Our 20th anniversary year has been a fantastic year of celebration, collaboration and change.
We have shipped 4,000 books to 16 organisations in 13 countries. This brings the total in 20 years to nearly 100,000 books shipped to more than 300 organisations in 63 countries. Our mission to support the rule of law with printed legal resources remains as robust as ever; future shipments are already in train for the start of 2026.
Throughout the year we have had unstinting support from our partners, as well as law firms, barristers’ chambers, in-house lawyers, the courts, law students, legal publishers and law librarians. We are immensely grateful to everyone who has assisted us this year in our mission. In the summer, the team at the RCJ held another successful cake sale, and Ben Yallop braved all manner of extremes to raise money for the ILBF.
The impact of the books continues unabated as vital printed resources to support legal studies, inform judgments, and increase knowledge and understanding are shared with our partners overseas. The year started with our first shipment to Ukraine, and finished in December with shipments to South Sudan, Iraq and Ethiopia. Thanks to our Latin American representative, Franz Mariscal, and the legal team at Anglo American, we have shipped to two universities in Argentina, our 63rd country.
Our 2025 essay competition for law undergraduates, launched by Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the-Hill, the Lady Chief Justice, generated a record number of entries and produced a very worthy winner, Sean Xue. Sean enjoyed a week’s work experience with competition sponsor Brown Rudnick. The responses to the question we set showed how committed law undergraduates are to the rule of law and its future.
The 20th anniversary event in May at Clifford Chance was a marvellous celebration with partners, funders, and volunteers, with the Lady Chief Justice and our founder patron Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd in attendance to celebrate with us.
2025 also brought our very first judicial and law librarian guests from Nigeria and Sierra Leone to London to visit key law libraries at the RCJ, Inner Temple, Lincoln’s Inn, and Herbert Smith Freehills, as well as the chance to meet the teams at LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters. The visit built on the excellent online training from BIALL volunteers in May. The partnership with Africa House London and the UK Sierra Leone Pro Bono Committee, and financial and technical assistance from A4ID and ROLE UK made all of this possible.
In September, Laiba Choudhury took over from Haroon Matloob as shipping coordinator for 2025-2026. In the autumn term, law students at the University of Cambridge and the University of Nottingham packed books for Argentina and Kenya. Laiba will soon be working with new university groups at UCL and the University of Surrey.
The year ends with our new Chief Executive Katherine Eden Haig taking over from Katrina Crossley. We are looking forward to working with Katherine and building on 20 years of success in the decades to come.
You can watch a short film of highlights from our 20th anniversary year here. Our thanks to the recipients of books in Ukraine, Ecuador, Sierra Leone, Jamaica, Belize, Turks and Caicos Islands, Kwara State Nigeria, Iraq, Uganda and South Sudan for sharing their photos with us.
With all good wishes for the festive season and the new year to come from the trustees, patrons and operating committee.
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