The Last Ditch by Tom Paine

2 responses to “What Price Justice?”

1. 

   james higham

   February 9, 2007

   ‘Erosion of freedoms’ is just an expression bandied about until it strikes home through something like this. When your profession is no longer a profession, it’s time to get out. It’s a nauseating thing seeing oneself further and further alienated from one’s country and the way back seemingly closing off.

   LikeLike

   Reply
2. 

   Nearly Legal

   February 10, 2007

   You correctly identified the note of irony in that post, but didn’t notice that I am not a solicitor. But, pettifogging over professional qualifications aside, the matter at issue is not an improvement in legal aid, (there has been no increase in civil legal aid rates since 2004 and that was the first for something like seven years), but rather a set of proposed changes which make legal aid practice, civil or criminal, virtually impossible for private practices. The arguments for national rates and set fees is not coming from practioners, but the Government.
   For criminal defence, from which practioners are already fleeing, a ‘Public Defence’ body, directly run by the Legal Services Commission, is the proposed replacement (despite being more expensive in trials). For civil legal aid, where the number of practioners has dropped by 25% in 4 years, Community Legal Advice Centres, funded jointly by the Legal Services Commission and local authorities, are imagined to be able to fill the advice deserts when still more private firms abandon legal aid work.
   So, the choice is to either deal properly with independent professionals or head towards an entirely state funded and controlled provision of legal advice and representation for those who cannot otherwise afford it.
   I don’t think you’ve actually thought through what an independant profession means in and for the legal aid area.
   By the way, state subsidies to litigants usually means funding defendants faced with a claim or prosecution by the state or a quasi public body. Equality or arms, y’know.
   A claim by an individual will not get public funding unless it has at least a 50% chance of success, and success means that the public funding is repaid by the defendant, so not so much a subsidy as a loan.

   LikeLike

   Reply