COMMENT: Rising legal costs must be controlled (From Worcester News)

COMMENT: Rising legal costs must be controlled

8:30am Saturday 13th March 2010 in

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WE CONFESS to being somewhat puzzled by what Worcester solicitor Ruth Edwards says in her passionate defence of her profession in the ongoing debate over the rising cost of legal aid.

As regular readers will recall, we revealed earlier this week how legal aid costs for crown court cases had increased by more than £1 million between 2006 and 2009 even though the number of cases heard had fallen by almost 1,500.

Ms Edwards, from Worcester’s Thursfields practice, says the figures are not the result of rising defence costs. She says lawyers are not ‘fat cats’ milking the legal aid system.

Instead she says bureaucracy is the reason for the increased costs.

All of which is confusing, to say the least.

The extra £1 million it has cost taxpayers to pay the defence costs of 1,500 fewer defendants in a three-year period must be going somewhere.

Whether it is going into the pockets of solicitors or being swallowed up by red tape is immaterial.

What concerns us is that the system appears to be out of control financially.

We repeat our view that legal aid is vitally important to the administration of a criminal justice system that is fair and affordable to all. Every person accused of a crime must have access to legal advocacy whether they be a baron or a beggar.

But the system’s spiralling costs have to be brought under control, particularly with the nation’s public finances in their current parlous state.

Comments(2)

lowlybarnacle says...
11:15am Sat 13 Mar 10

There needs to be some focus on solicitors' applications for legal aid.

As the National Audit Office found late last year, these applications are sometimes inaccurate/misleadin
g or plain wrong.

Fault also lies with the Legal Services Commission (whose CEO resigned last week) who appear to lack the ability to properly scrutinise applications for legal aid.

Not only that, but there are seemingly no sanctions for solicitors who do apply for legal aid on an intentionally false basis. Compare with what happens when a benefit claimant does the same.

I really do think it would be useful if this paper were to obtain info from Worcester's law firms on how much taxpayers' money they have applied for and obtained for both criminal and civil cases and decide whether it really is value for money.

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Hymie says...
1:08pm Sun 14 Mar 10

Much legal aid work is carried out not by solicitors but by clerks and then charged out at solicitors rate .
Very offen solicitors charge for more interviews with clients then take place - something very difficult to check.
A better use of legal aid would be for convicted clients to be made to pay back the cost of their aid. The client now has no idea of what the legal aid cost or what their solicitors claims. The clients should be given an
itemized bill from their solicitor and you can be sure they will check that they are charged properly. The solicitor would be paid by the legal aid board on submission of their account and the legal aid cost would be collected by the Court along with any fine. This would have the effect of making guilty defendants think about an early guilty plea rather than wasting money with a spourious not guilty one and solicitors would know that their claims for aid are going to be checked by their client also.

COMMENT: Rising legal costs must be controlled (From Worcester News)

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