Saunders Law helps Inside Justice with surplus funds
Every year, Solicitors firms find that their client credit accounts may hold small sums of money that are left over after a case has been closed. Cheques for witness expenses may not be presented, clients can emigrate or disappear, third parties may find they are holding the client's funds and pay them over. The firm is required to make every reasonable effort to find the client and pay over monies due, but if after a reasonable period of time has passed and the firm is sure that the client cannot be found, they can decide which charity should be the beneficiary of any monies left over in their client account. The process is supervised by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, and any clients that unexpectedly re-appear are paid out in full.
Saunders Law has chosen to send their surplus funds to Inside Justice, an organisation investigating alleged miscarriages of justice, and can think of no worthier recipient.
Inside Justice is a division of the not-for-profit National newspaper Inside Time, which has been a voice for prisoners and invaluable resource of information since it was launched in 1990. One Inside Justice trustee is Louise Shorter, who for 10 years was a producer/director of the BBC's long-running miscarriage of justice TV series Rough Justice. The organisation's Advisory Panel considers select cases put before them with a view to identifying new work and investigative strands; with the family and friends of a person who says s/he is innocent of the crime they are imprisoned for and with their existing solicitors and legal representatives, they seek to investigate, challenge and overturn any miscarriages of justice they find and reveal the truth. Members of Inside Justice's Advisory Panel have been pivotal in getting a string of wrongful convictions overturned, most notably: the Bridgewater 4 case, Danny McNamee, Reg Dudley, Sam Hallam, Suzanne Holdsworth, Keith Hyatt, Bob Maynard, Victor Nealon and Barri White.
Any law firms who wonder what to do with the funds left over in their client accounts after the requisite period, may want to consider passing the money to this worthy cause.