Mike McIlvaney studied Politics and Sociology at Durham University and following graduation studied law at Leeds. Passionate about the rights of the politically and socially oppressed he embarked on a career in social welfare law and has worked in both private practice and the voluntary sector. For the past 20 years he has specialized in housing and has taken cases to the Court of Appeal, House of Lords and Supreme Court and represented clients in some of the leading cases in this area of the law. He was a founding partner of the Community Law Partnership (CLP).