Associates
Amanda Finlay, Advisory Consultant
Amanda Finlay was a Trustee of Advicenow from 2009, when she retired from the Ministry of Justice. During her career she was an advocate and supporter of public legal education, and was a member of Professor Dame Hazel Genn’s PLEAS Task Force and of Lord Bach’s Public Legal Education Strategy Group. She was Chair of Advicenow (or Law for Life as were known then) from 2011 until 2023.
Amanda is a Council Member of Justice. She was a member of the Justice Working Groups on Access to Justice in an Age of Austerity, and on What is a Court? and chaired the Justice Working Group on Preventing Digital Exclusion from Online Justice.
Amanda was a member of the Civil Justice Council (CJC) from 2009 -2012 and was a member of the CJC Working Group on Litigants in Person Support Strategy and of the MOJ Litigants in Person Engagement Group. She is now a member of the MOJ LIPS Strategic Engagement Group .
She is a member of the Greenwich University Law Advisory Forum. She was Vice Chair of the Low Commission, and was a Trustee of LawWorks and a public governor of Oxleas NHS Mental Health Foundation Trust in South East London.
During her long career in the Lord Chancellor’s Department, and then the Ministry of Justice, Amanda worked on many aspects of access to justice. She was the MOJ Director responsible for legal aid strategy and for legal services reform. She led work to improve the forecasting and control of legal aid, introducing more predictable fee schemes for lawyers. She built on research and client surveys to target legal aid on more vulnerable groups. She led the arrangements to set up the Legal Services Board. She worked with the legal profession, academics, social workers and client representatives to develop improved arrangements for both private law and public law children cases. She supported the case for tribunal reform set out by Sir Andrew Leggatt in his review “ Tribunals for Users” which in time resulted in the Unified Tribunal service. She worked with human rights and asylum lawyers, and with the immigration and asylum judiciary, to develop HR compliant new asylum appeals primary and secondary legislation.
Amanda led the work on the Human Rights Act in the Lord Chancellor’s Department, working with human rights lawyers to ensure that the scheme of the Act was workable in the courts and leading ten all day “walkthroughs” to test out compatibility with judges, lawyers and human rights experts in courts from the magistrates up to the Court of Appeal. She was Secretary to Lord Woolf’s Inquiry “Access to Justice”, working with the judiciary, lawyers, academics and lay people to devise improvements to the civil justice system.
Earlier in her career she was engaged in work to open up legal services to more competition, including work with the Advisory Committee on Legal Education and Conduct on rights of audience applications from solicitors and employed lawyers, and the establishment of the Legal Services Ombudsman. Amanda was secretary to the Legal Aid Advisory Committee; worked with Richard White and Cyril Glasser (founder members of the Legal Action Group) on their report on unmet need for legal services in the 1970s and was engaged in the work to set up the Crown Court and the Court Service following the Courts Act 1971.
Tony Thorpe
Tony has worked in public legal education for thirty years, initially as member of the Law Society’s Law in Education Project, designed to develop the nature and extent of law-related education in schools. Tony was one of the founding members of the Citizenship Foundation, and the members of staff there who focussed on the development of law-related education.
Tony has written 20 textbooks and guides to the law. His publications include ‘A Guide to the law for refugees and asylum seekers' and the 'Young citizens passport' (amongst others) and he has written and developed teaching materials in the UK, Russia and Georgia. Tony has extensive skills in developing and implementing law-related programmes in both formal and informal teaching settings. He has designed programmes for a wide range of audiences through work with BBC and broadcasters, human rights organisations, schools and universities and many others.
David Thomas
David is a solicitor who practised in the legal aid sector for about 30 years, until September 2013. During that time he gained experience in many areas of legal practice, latterly specialising in housing law and related public law and human rights. In 2011 he was selected as Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year (Social Welfare category). He is now studying for a PhD in law at the School of Law, Birkbeck College, and teaching law to undergraduates there; he has a Graduate Certificate in Teaching and Supporting Learning in Higher Education.
He has been working with Advicenow helping to design and deliver training since 2016.
Olga Fuseini
Olga Fuseini is a Czech Roma consultant, activist and research fellow. She has years of experience in community development work, and she was involved in several projects led by the University of Sheffield, the University of Salford, Roma NGOs and Migration Yorkshire. Her work or contributions have been about integration of Roma migrants in the UK and identifying policy problems impacting Roma integration. One of the projects she was involved in was the National Roma Network which had a specific focus on working with national and local government departments to raise awareness of Roma issues in education, health, employment, housing, and community cohesion. Olga graduated in politics and sociology and her dissertation (Rotherham case study) looked at the role of the community centres on Roma integration in the UK.
Davina Adamson
Davina has extensive experience of advice and information provision within the voluntary sector for over 20 years. As Senior Adviser at Help the Aged she was responsible for providing public legal information and advice, as well as delivering training and mentoring to staff and volunteers. As Advice and Casework Manager for a charity called Ownership Options, which specialised in providing technical welfare benefits and housing advice, she was responsible for delivering training and legal guidance to local authority and housing association staff, as well as commissioning, editing and writing information guides for the public.
