 Good evening, everyone. My name is Katja Ocherman. I am a member of the Executive Committee of the Cambridge Pro Bono Project, or CPP. And on behalf of the Cambridge Pro Bono Project, I would like to welcome you all to this first CPP speak series talk of this term tonight. By way of brief introduction, the CPP is now in its 11th year. It is a research program run out of the Faculty of Law at the University of Cambridge. What we do is to partner faculty members and graduate research students with leading baristas chambers, charities and NGOs to produce targeted research on issues of contemporary social just contemporary social significance excuse me. Alongside that work, we also provide a network here in Cambridge for students and faculty members with an interest in pro bono work and human rights. To that end, we have started a regular speaker series last year. And as our first speaker this time, we are delighted to welcome Keelyne Gallagher QC of Doughty Street Chambers who will be speaking on the value of pro bono work. Keelyne has graduated from the University College Dublin and from the Honourable Society of Kings in. She also holds an LM degree from the University of Cambridge from my very own college keys college. Thanks Keelyne a particularly interesting speaker for many of the CPP student researchers as most are graduates students who have studied at other universities previously before coming to Cambridge to do their LLMs or PhDs. Keelyne has an exceptional career at the bar and has had an exceptional career at the bar so far which is impossible to do justice to in a short introduction. I will therefore just highlight a couple of her many notable achievements. Keelyne has acted in many of the leading human rights cases in the UK in recent years. Most notably she has been acting for the bereaved families and survivors of the 77 London bombings, as well as the Hillsborough disaster. Keelyne has particular expertise in the area of freedom of expression or freedom of expression. Her UK practice focuses on reporting restrictions anonymity and open justice matters. Internationally, she has acted for journalists worldwide who are imprisoned, prosecuted, sued or subject to travel bans due to their journalism. Most notably, she heads the international legal team for the family of Daphne. Garouana Galicia, the Maltese journalist who was murdered in 2017 as well as representing Maria Reza, the award winning journalist who is subject to a state sponsored harassment campaign on account of her public interest reporting on corruption and human rights violations in the Philippines. Keelyne has also done considerable work for women's and children's rights, in particular she has acted in a series of cases concerning the almost total ban on abortion in Northern Ireland. In 2016, she was named by the Irish times as one of the 100 most influential Irish women living outside Ireland. In 2017 she was made a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts for her contributions to the protection of human rights. Most recently she has been appointed assistant coroner for Cambridge and Peterborough. We are extremely grateful to have Keelyne virtually at Cambridge with us tonight. Keelyne will be speaking for about 30 to 40 minutes and her talk will be followed by a Q&A session of about 15 to 20 minutes. Please do post your questions in the Q&A section of Zoom. We also have Alex Alan Franks here on the panel tonight. You will be assisting with the questions as well. Thank you very much Keelyne. Thank you so much for that very kind introduction. May I just start by saying two quick things unrelated to the subject of the talk. The first is I've no idea why I'm appearing with this kind of ethereal glow. I look rather blue, something to do with my lighting so apologies for that. But the second thing is just Katia when you were making that reference to being one of the Irish times as 100 most influential Irish women living outside Ireland. It's quite a strange honour for an Irish person. I know many of the graduate students joining today are likely to be of a different nationality who've made the UK their temporary home or indeed their permanent home. But it always reminds me of a quote from the late Sean Hughes, the comedian and writer who grew up between London and Dublin and who moved to London at 19. He said, I had no identity as such, but I could not shake off my inherent Irishness. I became one of those Irish people who would do anything for Ireland, except live there, which always rings a bell with me. And he also said, when Seamus Heady won the Nobel Prize in literature or Daniel Day-Lewis won an Oscar, he felt it was a personal triumph. You know, every time some Irish culture burst through, he would see it as to his credit. But anyway, so in terms of my talk this evening, what I was going to do, I've taken the liberty of renaming it slightly and I'm going to see if I can just share a slide with people and wonderful. Okay, it's just a few pictures, but just so you can get a sense of it. So I wanted to rename it pro bono, low bono and keeping the lights on. And the reason for that really is this. Pro bono publico the original phrase of course means for the public good. Now it has come to mean for lawyers, legal work acting without charge for clients, usually