For professionals › Membership
Membership
For solicitors, medical experts, training providers, therapists and support professionals who work with survivors of abuse. Membership is being designed and is not open yet.
For solicitors, medical experts, training providers, therapists and support professionals who work with survivors of abuse. Solicitor membership is open: law firms can apply to join our Legal Directory. The other kinds of membership are not open yet.
Who membership is for
Membership is for people and organisations whose work helps survivors of abuse. There are four kinds.
Solicitors and law firms
For solicitors and firms who act for survivors of abuse in claims for compensation. It is for any regulated firm that does this work, not only specialist firms. Members appear in our Legal Directory.
Medical experts
For medical experts who write reports in abuse claims. Members will appear in our Expert Directory. This membership is being designed to respect an expert’s duty to the court.
Training providers
For organisations and people who run training for those who work with survivors of abuse. Members’ courses will appear in our Training Directory.
Therapists and support professionals
For counsellors, therapists and others whose paid work is supporting survivors of abuse. Where these members will be listed is still being decided.
Charities and helplines
Support organisations, such as charities and helplines, don’t need membership. They are listed in our Support Directory free of charge. If your organisation is listed there, read about your listing.
What members get
Membership is being designed. Every kind of member is planned to get:
- A directory listing that shows your own contact details, so people contact you directly.
- Our training: webinars, and recordings you can watch later.
- “Verified” on your listing, once we have checked and accepted you.
- Our newsletter for professionals.
Solicitors and law firms will also have a firm portal, where they keep their listing up to date.
Solicitor members get a listing in our Legal Directory and a firm portal:
- A listing card with your firm’s own website, phone number and email address. People contact you directly.
- The firm portal. You keep your listing up to date, submit articles for review, raise support tickets, and see delayed, aggregate figures on how often your card was seen and its contact links used. The figures never identify any visitor, and they are not a count of enquiries.
Our training and a newsletter for professionals are planned for every kind of member. They are still being designed.
What membership is not
- It is not payment for cases. We are never paid for a case.
- It is not a promise of work. We don’t promise any member referrals, enquiries or cases. Survivors choose who to contact, and they contact members themselves.
- It is not a quality rating. We don’t vouch for any member’s work. “Verified” means only that we checked a member by hand and accepted them.
- It is not a route to survivors’ details. We never ask for a survivor’s story, and we hold nothing about any survivor to pass on.
What “Verified” means
Every member we accept has been checked by hand by our staff, so their listing says “Verified”. For each check we will record what we checked, the public source we checked it against, and the date. We won’t keep copies of members’ documents.
Parts of what we check for each kind of member are still being decided.
The Legal Directory shows only firms that we have checked and approved, and each card says “Verified firm”.
How membership works
- You apply. You tell us who you are and which kind of membership fits.
- We check. We check your application by hand.
- You are listed, with your own contact details, as “Verified”.
- We check again each year.
If a member no longer meets our checks at a yearly check, we will tell them and give them a short time to put it right. If they don’t, the listing comes down until they do.
For solicitors and law firms, each step is set out in how applying will work.
For solicitors and law firms:
- You apply online. Applying does not create an account.
- We check your application by hand. We approve it, ask you questions or decline it. If we decline it, we send you a message.
- You set your own password. Once we approve your application, we email you a secure link to set it. We never email passwords.
- You complete your listing: your firm’s public details, and at least one region and one type of claim.
- We review your listing before it goes live. We review later changes too, and your last approved listing stays live meanwhile.
- You confirm each year that your listing is still accurate.
We can hide or suspend a listing. A firm can withdraw, which removes its listing at once. A firm that has withdrawn cannot rejoin by itself: it can return only after we have checked it again and restored it.
Membership for medical experts, training providers, and therapists and support professionals is not open yet.
How to apply
Membership isn’t open yet, so nobody can apply today. You can see how applying will work for solicitors and law firms.
Solicitors and law firms can apply now: apply to join the Legal Directory. If your firm is already listed, sign in to your firm portal. The other kinds of membership are not open yet.
Act for survivors of abuse? See what applying to the Legal Directory will involve.
Act for survivors of abuse? Solicitors and law firms can apply now.
See how applying will work Apply to join