Justice should not depend on what you can afford.
Justify UK Foundation provides legal advice, advocacy and representation to people who could not otherwise afford to challenge unfair or unlawful decisions.
Registered charity 1188873.
Every year, thousands of people face decisions by public bodies that are unfair, procedurally flawed, or unlawful. Schools, local authorities, immigration officials, child protection services, housing teams. The settings change. The pattern does not. Legal aid is scarce. Specialist solicitors are expensive. Most people have no realistic route to challenge what has been done to them, and no one to stand alongside them when they try.
Our Founder
"The headteacher believed he could 'punish ADHD' out of his child."
Nick Whiteley, Founder, Justify UK Foundation
Nick founded the Justify Foundation in 2020, after a protracted legal battle with a school whose headteacher believed he could "punish ADHD" out of his child. When that approach inevitably failed, the school permanently excluded him, unlawfully, as Nick went on to establish.
Challenging the exclusion cost a great deal, financially and personally. The procedural failings Nick uncovered along the way convinced him the case had to be seen through, even when the damage to his own child could no longer be undone. He secured an independent barrister-led review into the school's conduct, which produced substantive changes in how the school operated.
That experience exposed Nick to how many other families, children, parents and carers, were facing similar injustices, without the knowledge, the legal aid, or the financial resources to challenge them. He responded by qualifying himself to help. First a paralegal certificate, then a postgraduate diploma in law, then an LLB.
Since founding the charity, Nick has acted as McKenzie Friend and lay advocate in court, supported clients across a wide range of legal areas, and undertaken investigative research where the circumstances of a case demanded it. In a recent strategic policy challenge brought as a litigant in person, he succeeded in a judicial review against a Local Authority represented by a KC and junior counsel, and compelled that authority to commission an independent barrister-led review of its policies and treatment of families.
The Justify Foundation exists to make that kind of accountability accessible to people who would otherwise have no route to it.
Our Mission
Justify exists to make accountability accessible to people who would otherwise have no realistic route to justice.
Enforce
We help people challenge unfair, unlawful or procedurally flawed decisions by public bodies.
Empower
We stand alongside individuals and families who would otherwise face complex legal systems alone.
Educate
We examine documents, decisions and procedures to identify failings, clarify what happened, and help people understand whether there may be grounds for challenge.
What Justify does
By your side in court
We support people facing court or tribunal where formal legal representation is unaffordable or out of reach. This may include McKenzie Friend support or lay advocacy where appropriate and permitted.
Strategic Legal Challenges
We bring judicial reviews and policy challenges where decisions by public bodies have caused, or will cause, serious harm.
Investigative Research
We uncover the procedural and evidential failings that public bodies would prefer to keep hidden, and put what we find into the hands of the people who need it.
"When Justify agreed to support me, I didn't feel alone anymore... without Justify I don't think I'd be alive, and my son would have no mum"