THE Law Society of Scotland’s Lawscot Foundation is one of chief executive Lorna Jack’s proudest achievements.
Established this year, the charity will provide financial assistance and mentoring to law students from socially disadvantaged backgrounds, with between eight and ten people set to benefit from September next year.
Ms Jack said the launch of the foundation was the “culmination of a lot of work on access to the legal profession” with the aim being to bring down “barriers for anyone who is academically bright enough” to pursue a career in law.
“There are communities in Scotland that do not produce lawyers,” Ms Jack said. “In tables that classify the economic wellbeing of areas the bottom 20 per cent produce a significantly disproportionate amount of law graduates. That’s not a fair distribution. Funding is something we could do about it.”
At the moment the main priority of the foundation is to raise the “hundred of thousands of pounds” Ms Jack said will be necessary to make it a success. Longer term, the aim is to use mentoring to make the foundation’s aims self-fulfilling, the hope being that those who receive bursaries in the first round will go on to mentor future recipients.
With this in mind, those involved in the Law Society’s student law programme have been spreading the word in schools in socially disadvantaged areas for the past three years.
“They engage pupils about law in a really creative way and that’s getting the interest going,” said Ms Jack. “If you’ve got someone who’s interested what’s the next thing you can help with? Finance and mentoring.”
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