Work doesn’t pay: civil legal aid providers at breaking point

The study, ‘Research on the sustainability of legal aid’, was commissioned by the Law Society and conducted by Frontier Economics with housing and family legal aid lawyers in not-for-profits and private practice. It found 82% of providers were making a loss from civil legal aid.

More specifically, all housing legal aid providers in the sample were loss-making from their civil legal aid work, including all private sector solicitors offering housing work.

It found 47% of family legal aid providers were loss-making. All not-for-profit providers sampled in both areas of law were making a loss.

One lawyer told the researchers: ‘We simply can’t afford to do private family legal aid.’ Another said: ‘It’s an exercise in withering on the vine. We’re all quite old. I look at it and think, in ten years’ time there won’t be any legal aid work.’

Civil legal aid fees have not increased since the 1990s and were cut in 2011 by 10%. According to the Law Society, this represents a real terms reduction of 90% since 1996.

Law Society president Nick Emmerson said: ‘This research reveals an untenable situation where reductions in fee levels by successive governments mean fee-earning staff cannot even recover the costs of providing legal aid, let alone generate a profit to make the organisation sustainable.

‘Those who remain in the market are only able to do so by cross-subsidising from other areas and relying on the goodwill of staff to regularly work overtime, leading to real difficulties with recruitment and retention—especially at senior levels of the profession. Others are taking the decision that legal aid work is simply no longer viable and exiting the market, leaving areas of the country with no legal aid provision at all.

‘This is just not sustainable and is resulting in massive market exit, with advice deserts growing across the country. It is a significant concern when a city the size of Liverpool struggles to sustain housing provision and the family courts are flooded with litigants in person. These figures provide clear evidence of the reasons why.’

Emmerson urged the Ministry of Justice, which is currently conducting the Civil Legal Aid Review, to set fee rates at a ‘realistic and sustainable level’.