared in The Scotsman.