Lawyers gathered in London last week for a Legal Action Group (LAG) legal aid conference to celebrate 70 years since the modern legal aid system was founded.
Reporting on the conference for NLJ this week, former LAG director Steve Hynes describes how Supreme Court President Baroness Hale lamented the ‘patchy picture’ of legal help available in family law.
Lady Hale told the conference that ‘technology solutions can help but they cannot replace proper advice from a skilled person’.
Hynes says, that among delegates at the conference, there seemed to be a consensus that the Ministry of Justice’s direction of travel was right. However, he believes that ‘publicising the many positive human stories behind legal aid cases is likely to be the best way to sway political and public opinion to invest in this often maligned public service as it enters its eighth decade’.
