Legal Questions and Answers by
Jonathan Stones of John Barkers
Question :-
I was concerned to read national reports which suggest that a very large number of law firms are considering dropping legal aid work, producing a situation in which, in some areas, it will be difficult to find a solicitor to take a legal aid case.
Given that the people who receive legal aid are usually amongst the poorest sectors of society, it would be a very unhealthy development.
My questions are: a) Is this really happening? b) If it is happening, why is it happening? c) Is there any evidence that it is happening in our area?
Answer :-
All the evidence would suggest that there are many law firms that are taking a long hard look at their legal aid practices. Whether or not they actually decide to withdraw from legal aid work remains to be seen.
The source of the recent news reports was a Law Society survey of 200 legal firms. About a half said they were considering not taking legally aided consumer cases; 38% seem to have reservations about housing and landlord disputes and 33% were looking at their legally aided employment work. Just 27% said they might stop taking criminal cases on a legal aid basis.
The reasons this is happening are threefold - bureaucracy, pay and demand.
To do legal aid work these days it is necessary to have a franchise for the particular category of work involved, for example criminal law, matrimonial work and so on. Franchises involve jumping through lots of bureaucratic hoops: Standards of work have to be audited; files are inspected annually, as are accounts.
It is quite right that checks are made to ensure that public money is properly spent and that the solicitors doing legal aid work are competent, organized and able to provide a proper service. However, the current levels of administration take a considerable amount of time, much of it unpaid.
Secondly, legal aid rates of pay are set by the government and they haven't been going up very often or by very much. Certainly they have not been keeping pace with the rates of pay in private practice. In this situation it is scarcely surprising that many lawyers - in particular many of the best lawyers - find it difficult to justify spending their time
on legal aid work when there is heavy demand for their services at more realistic rates.
Thirdly, to save money successive governments have tightened the financial criteria for people seeking help, with the result that fewer and fewer clients are able to get legal aid. So solicitors are going through hoops, to work at reduced rates in a diminishing market.
Legal aid is not what it used to be, either from the public's point of view or the
lawyer's perspective. This is why firms are asking if it is worthwhile to seek or retain legal aid franchises.
The current position in Grimsby & Cleethorpes is that there is still a good choice of solicitors open to clients in most categories of legal aid work. However, if the reserve about the system translates into some law firms abandoning legal aid, then things could change.
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