Pro Bono Week (PBW), running this year from 6 to 10 November, is an opportunity for the legal professions to highlight and celebrate the fantastic work done for the ‘public good’. As a past chair of the Free Representation Unit (FRU), I have seen what a difference law students and young barristers can make by providing representation in tribunals. I did my first ever cross-examination while doing the law conversion course, in the Industrial Tribunal (as it then was). My client was a cleaner on the tube, who had been sacked for declining to wear a hi-vis jacket—which, he said, he was allergic to. He was reinstated. Beginner’s luck: I wish every case I had done in the intervening 35 years had had such a satisfactory outcome!
FRU has a long history. In 1972, students at Bar school decided to set up FRU having recognised both the complexity of tribunals and that those who didn’t have a lawyer were at a real disadvantage. FRU is
