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LAPG announces 2018 Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year award winners

The president of the family division and the solicitor who challenged the Parole Board decision to release John Worboys were among the lawyers honoured at the LALYs.

Lord Justice Andrew McFarlane - who took over as president of the family division and head of family justice on 27 July - has been named winner of the Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year's Outstanding Achievement award. Sir Andrew, who was appointed to the Court of Appeal in 2011, is the first former childcare legal aid lawyer to become president of the family division.

He was presented with his award by Baroness Doreen Lawrence OBE, in front of an audience of 500 legal aid lawyers at the central London ceremony. Sir Andrew told the audience he had always been a champion of legal aid, which he described as a vocation.

He added: 'It is very good that we live in a country which has developed a sophisticated understanding of the importance of human rights. But those rights are no good to anybody unless people have access to them. The only way to access them is to have a key, and the key is the lawyer. Without lawyers, access to justice is just an empty phrase.'

Harriet Wistrich, from Birnberg Peirce, who brought the first-ever challenge of a Parole Board decision, was named Public Lawyer of the Year. Harriet was recognised for a string of groundbreaking successes in the past year, including a Supreme Court ruling upholding human rights as a remedy for victims, where the police have failed to investigate sexual and violent crimes; and a ruling by the High Court that disclosing the criminal records of women convicted for prostitution offences, when they had been trafficked and groomed into sex work was a breach of their article 8 rights. Harriet was described by the compère, broadcaster Anna Jones, as 'a dogged champion of women and an inspiration to women'.

And the winners are…

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