header-logo header-logo

11 April 2019 / Steve Hynes
Issue: 7836 / Categories: Opinion , Legal aid focus , Profession
printer mail-detail

Shine on! Legal aid at 70

The MoJ is travelling in the right direction but is it too little too late, asks Steve Hynes

It’s 70 years since the modern legal aid system was founded, and Legal Action Group (LAG) celebrated this auspicious occasion with a conference in London last week attended by the great and the good from the legal aid world.

A packed first plenary session heard from Baroness Hale,the president of the Supreme Court. Lady Hale is a long-time supporter of the charity who has described herself in the past as ‘a LAG generation lawyer.’ Her speech focused on family law, and she used a hypothetical example of a woman from Richmond, North Yorkshire—where she went to school—who had experienced domestic violence. She listed the websites and other sources of information the woman could use to navigate her way through the legal system and concluded the help available added up to ‘a patchy picture’ and that ‘technology solutions can help but they cannot replace proper advice from a skilled person.’ Lady Hale also said

If you are not a subscriber, subscribe now to read this content
If you are already a subscriber sign in
...or Register for two weeks' free access to subscriber content

MOVERS & SHAKERS

Harneys—Maggie Kwok & George Weston

Harneys—Maggie Kwok & George Weston

Harneys senior leadership appointments

Freeths—Keith Browne & Jim Jordan

Freeths—Keith Browne & Jim Jordan

Freeths strengthens London Construction and Engineering practice with two strategic senior hires

Anthony Collins—Laura Moss

Anthony Collins—Laura Moss

Anthony Collins announces strategic hire to deepen skills base in the social business sector

NEWS
Existing defamation law can respond to AI ‘hallucinations’, but allocating responsibility will prove harder where outputs reach users without human intervention
The High Court has upheld a rare successful serious-irregularity challenge after an arbitrator relied on an implied term neither party had advanced
Thirty years after The Future of Law shook a profession still using fax machines, its central forecast looks increasingly less like prophecy and more like description
More than 100 teams from the legal and financial services sectors competed in five sports at the 51st Law Society RFC Festival of Sport earlier this month
Part-time status need only be an effective cause of less favourable treatment, rather than the sole cause, the Supreme Court has held in Augustine v Data Cars
back-to-top-scroll