on a low income or indeed working for NGOs. But the original concept is vital when we think about pro bono work for the public good. And the title that I was given the value of pro bono work, keeping for us to ask is value to whom. There's just three quick categories I wanted to mention there's value to the lawyer, there's value to the clients, and there's value to the public more generally now I'm starting with value to the lawyer simply because I want to start some caution details that I see as a specialist human rights lawyer. So there is of course a huge value to doing pro bono work, and your project in its 11th year for over a decade your project has been doing superb work with expert faculty members and graduate students incredibly worked with real expertise and wanting to give their time and their expertise to the greater good, thinking back to that original phrase, but unfortunately something which I very regularly see in practice is people wanting to do glory chasing pro bono work. So people who work, for example, at firms who specialize in entirely different work, don't have any particular background in human rights, have never been a graduate student working on human rights, literally have never done it. This is something they can turn their hand to, and want to do the high profile cases. So I have gone through just in preparation for today. Some of the more offensive things people have said just so you've got a sense of people who see really the value of pro bono work being in some way reputation washing for them, or wanting to make themselves feel better. So, for example, and there's one individual a number of years ago about 10 years ago. And who I and a colleague had approached about doing some pro bono work which was particularly within their area of expertise and when their firm boasted having a pro bono ethic. And it made sense for them to do this work, because it would have involved them giving advice on a contract to an NGO who needed advice on a contract, and that was their expertise. What they wanted to do was to act on one of the high profile death penalty cases that my chamber is acting. Now this individual had zero background in the death penalty, quite how benefit the client, as someone coming in who's a commercial contract lawyer to work on a pro bono death penalty case which couldn't be more important is quite beyond me. It's quite important really because when you think about value to the lawyer, or value to the firm, or value to reputation, you quite often have a mismatch then with what is in fact of value to the client and what is in fact of value to the public more generally. Another risk that we see is the risk that someone is able entirely understandably to give pro bono commitment but only in a specific part of the case, and that can lead to a silo approach which can run risks. And also sometimes people see a particular piece of work which they could do. And because for example, particularly in international law work, they can do research on it, and they feel that they can produce submissions for example to a UN body, but they don't have the expertise and the breadth of expertise in the area so there are many examples of where in cases that I've done and in cases my colleagues have done. We have come in at a time when some pro bono work has already been done which is damaging. And it's very important we say that right up front. Let me take an example. If, for example, you want to take an action that this did not happen in this case that's hypothetical in Daphne Karawana Galicia's case. That is a case which has taken place in Malta. There is ultimately recourse to the European Court of Human Rights for the bereaved family. Now, if someone had done a piece of pro bono work for that family, for example, complaining to a UN treaty body, we would of course be in a position where when you then ultimately want to go to the European Court of Human Rights. We would be faced with an argument that in fact were barred from going to the European Court of Human Rights. And regrettably I and my colleagues who specialize in international media defense law and international human rights law have in recent years have many examples where a client entirely unbeknownst to them and without having been given any advice has lost their optimum option of a mechanism which could give them a real result. Because of a piece of badly advised pro bono work, which took them down a different path without them ever being told by going to this treaty body or ruling out another, and they were simply never given advice on sequencing, advice on alternatives, and that breath of advice. So I say that right at the start. So there is a real need to proceed with caution and it's why projects like yours are so brilliant. And it's why some other pro bono work. In fact, proceeds on the wrong premise about value to the lawyer and value to the lawyers reputation or value to the firms reputation, rather than value to the client. The second point then of course is value to the client. And that is what should be at the heart of all pro bono work whether that client is an individual or an NGO. That is critical. And often the client may in fact be very being real difficulties financially, not have any option of providing any form of funding, but there may in fact, in