Channel 4 News
Next on TV
Tonight 7.00pm
Menu
4 Sep 2015

Lawyers raise thousands donating billable hour to refugees

Lawyers, accountants and writers are donating a billable hour of their salary to the charities helping Syrian refugees.

Relatives mourn during funeral of Syrian children Aylan, 2, his brother Galip, 3 in Kobani

Lawyers have raised over £45,000 for Syrian refugees in less than a day donating just an hour of their salary to charity.

Many in the legal profession are renowned for the amount of money they can charge for a “billable hour” – and just how many hours they can rack up in a day.

However lawyers are turning the reputation on its head donating the equivalent of hundreds of hours to Save the Children.

Sean Jones QC, an employment lawyer, stared the “Lawyer’s billable hour appeal” at 11pm last night with a target of £5,000 . That had been reached by the time he went to bed.

The total currently stands at just over £45,000 from 344 donations. That is the equivalent of £50 a minute over the last 15 hours.

Accountants and writers have also set up fundraising pages to get colleagues to donate to refugee appeals.

He told Channel 4 News: “I got very upset by the photograph of the young boy on the beach, and as a father of young children I just found seeing that utterly harrowing.

Wanting to donate he was pointed in the direction of a writer encouraging fellow writers to donate and decided to get his fellow lawyers to do the same.

He added: “Given that this whole crisis seems to be energetic machine for creating appalling injustices it is naturally something that makes lawyers sit up and want to do something about it.

“I have been astonished, even though I shouldn’t have been. These are the people I work with and I know the sort of people they are.”

He added that young barristers who do not earn billable hours and are struggling to make ends meet due to legal aid cuts have been donating the equivalent of an entire day’s fee to the cause.

The Lawyer magazine and the Solicitors’ Journal have also donated.

The campaign has been so successful that accountants have set up a page for members of their their own profession to contribute.

“I’m just hoping for some professional rivalry,” Mr Jones added.

The fundraising comes as David Cameron announced that Britain would take “thousands” more migrants but will not reveal the exact detail of the plans until next week.