Legal aid focus

Let us remember the names of the reviewers and researchers of legal aid since 1997: Sir Peter Middleton, Frontier Economics, Matrix Consultancy, Lord Carter of Coles, the (hapless) in-house Fundamental team and now Sir Ian McGhee. As Labour came into office, it asked a retired banker what to do. As it seemed likely to leave, it asked a former civil servant the same question.

Fixed fee figures represent a 40% cut to hourly rates

Family lawyers have voiced concern at a new “uneconomic” fixed fee structure for family legal aid work.

Civil & criminal systems could be separated under Ministry of Justice proposals

“Bombed—lost everything”. That was how one London Citizens Advice bureau memorably recorded the nature of the legal problems for the newly dispossessed “streams” of clients approaching the nascent service. War was declared on 3 September 1939 and the first bureau opened its doors the next day.

As legal aid limps past 60, Elsa Booth suggests the adoption of some alternative funding pathways

If it’s a 60 in London, it’s only 35 in Washington. National legal aid got going later in the US. President Obama issued a special proclamation celebrating the 35th birthday of a US national civil legal aid service through the establishment of a legal service corporation.

Maximum rates for experts and cuts to criminal work among proposed changes

The tendering date for civil and criminal legal aid contracts has been pushed back six months to October 2010 to give the Legal Services Commission (LSC) time to finalise arrangements.

Legal Aid Minister Lord Bach marked the 60th anniversary of the introduction of legal aid, this week, with a pledge that vulnerable people “most in need” would get the right help at a cost that was fair to practitioners and fair to the taxpayer.