Most of the times that we hear about companies based up in the City of London, it is to do with banking scandals, or the size of employees bonuses, or something else equally unsavoury to those of us who aren't involved in such work.
So I am delighted to share today about a conversation I had yesterday that somewhat redresses the balance.
Advocates for International Development (A4ID) is a charity that empowers lawyers to use their skills to help fight world poverty. It acts as the broker between NGO's that are involved in world development and meeting the millennium development goals, and law firms who wish to use their skills to assist the NGO's with solving legal matters.
CRED Foundation is one of the NGO partners for A4ID, and we have recently applied for some legal advice regarding the ambiguous wording of part of the charity tax laws. Don't worry, everything we are doing is totally legal and above board, and I won't bore you with the details, but suffice to say yesterday I had a very good conversation with 2 lawyers from a big law firm in London who are going to do the investigating for us. And the nice thing is that the advice, which normally costs an arm and a leg, was free - because the law firms do the work pro bono ie for free!
Our enquiry is relatively small, and I doubt it will take them many hours to sort out; but for us who aren't legally trained it would take hours, and even then we'd still be wondering if we'd reached the right conclusion. Yes we could turn to a lawyer in the normal way - but it is very nice to be able to ask the question and not wonder if the cash-flow will cover the bill when it comes in.
And of course another benefit of the A4ID set up is that we are given the opportunity to let big law firms know about what we do. Now I'm not making any assumptions about what will happen - but God does have a knack of bringing the unexpected out of situations, so who knows what might happen with any given contact and conversation!
So I am delighted to share today about a conversation I had yesterday that somewhat redresses the balance.
Advocates for International Development (A4ID) is a charity that empowers lawyers to use their skills to help fight world poverty. It acts as the broker between NGO's that are involved in world development and meeting the millennium development goals, and law firms who wish to use their skills to assist the NGO's with solving legal matters.
CRED Foundation is one of the NGO partners for A4ID, and we have recently applied for some legal advice regarding the ambiguous wording of part of the charity tax laws. Don't worry, everything we are doing is totally legal and above board, and I won't bore you with the details, but suffice to say yesterday I had a very good conversation with 2 lawyers from a big law firm in London who are going to do the investigating for us. And the nice thing is that the advice, which normally costs an arm and a leg, was free - because the law firms do the work pro bono ie for free!
Our enquiry is relatively small, and I doubt it will take them many hours to sort out; but for us who aren't legally trained it would take hours, and even then we'd still be wondering if we'd reached the right conclusion. Yes we could turn to a lawyer in the normal way - but it is very nice to be able to ask the question and not wonder if the cash-flow will cover the bill when it comes in.
And of course another benefit of the A4ID set up is that we are given the opportunity to let big law firms know about what we do. Now I'm not making any assumptions about what will happen - but God does have a knack of bringing the unexpected out of situations, so who knows what might happen with any given contact and conversation!
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