How Lisa Hilder Is Helping Women Reclaim Their Voices in a Legal System That Failed Them
When women can’t afford justice, they often can’t afford to leave.
In 2012, the UK government passed LASPO (the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act) quietly rewriting the eligibility criteria for legal aid and stripping funding from women who needed it most. Women in domestic abuse situations, already impoverished by partners who controlled their finances and stopped them from working, suddenly had no route to legal representation and no realistic way to pay for it themselves.
Lisa Hilder had been watching this happen from the front line.
Lisa Hilder, Director and Founder, Affordable Justice and Preston Road Women's Centre
As one of the original founders of the award-winning Preston Road Women’s Centre in Hull, Lisa had spent years witnessing how economic abuse and legal complexity worked together to keep women trapped. Alongside her colleague Sue Sedgwick, a family law solicitor, she watched the effect LASPO was having in real time… women unable to escape, unable to access courts, unable to get the clean legal break that would finally free them.
Affordable Justice was their answer. It took over two years to devise a financially sustainable model, but in 2016, they opened as a non-profit Alternative Business Structure legal firm with charitable status, able to charge less than a third of commercial solicitor fees by stripping out the profit element that inflates standard legal costs.
But the fees were only part of the problem.
"What has been even more enlightening," says Lisa, "is the insidious misogyny of the family courts process that is open to weaponisation by the very people from whom these women are trying to escape. And the handling of these women by legal representatives whose main focus is protecting their own bottom line has led to many women being retraumatised."
Lisa and Sue built something different. A framework with what they describe as a golden thread of feminism running through everything, meaning the client relationship is built not on legal transaction but on compassion, shared understanding and a trauma-informed approach that ensures the woman is listened to, believed, and central to every decision made on her behalf.
"For many of these women, it is not about getting the house or money," Lisa explains. "In fact, these things can often tie them right back to their abuser, prolonging the anguish. For many of these women, gaining their freedom with a clean and permanent break is more valuable than any financial settlement."
In an independent evaluation, 97% of women achieved the outcomes they wanted. That figure reflects what happens when a legal service is designed around the person using it rather than the system processing them.
From its beginnings in a small room in a gifted council house, Affordable Justice now serves women throughout England and Wales from a purpose-built suite of offices. The model Lisa created has also extended beyond legal support. She has been instrumental in creating safe homes for women rebuilding their lives, raising over £9 million for housing services. The average number of times a woman attempts to leave an abusive relationship before leaving for good is seven, often because she has nowhere safe to go. Affordable Justice's housing work is directly addressing that.
Beyond their own work, the funding model Lisa developed has allowed 29 other charities to raise a further £17.6 million, providing safe housing for thousands of women across the UK.
"Moving charitable endeavours away from dependency on grants and donations, and towards self-sustainability is much more empowering," says Lisa. "They can take back control — and that is when they are no longer forced to return."