many of those cases be a benefit to, for example, looking at whether the work can be done under a conditional fee agreement. And so which means essentially no win no fee. So there's the potential for taking on work where you're not guaranteed to be paid but there may be prospective payment at the end or low bono work which is quite important. Now I mentioned low bono. It's a slightly unusual phrase but on many of the cases that I do. They are low bono cases where we're paid far below the minimum wage but we are paid something. So for example, we are able to secure funding through crowdfunding, or we're able to secure funding through grants from international organizations, which enable us for example to travel to Geneva to the Human Rights Council and pay for expenses rather than us having to pay for those out of our own pocket, or at least enable us to ensure that junior members of the team are paid. So in the last year, I've done a number of cases involving individuals who've been detained in prison in Egypt, where I as a QC at the stage that I might have chosen to do the case pro bono, and it's something that I've been able to do. But I do not think that's a reasonable ask of a self employed junior barrister who's trying to keep the lights on. So what I've said is, I'll do it pro bono, you can have my expertise pro bono, but I want my junior to be paid at a low rate, and they'll do it well below market rate, so they're giving their time, they're not giving their time for free. But they are giving their time at a heavily reduced rate. And that is very important. And I do think low bono work often allows you to do work which runs over a longer period of time, gives you a better resource team and enables you to provide ultimately a better service to the client. So that's quite important. And then the third thing of course is value to the public more generally, and I mentioned conditional fee agreements earlier, and that's quite important might sound like the dullest thing in the world to be talking about but I did want to start with these nuts and bolts, because in international media law, for example, one of the things that we see regrettably is the libel courts in England and Wales being used for libel tourism. So individuals who have very deep pockets, threatening proceedings in the courts in England and the courts often referred to as strategic lawsuits against public participation slap. And the threat is made, often to someone who has, who's impecunious has no funds, they know will not be able to mount a legal defence. Now if you provide support to that individual pro bono, and you of course they may be able to get a specialist defamation lawyer who's willing to do it pro bono, they may be able to get someone who's not a specialist defamation lawyer who's willing to do it pro bono. They may be able to get some form of support. But actually that just provides defence to that individual client, because in fact, if it's being operated on a CFA basis, no win, no fee. If that lawsuit turns out to be rejected, there's of course the possibility of costs. So you can hit the individual where it hurts with costs. And that is actually quite important when you think more generally of the impact of this case on others. So whether that individual outside the UK who's tried to misuse the courts of England and Wales whether they would do it again. And of course also there's the prospect, even if you do have pro bono of getting a pro bono cost order, and regrettably not enough people go for a pro bono cost order which is very important because even if you have pro bono, there is the possibility of getting costs from the other side. So there's a mechanism to do that when it then goes into a pot and it benefits other individuals who are in pecunious and you need legal support. So I wanted to start with those three points. And I think it's quite important. So think about who value to whom is it value to the lawyer value to the client value to the public. And really what we should be looking at here is value to the client and value to the public, not value to the lawyer. And of course, a great benefit to doing pro bono work. It can of course give you a great sense, and it can give you a great sense of satisfaction. It's enabling you to give something back and to use your skills for public good. All of those things are quite right. So of course there's some value to the lawyer, but I mean that that is very much secondary it seems to me to value to the client and value to the public. And just to give you an example. I as a barrister if I do a piece of what's called public access work where I choose to act without a solicitor in a particular case I could very clear regulatory obligations placed on me where I must consider whether it's in the interest of the client for me to be acting as a barrister directly without a solicitor. And I also have a clear obligation to consider whether or not the client is entitled to legal aid, because if they are entitled to legal aid they have to tell them that. Now it seems to be remarkable that you don't have equivalent regulatory obligations when someone, a lawyer with zero expertise wants to act in a death penalty case because they like the headline, or wants to do a submission to a UN treaty body, because it's high profile, when