Thank you for visiting the HRLA website.
The HRLA is a dynamic and welcoming organisation for all lawyers with an interest in human rights, from law students and those just setting out on their legal careers to established practitioners and distinguished jurists. We have been spreading the word on human rights for over twenty years since the organisation was founded in 2003 by the late Jonathan Cooper and others. We are a non-partisan human rights organisation and aim to provide a wide range of events on topical and significant themes in human rights. Recent speakers have included Lord Carnwath, Lord Justice Singh (our Honorary President), Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws KC, Professor Conor Gearty KC, and Robert Spano, the former President of the European Court of Human Rights. We also provide an annual bursary scheme, providing opportunities for junior lawyers to gain inside experience of working within human rights organisations.
We are enormously proud of the HRLA’s Junior Lawyers Committee (formerly our Young Lawyers Committee), which arranges events especially targeted at junior lawyers who have not yet started a training contract or pupillage. The JLC works through the year to put on regular events (the annual careers day, the Lord Kerr essay competition, and the judicial review mooting competition), together with one-off events and initiatives.
If you are not yet a member of the HRLA, please consider joining us, and if you are, please spread the word and encourage your friends and colleagues to join. We also rely on support from law firms and barristers’ chambers through their corporate memberships, and other law-related firms for sponsorship of our bursary scheme. If your organisation might be interested in joining us or supporting the bursary scheme, please let us know.
In the meantime, I look forward to meeting you at one of our future events.
Joe Middleton KC
Chair of the HRLA