Expanding Our Global Impact

600+ APAC pro bono hours

3,700+ hours across Brussels, Geneva, and Munich

11,900+ UK pro bono hours

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In 2023, our global offices contributed substantially to pro bono work in a variety of impactful ways.

Our London office devoted more than 11,900 hours to assist over 130 individuals under the firm’s access to justice projects, which focus on serving people with disabilities, asylum seekers and refugees, women, and children. We continued to support the most vulnerable in society by helping mothers in prison to see their children and by representing individuals in appeals to obtain disability benefits. Through our charities and nonprofits program, we provided over 70 organizations with free legal advice and support, enabling them to focus on their important work of delivering essential public services to those in need.

Our Brussels, Geneva, and Munich offices contributed more than 3,700 hours to pro bono matters and continued to make important strides on behalf of clients who we represent through the firm’s Emerging Enterprises Program and Trade for Development Initiative.

Our Asia Pacific offices dedicated more than 600 pro bono hours and continue to seek new opportunities to provide pro bono support to our global communities.

KIND UK

We are proud to partner with Kids in Need of Defense UK and the Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit to help children and young people apply for British citizenship.

In one such case, our client came to the UK from Nigeria with his mother when he was just six months old as a result of a violent, politically motivated attack on his father. Despite living in the UK ever since, only returning to Nigeria twice for holidays, and being educated entirely in the English school system, he was not automatically entitled to citizenship and therefore did not have access to student finance. A Sidley team helped him with his discretionary application to the secretary of state for British citizenship. The application took the form of a novel letter of representations based on new Home Office guidance along with a comprehensive suite of financial, educational, and medical evidence and was accepted just two months after submission. The client’s mother was thrilled at the result.

“This is the greatest news ever! Words cannot describe how grateful and happy I am right now.”
– Sidley client

JUSTICE

Sidley is supporting a Working Party convened by JUSTICE, a UK human rights and rule of law charity. The Working Party produced a report on the structural issues surrounding administrative decision-making in prisons and makes recommendations for related policy and law reform. An associate from Sidley’s London office, who was a Pro Bono Fellow at JUSTICE during 2023, contributed significantly to the report.

JUSTICE is concerned that too few safeguards exist with respect to the decision-making processes applying to those in prison, who ought to be afforded appropriate access to justice to enforce their human rights. The prison population in England and Wales currently stands at over 86,000 and it is expected to increase to over 106,000 within four years — despite the fact that overall crime rates have been decreasing for some years — presenting a crisis of overcrowding, combined with staff shortages and insufficient resourcing, capacity, or structures in place to allow for rehabilitation. Many prisoners are spending the vast majority of their time in cells without meaningful activity. All of these factors underscore the need for everyday decision-making in prisons to be lawful, fair, and correct.

QLEGAL

qLegal is a commercial law clinic at Queen Mary University of London which provides pro bono legal advice given by post-graduate law students, under the supervision of qualified lawyers, to tech startup companies and entrepreneurs. Sidley teams worked on matters including: supervising students in advising two young entrepreneurs who started a business designing and assembling bespoke bicycles; supervising students in advising a majority shareholder of a medical startup, giving the students an opportunity to further their commercial acumen, interview experience, and understanding of client considerations in the context of a shareholders’ agreement; and supporting students in reviewing their legal advice to a not-for-profit UK-based company in the arts industry on their various obligations under the UK GDPR.

Asia Pacific

Our Hong Kong office contributes significant hours to pro bono projects annually. This includes our ongoing work with Help for Children (Asia) Limited. Sidley established and continues to advise the Hong Kong-registered chapter of the multinational charitable organization on all aspects of its legal operations, focusing on the prevention and treatment of child abuse. Help for Children has become one of the largest and most well-known asset management industry-supported charities in Asia.

In connection with this work, Sidley partner Effie Vasilopoulos, a member of Sidley’s Executive Committee and a co-leader of the Asia Pacific Investment Funds group, was awarded the “Gold Individual Award” for the fifth consecutive year by The Law Society of Hong Kong as part of its 2023 Pro Bono and Community Work Recognition Programme. The annual awards recognize legal practitioners in Hong Kong who have made exceptional contributions to the community.

Additionally, lawyers in our Hong Kong office are advising on the incorporation of a Hong Kong chapter of the Effective Altruism Network. Effective Altruism Hong Kong is dedicated to building a community of people who seek to continuously investigate what “do the most good” means, applying evidence and careful reasoning.

Together with Pro Bono SG (formerly Law Society Pro Bono Services), a Sidley team in Singapore is developing a workshop curriculum for migrant domestic workers on their labor and employment rights. Pro Bono SG is a registered charity and an Institution of a Public Charter (IPC). Their primary objectives are to implement the provision of pro bono legal services in Singapore; to coordinate the provision of civil, criminal, and community pro bono legal services; to conduct and to coordinate volunteer recruitment drives for pro bono legal services; to implement training initiatives; and to identify opportunities for pro bono legal services.