Tax the City?

City law firms should make a financial contribution to legal aid, through a “tax” if need be, according to Geoffrey Bindman QC.

Writing in NLJ this week, Bindman, former leading legal aid solicitor and NLJ columnist, has backed the Lord Chancellor Michael Gove’s proposal that City firms contribute more to legal aid. However, he notes that “efforts to persuade prosperous lawyers to make a major contribution to the funding of legal services have a long history without significant result”.

Bindman argues that City law firms’ main contribution “must be financial” both because existing City pro bono programmes, although “highly commendable”, have “considerable limitations” due to a lack of expertise in the legal area concerned and because charitable efforts by the profession to raise funds for legal services “have not filled the gap”.

He suggests a levy of 10% on incomes over £150,000 which could be paid through a charity and therefore tax deductible.

City firms failed to welcome Gove’s suggestion, in June, that they contribute more. However, most of them already have substantial pro bono programmes and all do pro bono work, some of which is ground-breaking and innovative.

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, for example, became the first City firm to win a Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year (Laly) award this year, jointly with Royal Courts of Justice Advice Bureau, for their development of Courtnav.

Linklaters has commissioned legal education charity Pro Bono Community to provide its lawyers with a bespoke training programme in housing law. The training covers legal advice at clinics, social security law and housing benefits, and common areas of housing law that arise at the advice clinic Linklaters runs in conjunction with the Mary Ward Legal Centre.

The training is part of Linklaters’ involvement in the Collaborative Plan for Pro Bono in the UK, and will be rolled out to in-house counsel and lawyers at other firms.