The Joy of Housing Law
The Law Society’s ‘what price justice‘ campaign hits a snag when solicitors are banned from wearing these small, well designed and unobtrusive badges in Magistrates’ Court
Actually, on closer inspection, it turns out to be a great PR opportunity based on one Magistrate in Stoke on Trent having a bit of wobbly, but hey, the upside is that the Law Society have got someone with a bit of nous doing PR.
By any means necessary, comrades.
Nearly Legal made the blawgreview 86.
I am Becky Sharpe, albeit a Becky with a trumpet of her very own. (I do realise possession of a trumpet with intent to play equates less to social climbing minx and more to nuisance neighbour.)
Still, as someone who has used and abused Dante allegories all too often in the past, may I say ‘Oh well played sir’ to Colin Samuels, although surely both the pride and avarice terraces could have been more thickly populated…
I’ve been toying with the idea for while, since I discovered Google Co-op. Why not a search engine dedicated to legal resources/information/commentary, bringing together the scattered information and comment that is already out there?
So, with a small parp of the trumpets, here is an alpha version. It is also accessible via the ‘Law search’ tab at the top of the page. Note that this search only covers freely accessible sites. Closed commercial sites will not show up.
There are over [edit] 90 sites in the list so far (and much thanks to Delia Venables for the superb work in collating and organising resources). But although I’m adding sites for searching at the moment, I feel that it is a bit weak in criminal and family sources (and perhaps corporate as well - assuming there are any free ones). [I'm in the process of adding in conveyancing and property, mental health, immigration and more family sites. Intellectual property, Public law, trusts, agriculture and shipping will be strengthened soon].
Any and all suggestions for sites (preferably as top level urls) are welcomed as long as they contain useful resources rather than mere publicity.
email contact (a) nearlylegal.co.uk
I hope people find this useful. Please let me know. [Once the thing appears to be reasonably functional, I'm happy for anyone to add the search box to their sites, but it is distinctly pre-beta at the moment].
is wearing this rather uninspiring thing. Nonetheless, you may see it here quite often.
As Nick Holmes and Family Lore have noted, the Times Law blog appears to have unceremoniously vanished, 404ing without even so much as a goodbye. I hope that something new is planned, although in retrospect the difference between the blog and the Times law online pages was never entirely clear - was the blog for news, gossip, insider views, comment, polemics or what?
I was once asked if I’d like to send some trial contributions to the Law blog. I assume many people were (although the contributors list remained noticably the same). This did give me a head scratching moment or two trying to work out what a Times law blog piece might be like, because it wasn’t particularly clear. Therein, perhaps, lay its problem.
Obviously I got it wrong as my one or two spec submissions didn’t make it. And then work got in the way of doing anything more than this blog. But, being a rather sad person, I had been thoroughly entertained by the prospect of appearing on some page with the Times header and had even readied a post celebrating the occasion should it arrive. As it will never be used now, I’ve dug it out of a dusty corner of my hard drive and stuck it here, as a memorial to the Times Law Blog.
As my youth was spent getting through the 1980s, my formative moral values were those of a rather puritanical leftism, with an emphasis on personal rectitude. In particular, one did not sell out to the Establishment, as the slightest compromise meant damnation (of a secular sort).
Naturally, as with all moral taboos, the despised act gains a half buried, denied fascination. So it was that ever since the early 80s, I have awaited the corrupting touch of the Establishment with much the same mix of fear and desire as an 18th century virgin on her wedding night.
Alas, the Establishment declined to ravish me and despoil my moral sensibilities. I resigned myself to being more George Eliot than Vanity Fair.
Until this (link to putative post).
Hoorah. Loosen my stays and call me Clarissa.
In what would, were all the world a stage, be a rather overdone bit of dramatic irony, the final publication of the LSC’s future legal aid funding arrangements took place yesterday, as did the showing of ‘Evicted’ on BBC1, part of the Beeb’s ‘No Home’ project.
‘Evicted’ was a really rather good documentary, following a few evicted families through homeless applications, temporary accommodation, B&Bs, sofa surfing etc., with all the effects on the kids shown clearly, missing GCSEs and school, fearing being taken into care and so on. All the familiar problems were on display: eviction through housing benefit foul-ups by the same Council; findings of intentional homelessness on eviction for arrears, regardless of the basis for the arrears; Homeless units failing to accept applications; unsuitable temporary accommodation many miles from schools and support networks, that is then changed at a moment’s notice. A depressing litany, which apparently took some people by surprise.
Many of the local authority’s actions looked to me to be potentially challengeable or reviewable. Indeed, Shelter took action on one family’s part. Viewed from that angle, the documentary was a clear demonstration of the need for civil legal aid.
Of course, the south west, where the documentary was largely made, is a notable ‘advice desert’, particularly for housing law. So, what is the LSC’s published route to the future going to do about this? Given that I have already pointed to the irony involved with a large neon arrow, readers will not be surprised to learn that the answer isn’t good.
They are setting the Legal Help fixed fee at a national rate of £170. All homeless work, apart from judicial review and Housing Act appeals, is conducted under Legal Help. There is currently a set fee, which has been based on a firm’s ‘average’ costs of Legal Help cases from a few years ago. Now there is a set fee of £170, which is roughly 2.5 hours billable work at standard legal aid rates. Supposedly this is a notional national average. It looks to me like a significant cut.
I have heard of current Legal Help rates for firms I know of varying between £250 and £500, and Law Centres at about £210 or so. I would be delighted to receive comments from anyone in England whose firm does Legal Help at a rate less than £170 on the current scheme, because I can’t really see how this can be done. Perhaps this post will be flooded with comments, but I doubt it.
Dealing with homeless cases tends to be detailed, protracted and time consuming work. It is extremely difficult to do effectively under the current Legal Help system without running a loss (at least at my firms current rate). Call me Cassandra, but the future isn’t looking good and, given this juxtaposition, yesterday wasn’t a great day either.
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