they simply do not have the expertise to warn the client about the risks and what that's going to mean or the ramifications and they simply cannot provide the right service to the client. So bearing that in mind, I know this is all starting in a rather negative way about pro bono but it's just important to lay the groundwork it seems to me. And that's why one of my pet hates is when people conflate the phrase pro bono work with human rights work or with public interest work. And because they are not the same thing they overlap substantially there's quite a substantial crossover in the Venn diagram but they are not the same thing. And that can be quite pernicious. We see that for example, when with swinging legal aid cuts over the last decade, often in government documents they have expressly referred to the possibility of pro bono support being provided to people. By firms, for example, in circumstances where the result of the cuts will be that specialist services are cut, and pro bono work is going to be an inadequate replacement it's not going to plug that gap. It's going to be when you have large parts of the country where you have legal aid desert somewhere you just don't have expertise, and the unpopular kinds of cases that for example the bar pro bono unit and have they are not cases which are going to be headline grabbing but they're hugely important bread and butter cases to individuals who have a low income and have no alternative. As you may have seen, I'm sorry for all the Irish references. The Irish comedy trio foil arms and hog, and if not, I can post it on Twitter afterwards, where they've got a short sketch where a man has a broken tap, and the plumber turns up checks it says your tap is broken. It's going to be 50 quid to fix it. And the client says, Oh no, this job is unpaid but it does offer excellent exposure. And he boasts of the number of followers he has on Facebook and Instagram and says this is an exciting opportunity which could lead to future plumbing jobs, lots of my friends have toilets, and actually, there is something about that we do get approached quite a lot because they want us to do pro bono work simply because they've wrongly conflated pro bono work with human rights work. And in fact, they are not people who require pro bono assistance. They are often people who are quite well off, and who if they want a lawyer should be paying for it. And that's quite important because the bottom line is I'm self employed. I don't get a salary from anyone. I have particular expertise in human rights, and it is not possible for me to do 100% of my time on pro bono work. And you've got to be selective and you've got to look at pro bono work as genuinely being a last resort for paid representation is not possible. And it is not a replacement for paid expert work. So, against that backdrop, rather depressing, I wanted to turn to some stories about some of the cases where pro bono work has indeed been a last resort and essential and it's not here. Just some pictures to show you. So there's four cases here and I'm going to speak about two of them in particular if that's okay one international and one domestic. So the two people on the left, the two pictures on the left are pictures of individuals who I've acted for in the last number of years who were detained in Egypt. At the top is my client Amal Fathi. So Amal Fathi is a woman who's a women's rights activist and a blogger and a journalist. And her husband is a human rights activist in Egypt. It's fair to say being a human rights activist or a women's rights activist in Cairo is an act of bravery. And Amal and her husband are incredible individuals. And Amal Fathi posted a me to video on Facebook, describing how she'd been sexually harassed by officials of the state. And she was charged astonishingly with terrorism offenses for doing that by trigger happy Egyptian government which uses its counterterrorism laws repeatedly against journalists. Against bloggers. Against anyone who's critical of the regime. There's a you're with us or against us approach where the assumption is, if you criticize the Egyptian state in any way you must be Muslim brotherhood. Now she spent months in prison, removed from her husband and from her very young son, after the three of them, having been held at gunpoint by security officials in the early hours of the morning. She was arrested in circumstances which undoubtedly will have given her child PTSD, and in circumstances which were terrifying. And we acted for Amal Fathi and her husband and indeed for their child in taking action by going to UN bodies, but we worked extremely closely with the domestic lawyers in Egypt to ensure that what we were doing strategically. And that the international on the international plane fitted with what was in our best interests domestically, and that's critical in these cases. Now there are real challenges in working. Many of my clients at the moment are detained in Iran detained in Egypt and detained in other countries, where there are serious risks to being a human rights lawyer or criminal defense lawyer. And where we've got to be extremely careful about how we engage with the lawyers on the ground. Otherwise we're placing the lawyers on the ground at risk. We've also got to take with a pinch of salt some of the