LawWorks - the working name of the Solicitor’s Pro Bono Group - has launched a new service: 'Initial Electronic Advice' -

'Initial Electronic Advice is a free, automatic web-based system which provides brief legal information in response to straightforward legal queries. It is designed to assist not for profit organisations and individuals who cannot afford to pay for solicitors privately.

The system allows us (LawWorks) to submit a short legal query and have this answered anonymously by a lawyer via email. The process is that we receive an email with a short legal question. The system then produces a list of our volunteer lawyers who work in the area of law concerned and sends the question to them one by one by email. If the first lawyer in the list is unable to assist, they ‘reject’ the question and it is sent automatically to the next person on the list, and so on. If the lawyer is able to help, they ‘accept’ the question and answer it (also by email). Their answer email is sent to us, and we then forward this to the agency / organisation who submitted the question.'