Solicitors who provide legal aid services are among the worst paid in the public sector according to a recent survey. The average salary of a legal aid solicitor is £25,000, less than a prison officer or sewage plant worker. It is also well below police officer, nurse and secondary school teacher according to figures compiled by the Guardian newspaper and published by the Law Society.
In light of the recent Ministry of Justice consultation – that plans to slash fees for legal aid – the Law Society says ‘enough is enough’. Chief Executive Desmond Hudson said: “There is no scope left for cutting fees. These figures show that solicitors undertaking legal aid earn well below the average for professional salaries, and considering solicitors can amass significant student debts and work very long hours, the pay is very far from fat cat territory.” The Law Society believes any cuts to “this thread-bare system” will see firms no longer able to undertake this work, civil provision in mixed practices being hit, and the most vulnerable clients unable to obtain the assistance they need.
The Law Society has just published its response to the Ministry of Justice ‘Legal Aid Funding Reforms’ consultation. It states that the proposal to pay for committal hearings under a fixed fee in the Crown Court “is a fundamental misconception in the paper, that work conducted in the magistrates’ court is being ‘duplicated’ in the Crown Court”. In a scathing critique of the Advocates Graduated Fee Scheme, the Law Society say that, after the stagnation of criminal legal aid rates from April1994 to 2001, the LSC encouraged practitioners to sign up to a new contracting regime that promised a partnership between Government and the profession that could provide the necessary defence services that underpin a fair adversarial system of justice. “Since then, in contradiction to the promises, more and more cuts have been instigated. Whilst claiming to be done in the name of efficiency, these cuts have become nothing more than cynical brinkmanship: the only measure of policy that the Government recognises is whether there are enough survivors to provide the service”.
The Law Society say it is clear that, whilst practitioners continue to try to do their best for their clients, the recent seemingly relentless swathe of cuts to fees at all levels of work has left many of them with no choice but to undertake the minimum work possible within acceptable levels. “Clearly if cuts to police station fees leave practitioners with no choice but to spend less time in the police station, this is likely to lead to more people being charged, and more people being remanded in custody, thus causing further burden to the already overstretched prison population”. Their conclusion is that Criminal defence lawyers have become beleaguered and demoralised. “This fact will ultimately lead to profound damage to the future of defence services. Unlike any other part of the legal aid community criminal practitioners provide a 24 hour service to the community every day of the year… The current proposals for Crime risk cutting legal aid provision to a bare minimum that will see firms no longer able to undertake this work”.
The full text of the Law Society’s response can be found at the extremely long web address:
