Spare a thought for those poor legal aid lawyers

“Michael Gove tells @CommonsJustice he is keeping door open (just about) on reversing some legal aid cuts by citing a future review.”

I can see further back pedaling on yet another Grayling change that’s backfired in the near future…

In the 1990s in Scotland legal aid changed from being based on hours billed to a fixed fee of £500 for all work up to the first 30minutes of a trial. Anecdotally I noticed far fewer cases I was involved in went to trial after fixed fees came in. Seems lawyers weren’t so keen on trial when they weren’t making money.

A google search prompted by this thread confirms fixed fees changed the way cases were dealt with to some extent.

“the most economic use of fixed fees is simply to plead everybody not guilty, apply for legal aid, get legal aid granted, the plead them all guilty in the intermediate diet”.

Lawyers, Markets, And Regulation – Frank H Stephen.

“the most economic use of fixed fees is simply to plead everybody not guilty, apply for legal aid, get legal aid granted, the plead them all guilty in the intermediate diet”.

But that would never happen, because it would be unethical… 😕 😆

Fuller report on the effects of fixed fees at

http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2007/06/22104314/6

“You sometimes think that there is no more money to be earned here so I might as well just advise the client to plead guilty;

I suppose the other side of that is ‘I’ll get £x an hour if this goes to trial so I might as well kick the arse our of it even though he’s going to get convicted’. Which obviously also requires there to be some unscrupulous lawyers.

I’m real late to this and have absolutely no insight, but are you allowed to defend yourself, now the government’s taken away legal aid? Or is it allowed but an automatic fail?

You can, and I’ve seen it result in an acquittal more than once. In Scotland there are some sexual offences where you are not allowed to defend yourself, for obvious reasons. Don’t know if that’s the same in E&W?

They haven’t taken criminal legal aid away. They have cut it back a bit (most criminal legal aid). I’ve sat in a few courts over the years and the situation in most courts seems to be that word of mouth/performance/history results in most of an areas regular criminals being represented by a a few legal firms. So even though the fixed fees may be lower there is still a living to be made as one lawyer at a busy court can represent several clients each day. This does have the disadvantage that smaller firms and sole practitioners may not be able to operate at a profit. Swings and roundabouts.

Pondo, you can represent yourself (except in very special circs as thegreatape points out) but the people who typically rely on legal aid are probably the least capable of constructing and presenting a logical coherent defence. Moreover even if the big hitters from stw represent themselves (who are all accomplished debaters!) they inevitably, through inexperience, waste huge amounts of court time thus costing other parts of the judicial system more money in the long run
Then of course there will be more appeals etc too…

I did a long screed about the fee structure fortunately for you all I managed to lose it before posting .so in brief Yes the fixed fee system can be exploited but only so far and the sanctions are draconian.
The basic dispute is that firms that the government assess as being on a 6% profit margin are asked to swallow a 17 % pay cut plus additional cuts when the inefficiencies within the system beyond their control are not being addressed by the government that created them.
We are asked to restructure ourselves invest in a new digital working system that is flawed and expensive at a time when the government as a matter of policy plans to withdraw contracts from 2/3s of firms for purely ideological reasons.