We interviewed lawyer Sashy Nathan of Commons Legal, set up as a non-profit, cooperative law firm in 2016 with the aim to provide outstanding legal advice and representation to all of their clients, regardless of how the case is funded.
We spoke about how the firm was founded and why it dedicated its practice to criminal justice in the UK?
In 2021, Commons Legal won the coveted Cambridge Social Innovation Prize and Sashy told us about what inspires the Commons Legal team and what their plans were for the future of the cooperative. But first, we asked him why the firm was named “Commons”?
Here is what he said,
We named our law firm Commons because we believed in social justice and that lawyers can play a role in connecting society with the common good. Historically, the notion of the Commons broadly means that essential resources should be accessible to all members of a society, this may include natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable earth, or in more recent times, the internet. There is a vast array of intellectual theories spanning centuries and continents on the Commons as it applies to land ownership, feminism, economics and more. Our interpretation is a model of legal practice that serves people, not just profit, and that demonstrates novel approaches to problems in criminal justice and human rights where old ways of thinking and failing structures produce social injustices.
Know more about Commons.Legal here https://www.commons.legal/about-us
Listen to a conversation about law, cooperatives and criminal justice with Sashy Nathan, Solicitor at Commons Legal and Santosh Kumar ICA Director of Legislation.