And the cash keeps flowing in
The legal profession has donated over £50,000 in less than 24 hours hours to a billable hour appeal for refugees launched yesterday evening by employment silk Sean Jones QC.
The appeal asks lawyers to donate a billable hour to Save the Children to help the charity do its work alleviating the Europe refugee crisis, which has seen hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers flea countries including Syria, Kosovo and Afghanistan.
Jones, of the commercial set 11KBW, launched the campaign after spotting that an appeal by a group of children’s book authors had hauled in over £100,000.
Having tweeted JK Rowling that “Children’s authors are putting my own tribe: lawyers, to shame”, Jones then set up a Just Giving page of his own.
Twitter lawyers! Let's donate a billable hour to helping Save the Children meet the challengeof the refugee crisis: https://t.co/rriO6jLlWF
— Sean Jones (@seanjonesqc) September 3, 2015
12 hours later and the Lawyers Billable Hour Appeal has hauled in — at the time of publication of this story — £14,355.83. Update 12:10pm: It’s now up to £29,497.05.
With Jones’ big-earning silk pals splashing their cash, some of the donations are pretty hefty, with one anonymous individual handing out £1,000.
But it’s not just the big earners who have been contributing. A host a legal aid lawyers have donated generously, led by criminal barrister Jamie Hamilton who is pledging not just one hour but his entire fee for his appearance in court today.