information that we're given, and because of the fact that it's given sometimes under duress we've got to be very careful in those circumstances but here, we managed to work in a way which first of all got a result from and got her released. So that's the key thing in the short term to get a released. But and this is back to the point I made earlier about knowing the hinterland and knowing the area well. And of course that's headline grabbing you know Amal Fathi is released and that's wonderful. But actually what happens in many cases in Egypt we know is that individuals are released when the authorities are under particular pressure so they do respond to pressure from the pressure rapporteurs from the working group and arbitrary detention from other states that have leverage with them, and from the EU and others. We know that. But the problem is what they often do is they release the individual but then they subject them to very extreme measures. So they're no longer behind prison bars. The world stops watching, but they still have to report daily for example to the police. They have severe restrictions on their ability to work. So it was very important to us that we had a long term strategy to protect Amal Fathi's rights also. And that is why one of the things that we did as well as the immediate work that we did going to the relevant UN special rapporteurs using the urgent process with the working group and arbitrary detention and so on. It was critical to us that we actually get a reasoned ruling from the working group and arbitrary detention. And in fact, it was only when we got the reasoned ruling from the working group and arbitrary detention, which was over a year after Amal Fathi had been released, that those severe restrictions upon her were lifted. It was only when the working group said, in fact, both Amal Fathi and her husband and her child have their rights violated. The Egyptian state should pay them damages. It's only when we got that reasoned ruling after the world had stopped watching the headlines and stopped that in fact the position on the ground changed for her and changed for her family. So that's why I wanted to give you that story. And then the one below it is a gentleman called Hazem Hamouda and his daughter Lamees. So Hazem Hamouda is an Australian man who was detained in Egypt last year and working with my very brilliant colleague Jennifer Robinson who's Australian and works with us in Doughty Street Chambers. We did pro bono work for Hazem Hamouda and ended up securing his release. Now, given the time I won't go into the full detail but I can post some more information for you. But the reason I wanted to give that example with Hazem is that the fact that we weren't doing a one off case in Egypt but that Egypt is one of the areas of expertise was something we were able to put to very good use. So Peter Gresti, who's the Al Jazeera journalist who was detained in Egypt a number of years ago has been tremendous on these cases. He worked with us on Hazem Hamouda's case. He's worked with us again this year for another Australian Egyptian Jewel national who was detained called Walid Yusuf. And so Peter has worked with us on these cases and we've been able to work with him with others including Ibrahim Halawa, young Irishman who was detained. There's that Irish, the Irish angle again, young Irishman who was detained age 17 in Egypt a number of years ago and held for four years who was my client. And indeed was subjected to a process where he was at risk of the death penalty despite being a child at the time that he was involved in the peaceful protest in question. All of those individuals we've managed to work with on these cases to a good end because they've been through it. They've been detained in Torah prison. They know what it's like, but they also know what worked in their cases to get them released. And that's something we've also been able to do to good effect in relation to individuals detained elsewhere. So that knowledge and that background is really critical in terms of getting a good result in the short term and getting a good result long term. And those cases with Egypt and I know many of you in the program will know this from other cases that you've done. There are times when it's important to shed from the rooftops on these cases that involve international detention. And there are also times when it's important to be quiet and to ensure that there's a face saving way for the state in question to be able to say and to claim that they're reacting. Not to international pressure but it's simply their domestic system working well. And both of those cases have times at which we have to be quiet. And that goes back to the question I had at the start about value to whom many of our cases don't hit the headlines at all no one ever hears about them because it's simply not in our clients interests. And that's always to be known, and we need quiet diplomacy behind the scenes and legal work behind the scenes to try to secure release. So for every a mile fappy and has a mooder, which you know about there are many cases I simply cannot talk to you about because that's not in the client's interest. And that's important to bear in mind. And that's also why central to everything we do has got to be value to the client, whether