Legal Aid Lawyers in Quandary?
This week I met a friend who still, like many dedicated people in Bradford and elsewhere, practices almost exclusively in family cases funded by the LSC. More and more she delegates the minor cases to assistant solicitors so that she can concentrate on the most profitable area, namely care proceedings, where anyone involved gets legal aid and which is remunerated at the top legal aid rates. Even so she feels that her department is not providing as much return for her efforts as it should be.
She was disturbed because she had just attended a local LSC meeting at which she and fellow solicitors in the area had been told its plans for the future. At last the LSC is openly admitting that it wants to provide work to fewer, larger firms. In addition it wants to see the accounts for the firms it employs to check their profitability and viability. The LSC also expects open access to the firms' computers by linking to their own. The demands went on and on, apparently leaving a very sour taste in the mouths of the appalled delegates. My friend especially dislikes the idea of merging the few small and medium firms in Bradford into larger ones. She has had experience of a partnership with partners she did not like or respect. She knows how difficult partnerships can be, even for small numbers of like- minded people. She sees little prospect of forming a harmonious partnership with many of the other firms in the town. She believes that lawyers, especially committed advocates, are very individualistic and that they will have great difficulty establishing lasting organisations which will satisfy the LSC. She is also worried that these firms will be so dependent on the LSC for work that they will have less power to complain about its injustices.
What the LSC really wants is the equivalent of a salaried legal service but without the responsibilities which that would entail. They want lawyers at their beck and call but do not want to give them employment rights, pensions, holidays and all the other rights to which employed solicitors would be entitled. They should set up a proper salaried legal service. If they did many including my friend would be happy to join. Instead the LSC expects my friend and the others like her to behave as though they are employed, but covering their own overheads, while providing them with net profits which are less than the LSC would actually put into the pay packet of any lawyers they did employ.
So will my friend and her partners find another firm or two with which to merge? If the partners who do not do family work did not want to do this, would her firm have to break up? Will the new firms really be stable and viable bearing in mind the enormous costs involved in complying with the LSC demands? Or will they have bankruptcy petitions issued against them after a couple of years by HMRC like yet another legal aid firm in Bradford has done recently? And if firms in Bradford do merge, will there then be sufficient to provide a pool of firms capable of dealing with the conflicts which arise eg in many multi-party care cases?
My friend was floundering. She did not know what to do. Her instincts told her to tell the LSC to get lost. If everyone in the profession did so, the LSC would have to stop these plans wouldn't it? But she reckons that some firms will already have said they will comply through short-sighted stupidity or in the hope of carving up the market. If she wants to keep doing the work she loves, for the clients who need her, she will have to comply too, won't she? What are you going to do?
She was disturbed because she had just attended a local LSC meeting at which she and fellow solicitors in the area had been told its plans for the future. At last the LSC is openly admitting that it wants to provide work to fewer, larger firms. In addition it wants to see the accounts for the firms it employs to check their profitability and viability. The LSC also expects open access to the firms' computers by linking to their own. The demands went on and on, apparently leaving a very sour taste in the mouths of the appalled delegates. My friend especially dislikes the idea of merging the few small and medium firms in Bradford into larger ones. She has had experience of a partnership with partners she did not like or respect. She knows how difficult partnerships can be, even for small numbers of like- minded people. She sees little prospect of forming a harmonious partnership with many of the other firms in the town. She believes that lawyers, especially committed advocates, are very individualistic and that they will have great difficulty establishing lasting organisations which will satisfy the LSC. She is also worried that these firms will be so dependent on the LSC for work that they will have less power to complain about its injustices.
What the LSC really wants is the equivalent of a salaried legal service but without the responsibilities which that would entail. They want lawyers at their beck and call but do not want to give them employment rights, pensions, holidays and all the other rights to which employed solicitors would be entitled. They should set up a proper salaried legal service. If they did many including my friend would be happy to join. Instead the LSC expects my friend and the others like her to behave as though they are employed, but covering their own overheads, while providing them with net profits which are less than the LSC would actually put into the pay packet of any lawyers they did employ.
So will my friend and her partners find another firm or two with which to merge? If the partners who do not do family work did not want to do this, would her firm have to break up? Will the new firms really be stable and viable bearing in mind the enormous costs involved in complying with the LSC demands? Or will they have bankruptcy petitions issued against them after a couple of years by HMRC like yet another legal aid firm in Bradford has done recently? And if firms in Bradford do merge, will there then be sufficient to provide a pool of firms capable of dealing with the conflicts which arise eg in many multi-party care cases?
My friend was floundering. She did not know what to do. Her instincts told her to tell the LSC to get lost. If everyone in the profession did so, the LSC would have to stop these plans wouldn't it? But she reckons that some firms will already have said they will comply through short-sighted stupidity or in the hope of carving up the market. If she wants to keep doing the work she loves, for the clients who need her, she will have to comply too, won't she? What are you going to do?
posted by Steve Butler, UKlawyers | 4:04 pm
2 Comments:
A speaker on a legal Training course I attended nearly ten years ago said that legal aid would be allowed to die "a death of 1,000 cuts". The government would not risk announcing outright abolition, but would gradually restrict and regulate legal aid to the point that almost no one would qualify for it, and it would scarcely be worth having anyway.
Solicitors who are prepared to carry on doing the work should accept that that is how it is going to be. Otherwise, don't do legal aid. Harsh, but true.
All civil legal aid faces the same problem. Criminal faces other problems. I don't think it has sunk in yet how drastic the plans are. Rates are to be frozen for the next 5 years on top of the 'large firm only' scheme. Plus the CLACS and CLANS as dubious solutions to advice deserts.
It is a real possibility that this is the end for small specialist legal aid firms.
Post a Comment
<< Home