Stone King runs Campaigning and Public Law Toolkit event with co-hosts, the Sheila McKechnie Foundation

On Thursday 12 June, Stone King, along with the Sheila McKechnie Foundation, held a Campaigning and Public Law Toolkit event for charities and advocacy organisations.

The afternoon of talks and discussions took place at The Goldsmiths Centre in London and was co-chaired by Melanie Carter, Head of Public and Regulatory at Stone King, and Katie Roberts, Interim CEO of the Sheila McKechnie Foundation.

The first half of the event began with Aoife O’Reilly, Solicitor at the Public Law Project, and Melanie demystifying the use of public law for campaigning purposes, including how to approach costs. Tom Murdoch, Partner at Stone King, then took to the lectern with Joss Saunders, General Counsel at Oxfam, to speak about the interaction between charity campaigning law and strategic litigation, citing relevant case law as they went.

Katie de Kauwe, who is a Senior Lawyer at Friends of the Earth, continued in this vein by presenting a detailed case study on Friends of the Earth’s joint intervention with Greenpeace UK on the sentencing of Just Stop Oil protesters, and Lizette de Howarth, Senior Lecturer at the University of Law, finished the first round of sessions by speaking about human rights in international campaigning.

Following a quick tea break, Lucas Atkin, Head of Information Law at Stone King, delivered a thought-provoking presentation on the use of surveillance and data against campaigners.

To finish, Head of Charity at Stone King, Rosamund McCarthy Etherington, chaired a panel discussion which took questions from the audience and gave panellists the time to individually speak on their perspectives of the opportunities and threats for lobbying, campaigning and strategic litigation. On the panel was: Jake White, Head of Legal Advocacy, WWF; Jake Lee, Deputy Director, UK Programmes at Unbound Philanthropy and Director of Strategy and General Counsel at the Legal Education Foundation; Ravi Mehta, Barrister at Blackstone Chambers; Jovan Owusu-Nepaul, Head of Public Affairs at Social Enterprise UK; and Katie de Kauwe, who spoke earlier.

Particular thanks goes to all our speakers, and we look forward to running more events like this in the future.

If you would like to view the slides from the event, please complete the simple request form below with your first name, last name and email address, then submit.