you're adding value to the client, whether you're acting in the client's best interests, and often that will involve being quiet. So that's the problem of the time, and sometimes all of the time. So that's quite important. The next two cases I do want to give you a bit more detail about, and one of them is an international case and one a domestic case and these are both very good examples of where pro bono was the only option there was no alternative. And it was essential that we provide expert support. So the first one is a gentleman called reminisce a ballet, and he is a cartoonist. He's an artist and an activist who was detained in equatorial Guinea in 2017 until early 2018 because of his cartoons. And I acted for him with a number of my colleagues and with a number of NGOs internationally, based in the UK, and the US predominantly in acting for him. And I want to tell you a little bit about his story which I'll do in a moment. And I have a rather shameless plug as well inspired by what Alex and Katia said to me, just at the start before we went public with this talk. I just wanted to make sure that I'm conscious that many of you who are joining this call this evening have expertise in international human rights law and indeed have expertise in international media law and have an interest in those issues. On our international media defense panel, we get referrals every single day of cases, which involve individuals who don't have access to legal aid. And to legal support, and who do not have deep pockets and who need expert legal assistance, whether it's low bono or pro bono work happens all the time. I had one today indeed which involved a cartoonist in another country who's been imprisoned because of this illegal cartoons about the government's poor response to covert. So this happens to us all the time. Now, there are efforts underway after the UK and Canada led conference, two years ago in 2019 on press freedom to ensure that there is actually funding available for these cases. But regrettably, a great many of these cases do involve pro bono work. There's no prospect whatsoever of obtaining costs against the other side. The other side is usually an authoritarian government. But they are very, very urgent cases. And on those cases, I and colleagues are working for free. And we've got to do them carved out around other pieces of work that we need to do. We're working for research assistance. So if people are interested in that area, please do let me know. There was a huge amount of work to do. And I would love to work with you on it. So, let me just say that as a plug. And so reminisce about I want to tell you a little bit about his story. So he was arrested in September 2017 and questioned about his cartoons. Now for many years, he had been a critic and a satirist of President Obeang's regime in equatorial Guinea. His work has received international recognition. He's the recipient of multiple awards. So we worked with EG justice, which is essentially a one man and a cat organization, very impressive one man who runs this incredible organization and who's achieved great things in using strategic litigation at hold the equatorial Guinea and government and to account. And cartoonist rights network international CRNI who are a brilliant organization run by a gentleman in Scotland. And who is really fantastic and who I got to know through them winning an award from index on censorship a number of years ago. We worked with EG justice and cartoonist rights network international and we filed urgent appeals with the UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of expression and opinion. So at the time it was Professor David Kay who we've done a lot of work with there's a new person in post now and with the working group on arbitrary detention. Now, the appeals of course requested urgent steps to protect Mr ballet and to call on the authorities to comply with their international legal obligations. And they were filed after the president had failed to respond to an urgent open letter calling for his immediate and unconditional release sent by a number of NGOs so we were brought in after the initial flurry of activity and the focus had failed to get that support. And those organizations we worked with were joined by a range of others including amnesty international human rights watch the letter was also signed by my colleague Baroness Elena Kennedy, chair of justice at the time and now running the International Bar Association Human Rights Institute. So there had been quite a lot of attention given to the case but it hadn't resulted in any change. Now, I wanted to give you this example because there's a few aspects to it which are very important. Now, although we were working pro bono. Importantly, we also got support from many cartoonists around the world who agreed to donate their time for free. So I've given you some examples here of some of the brilliant cartoonists who were in the CRNI network, who decided to put together pictures using the hashtag free Ramon free Ramona ballet. And you can see in fact one of them is free Ramon, so no, because some of them in Spanish actually used a slightly different hashtag which is perhaps a lesson about organization in these very sprawling campaigns at short notice. But there were these very brilliant