What does our Legal Services team do? By the BALPA Legal Services Sub-Committee pilot members ike every industry, pilots and BALPA particularly love abbreviations. One that hopefully you wont hear too often is LSSC. It stands for the Legal Services Sub-Committee, a voluntary committee working for the NEC. Members only tend to come into contact with the LSSC when they need personal help from BALPA over a legal issue, or when their Company Councils (CCs) have to deal legally with intransigent companies. Actually, the LSSC does a lot more than that. We are the managers of all of BALPAs legal matters. Our remit is everything legal, from holiday pay to personal injury; winning battles for Monarch pensioners against the Pension Protection Fund to successfully stop airlines such as Ryanair and BA from injuncting strike ballots; and issues such as stopping unlawful deductions from wages to getting legal redress for pilots who have been victimised. We choose the legal firms. We source the experts in their field who advise you, Company Councils and the NEC on the legal matters that arise. We know which barristers and law firms provide the best service. We manage the running of each and every legal case to make sure the service you get is the best. We advise the NEC and Company Councils on how the law works, how it affects the industrial agenda, and the best strategies to employ to achieve the wanted outcome. When your Company Council or National Officer is faced with a difficult legal matter, they come to us to get the latest and correct information. We also look after individual members who need legal help, be that for employment matters, personal injury or other problems perhaps 50 to 100 members a year. We tell you how it is, not how we want it to be. In short, when it gets nasty, and legal threats are being thrown about, we are the ones who have your back. We are made up of several pilot volunteers, all of whom have extensive Company Council or NEC experience. We are supported by a team of fulltime assistants at BALPA House again, chosen for their expertise. We are the biggest-spending department in BALPA, but that is because BALPA defends its members interests. Yet you know little about us and wed like to change that. Part of doing that is this article, which explains who we are and what we do. Our next article will explain how we come to the decisions we do, and the way we work. In addition, we have asked our best legal advisers to write about aspects of the law that affect pilots in their work, and to dispel some of the myths and misconceptions that are around. Over the coming months, we plan to publish a series of these, starting with the feature on the next page. We manage the running of each and every legal case to make sure the service you get is the best Who we are Simon Williams, LSSC Chair, NEC, easyJet Sam Walkinshaw, NEC Executive Vice President, Jet2 Andrew Hammond, BA Jerry Kinder, Virgin Atlantic Ed Lawrence TUI Collectively the LSSC pilot members. LEG AL Legal eagles