Legal aid
The Legal Services Commission is dropping hourly rates and turning tail on its plans to set up a panel of barristers for complex criminal cases. The Commission’s proposals, launched in December 2008, will create a panel of litigators and a list of accredited advocates for very high cost criminal cases (VHCCs).
Litigators will negotiate how much work they carry out in a contract, and cases will be structured around a series of core litigation tasks.
Advocates will be contracted for individual cases, and will be paid a combination of graduated fees for core advocacy tasks and negotiated rates for case specific tasks rather than hourly rates. Barristers boycotted a VHCC panel set up last January, forcing the Commission to drop its plans, and a revised scheme set up in its place is due to expire in July 2009.
Tim Dutton QC, immediate past chairman of the Bar, says: “The proposed scheme should provide a fair payment mechanism, which reflects the complexity of the cases in question, and the concomitant expertise required of those advocates who conduct them. It will deliver within budget.”
Civil legal aid will become fully electronic in 2010, under a “Delivery Transformation” scheme announced by the Commission in December.
Applications for certificates, the completion of financial means assessments, billing and bill payments will be done electronically. The commission
says the new system will speed up progress on cases and save up to £7m in costs a year.