cartoons produced, and it meant that we were able to get attention for the case, and that was because it wasn't just lawyers providing their time for free and pursuit of greater good it was others, including the artists themselves. And so I wanted to give you those examples. But the other reason I wanted to tell you about this case is equatorial Guinea we know is not in fact very responsive to the UN special procedures. So, we know if you if you look so Egypt I mentioned earlier we know that Egypt does respond to the UN special procedures. We know that when there's urgent work undertaken with the special rapporteurs that responsive. Iran, for example that Iran is responsive to certain special rapporteurs the thematic ones is not responsive to the special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran because they see that as a political appointment and they don't understand why they've been singled out. So we know that so you can look back and you can see what works in these cases. Now we know in equatorial Guinea that they're not in fact responsive, but our immediate concern was that our client had been detained in a prison which is notoriously dangerous and his life was particularly in immediate danger. So a number of individuals had died in the prison that he was in Black Beach. And there are repeated reports internationally about how dangerous the prison is the conditions torture is right and so on. So we had a number of aims in what we were doing with our UN work. The first thing was that we know that more attention on cases and equatorial Guinea even if it doesn't result in immediate release has a protective effect. So even if the individual doesn't immediately get out, they are less likely to be tortured or killed. So that was an immediate part of our strategy. The second thing was we immediately have to look at what the leverage was with equatorial Guinea what works with that tutorial Guinea. And in short, and trading relationships that equatorial Guinea has are critical, particularly with the US. So US Congress is very influential, but US businesses are very influential. So what we were doing here with our UN work was we were trying to secure well respected international organizations and international body statements, making clear how outrageous this case was as a step to then motivate others who had leverage in equatorial Guinea to act. That's quite important. So here, you know it's very easy to put together a submission and send it off to a body which will perhaps make a statement that will be ignored. But enough, you've got to have a strategy what's the aim what actually works because you're dealing with states which are not rule of law compliant. And the bottom line is what is going to work in this case to protect your client and protect your client's interests. So that's really key. And that's why I wanted to give this example, because it's a little unusual, and it involved us going to the UN bodies without actually expecting that the UN Human Rights Council special procedures would in fact have an immediate effect directly. But we anticipated, rightly, that once you had a situation where David Kay said, this case is outrageous. It was going to be much, much easier for us to then write to US companies and say why are you trading with these people? You know, why are you trading with these people when the UN special rapporteur has said what's happening here is a flagrant violation of Article 19, ICCP or and so on. So it was very useful from that perspective. So, key thing for me in all of these cases is what's worked in previous cases, where's the leverage? Is the leverage through treaty bodies? Is the leverage through particular states who've got good relationships? Is the leverage through private business? What is it? What is it that's actually going to make them change their mind and think it's more hassle than it's worth to keep this person in prison? So the headline that you see on that case, of course, relates to what was said by the UN special procedures. But that's not actually the real story. The real story is about how the UN special procedure work was put to good use to get a good result. So the last person that I wanted to speak about is this lady on the right called Margaret Keane and continuing my Irish theme, I'm afraid, and bearing in mind the time. I'll just very briefly refer to this and then perhaps what I can do is stop sharing. Perhaps what I can do is on Twitter, for those of you who are on Twitter. I can post a link to a more detailed blog about the case, but I wanted to mention it. So this is a rather unusual case. It is going to involve leisure this month. Myself and my colleague and our very brilliant solicitor from Erwin Mitchell. We're all acting pro bono and all Irish, all female team. I'll have you know, quite rare. We're all going to be going to the court of the arches in St Mary LeBeau church, which is rather archaic bizarre place to be going will be going in person. And at the end of February, in this case. So the Church of England's ecclesiastical courts of course do not often hit the headlines they certainly don't often hit the Irish headlines. But the reason that this case is high profile is because the consistory court of the diocese of Coventry. Last year ruled that my clients were not entitled