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Dark days for legal aid

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23 March 2018 / Dr Jon Robins
Issue: 7786 / Categories: Opinion , Legal aid focus , Legal services
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Legal aid lawyers are undervalued, underpaid & under pressure, as Jon Robins explains

More than half of aspiring legal aid lawyers earned less than £25,000, according to a new study into social mobility by the Young Legal Aid Lawyers (YLAL) published earlier this month. ‘I pay out for rent, food, travel to work, my phone and Internet and there is nothing left. It’s depressing,’ complained one of the respondents who was managing to subsist in London on just £17,000 a year. The lawyer had to think twice about buying a 39p pack of sweets because they could not afford the ‘extravagance’. ‘I cannot live on my salary. My parents have to help me out,’ they said. ‘The money side of things is really soul-destroying. Firms are paying peanuts because they can.’

Social diversity

‘Young’ legal aid lawyers aren’t quite as young as you might think. Membership of YLAL is not age-dependent; instead a lawyer must be less than ten years post-qualified. The research drew on a survey of 200 respondents: they were

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