header-logo header-logo

Home Login E-newsletter About us

NLJ this week: Practical ways to rescue legal aid

© Copyright LexisNexis 2025. All Rights Reserved.
02 June 2023
Issue: 8027 / Categories: Legal News , Legal aid focus
printer mail-detail
124248
Could Starmer, Davey or Sunak (or whoever becomes the next prime minister) rescue the legal aid system? In this week’s NLJ, columnist Roger Smith looks back to the Cameron-Osborne years of austerity, before examining potential routes back to functionality.

The government could, for example, found a national legal service encompassing Citizens Advice and other advice centres. It may even be possible to include funding sources so that it partly pays for itself.

Whatever happens, it is not controversial to say that the current legal aid system needs help.

Smith, a former director of JUSTICE, writes: ‘In 2010, you could credibly argue that England and Wales had the best civil legal aid scheme in the world. Now, you would be laughed at for asserting anything like that.’ 

Read Smith's vision for the future here.

Issue: 8027 / Categories: Legal News , Legal aid focus
printer mail-details
RELATED ARTICLES
 

MOVERS & SHAKERS

Read All
Sponsored by
DWF—19 appointments

DWF—19 appointments

Belfast team bolstered by three senior hires and 16 further appointments

Cadwalader—Andro Atlaga

Cadwalader—Andro Atlaga

Firm strengthens leveraged finance team with London partner hire

Knights—Ella Dodgson & Rebecca Laffan

Knights—Ella Dodgson & Rebecca Laffan

Double hire marks launch of family team in Leeds

NEWS
Read All
NLJ this week: AI boom collides with courtroom reality
Artificial intelligence may be revolutionising the law, but its misuse could wreck cases and careers, warns Clare Arthurs of Penningtons Manches Cooper in this week's NLJ
NLJ this week: Small firms call for tech clarity as AI looms
Small law firms want to embrace technology but feel lost in a maze of jargon, costs and compliance fears, writes Aisling O’Connell of the Solicitors Regulation Authority in this week's NLJ
NLJ this week: Traders’ convictions quashed in Libor shock
The Supreme Court issued a landmark judgment in July that overturned the convictions of Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, once poster boys of the Libor and Euribor scandal. In NLJ this week, Neil Swift of Peters & Peters considers what the ruling means for financial law enforcement
NLJ this week: Trans pool player loses discrimination fight
Charles Pigott of Mills & Reeve reports on Haynes v Thomson, the first judicial application of the Supreme Court’s For Women Scotland ruling in a discrimination claim, in this week's NLJ
NLJ this week: Pro bono power without the red tape
Bea Rossetto of the National Pro Bono Centre makes the case for ‘General Practice Pro Bono’—using core legal skills to deliver life-changing support, without the need for niche expertise—in this week's NLJ
Copyright © 2025 LexisNexis
back-to-top-scroll