to have a memorial stone with an inscription in Irish only referring to their beloved mother Margaret we've just seen on screen a moment ago. And the Chancellor of Coventry judge Stephen RQC rejected their application. They wanted to put on their memorial stone to their mother, which will ultimately be a memorial stone for both their mother and their father. It's going to be his final resting place. Also, they wanted to put in our gray head good Joe, which means in our hearts forever on the memorial stone and the Chancellor ruled that they could not do that because the passions and feelings connected with the use of Irish Gaelic could lead to people regarding it as some form of slogan or a political statement. We ruled against the family's wishes. He said it had to be translated into English. And it was because of this Irish is political, essentially, cutting it very short. The reasoning in the judgment essentially is that in English speaking Coventry, people would see the wording would recognize that it's Irish, and would assume that it said something related to the IRA or republicanism or violence, deeply to me and to my clients to Irish people in the UK into the Irish language. So it's an appalling case and it really spoke to me. I was so concerned when I saw it. And over the last number of months, I've agreed to act pro bono for Margaret Keane's wonderful family. Now, Margaret Keane's case is high profile. And, and of course we could have done a crowd funder, for example, to raise some funds myself and my very brilliant junior and my solicitor to get some funding for the case. But we did not think that was appropriate in circumstances where it was very important to the bereaved family to actually turn the tragedy of what's happened to their case their private grief has been turned into a kind of public spectacle all over the headlines. In fact have been crowdfunding to do things which really mattered to their mother. So they've been trying to raise funds to raise awareness about the importance of the Irish language and the importance of Irish and Britain the importance of respect for other languages in the church of England and so on. And of course any funds which are raised, it's clear to me should go to that and should not go to lawyers these. So we're very happy to act for free because of the nature of the case. It also means there's no prospective course and also importantly, and our clients in fact were subjected to rather a lot of fees in the church of England's court system. So it wasn't only that they didn't have their own legal advice, they would have to raise money for legal advice. And they also in fact have to pay quite a lot of money by the time we started working for them they paid over 3000 pounds. And to bring an appeal, they were going to have to pay for the judges time. And they were going to have to pay for the time of the court itself. So when we got permission to appeal they got a bill saying it took the judge eight hours to read through the documents. And it took the judge eight hours to read through the documents and give the judgment you need to pay for eight hours of the judges time. So, what my solicitors and the family have managed to do is to ensure that in fact the church of England is not going to be charging those fees in this case but also importantly they're securing a change to law. And again I can post a link afterwards, because their case being high profile has actually turned into something positive which is the case was raised in Parliament. The number of Irish groups in Parliament have raised serious concerns about this case. And the result of it is we've been given an assurance that in fact this issue about fees is going to be looked at. And we're anticipating an imminent change to the law so from this tragedy of my clients case, there has been a much wider public good already regardless of what happens in the appeal although obviously we're hoping that when it comes to late February. In fact, finally, our clients can get their wish, and their mother can have her final goodbye in the form that the family want reflecting her Irish heritage, reflecting the fact that she is a woman who moved to England. When she was quite young, and it was always a key part of her identity that she was an Irish woman in England, rather like I'm an Irish woman in England. And that was critical to her and it should be reflected on a great stone hugely important to the family. So I wanted to give that example also. I've gone a little over time. I hope you don't mind. And I wanted to just tell you some of those stories and some of the principles behind the stories. And I would just urge you when you're thinking about doing pro bono work, always to think about what is the value to the client. And if you're asked to act in the case, no matter how exciting it is, if you don't have the expertise, you say, I don't have the expertise, and you ensure that the work you're doing is work that adds real value to the client and protects their interests that's got to be at the heart of what we do. And if possible to also add value to the public, and to do pro bono publicly to do work for the public good, all the better. That's what the phrase originally means. That's what we should be doing. And that's how we should add value. Thank you.