She currently works as a freelance writer, copyeditor and researcher into public policy and law around welfare benefits, welfare reform, social care and housing. As a freelancer, she has written, edited and evaluated public guides and factsheets for several organisations, including Age Scotland, Age UK and Independent Age. She has also written research reports and briefings for NHS Education for Scotland (NES) and HSEU (Housing Support Enabling Unit).
Davina’s skills are in copyediting and writing public information clearly and plainly for diverse audiences. She has considerable experience in information design and, more recently, has undertaken training in knowledge and information management.
Anta Brachou
Anta Brachou has just recently joined the Centre for Studies of Modern Slavery at St Mary’s University. Prior to joining the Centre, she worked for Hibiscus Initiatives, where she managed the Women Centre until June 2019. She has provided advocacy and support to vulnerable women affected by the criminal justice system and victims of trafficking. While at Hibiscus she established and maintained monitoring and evaluation frameworks that worked for the ‘one-stop-shop’ model and worked closely with various funders, including Big Lottery and Esmee Fairbairn to meet reporting objectives and project outcomes. She is also accredited at OISC Level 2 to assist service users with immigration and asylum advice, and led the organisation through the OISC auditing process.
Currently, she is doing PhD research at University of Hull, the Wilberforce Institute on human trafficking from Albania, to contribute to the 4Ps paradigm of the problem; prevention, protection, prosecution and partnerships. Anta has also conducted research on trafficking for ATLEP (Anti-trafficking Legal Project) and presently working on a feasibility study funded by Commonweal on housing for victims of human trafficking.
Lindsay Fletcher
Lindsay Fletcher specialises in welfare benefit advice and has worked with citizens advice for over 12 years providing benefit advice, supporting the public with appeals and income maximisation. Lindsay has joined us delivering courses on benefits for individuals and providing benefit advice focusing on breaking down barriers to accessing benefits, explaining complex benefit rules and looking holistically as situations.
She specialises in disability benefit appeals and resolving wrongful advice/complaints. Lindsay is also a freelance benefits trainer and works with many benevolent funds supporting their beneficiaries.
Michael Chambers
Michael Chambers is a welfare rights and money advice trainer with over 25 years’ experience. He delivers training for Benefits Training Company, Shelter, Citizens Advice, housing associations and a wide range of other voluntary, statutory and charitable sector organisations. He is also a team manager at Hertfordshire County Council’s Money Advice Unit, managing a team of welfare benefits caseworkers. Michael also manages the Unit’s training programme, which delivers benefits and money advice training to council staff and the private and voluntary sector in Hertfordshire.
Angharad Monk
Angharad is a barrister specialising in housing law with a focus on representing tenants and those facing homelessness. Before becoming a barrister she worked in a London law centre where she engaged in outreach work in the community and for local migrant projects, including the training of volunteers in housing related legal issues. Angharad continues to offer training and consultancy to third sector organisations on housing issues, and also participates in her chambers housing webinar programme aimed at a professional audience.
Theresa Harris
Theresa is experienced in designing and managing public legal information projects and materials, including a successful EU-funded advice sector partnership project to tackle discrimination. She is also a skilled writer and editor of user-friendly content on the law and rights, with expertise in information quality issues, and the information needs of litigants in person.
Jo Underwood
Jo is a supervising solicitor and lecturer in the King’s Legal Clinic at King’s College London. A solicitor with over 20 years’ experience in the legal aid sector, she specialises in housing and public law. She teaches and supervises Undergraduate and Postgraduate law students who work in the clinic. She also carries out research focused around improving policy and practice regarding homelessness, poor housing and access to legal advice.
Prior to joining King’s, Jo worked at the housing and homelessness charity Shelter for 15 years and was the head of the strategic litigation team. Jo has led test cases and third-party interventions on behalf of Shelter in several leading cases concerning homelessness, social security and poor housing. These cases include numerous Supreme Court challenges relating to homelessness, the benefit cap and out of area temporary housing placements. Jo also carried out training, policy, campaigning and research activities at Shelter, centred around improving policy and practice regarding homelessness and poor housing.
Natalia Schiffrin
Natalia has worked in human rights law and the voluntary sector for over 25 years, with an emphasis on the family justice system. She was an adviser at Family Rights Group for a decade, where she developed an interest in public legal education and helped produce resources for families involved with Children’s Services and, in particular, domestic abuse. She was a member of the Family Justice Council from 2022 to 2025 where she took the lead on developing resources in plain English for litigants in person. Natalia also served as a Family Magistrate and a Magistrate in the criminal division from 2016 to 2024. She is currently an adviser to the Family Justice Council, a member of the Howard League for Penal Reform’s Advisory Council and Transform Justice’s Court Watch Project Advisory Group. Natalia is also a consultant for a US law firm, where she undertakes independent employment discrimination investigations. Natalia has worked with Advicenow as a volunteer since 2020, helping design materials and deliver training, and is now delighted to be an associate.
