Archive for September, 2007

Knackered

Published
by
Nearly Legal
on 30 September 2007
in job and whatever
. 1 Comment

It has been a long, frantic week, preparing for a trial. Naturally, the trial was adjourned at the very last minute for lack of free court/Judge/time. Not necessarily a bad thing, as it gives us some time to convince the client that she really, really, really doesn’t want her day in court. She is currently certain that, if only the Judge hears her, the Court will not only award many thousands in aggravated and exemplary damages, but quite probably demand that the local authority chief executive is imprisoned.

None of this is remotely likely, and the client has been repeatedly told so, but she has been obsessed with her case for so long that I don’t think it has sunk in at all. Even assuming that we can get the current settlement offer improved a bit, it is going to be a nightmare getting the client to agree to it, but she will have to. Counsel concurred with our view, so there won’t be funding to continue. So, although we are closing to pulling off a definite good result with a massive improvement in the client’s position from when she came to us, she will not be at all happy and will probably complain.

It has all left me tired and rather dispirited, perfect for the long slog into the shortening autumn days.

Open letter to Jack Straw

Published
by
Nearly Legal
on 24 September 2007
in Legal Aid and job
. 1 Comment

Dear Minister for Justice,

I note that in your address to the Society of Labour Lawyers you asked for the help of the legal profession in finding out why England and Wales spend more on legal aid than ‘any other nation’.

I am somewhat surprised that you haven’t got civil servants, advisory groups, commons committees and professional bodies who can explain this to you. I thought the Committee on Constitutional Affairs and the Law Society had tried to give explanations and suggestions, amongst many others. But I am delighted that you seek our views and trust that you will consider the following.

The increase in the legal aid budget that you give is apparently not adjusted for inflation. The statistics office won’t let me go back beyond 1987, but since 1987, there was about 100% inflation to 2005, and the inflation rate was, on average, quite high between 1980 and 1987. So let us be generous and say another 40%. So the equivalent legal aid budget for 1980 would be £916 million.

But this is still a sizeable increase, of course. The LSC, the Law Society, The Committee for Constitutional Affairs and others all point out that the increase has been driven by high cost criminal cases and the family sector, although uniquely, the LSC refuse to act on this information.

Now ask yourself why this increase? Might the 40 Acts of Parliament on Criminal Justice and the thousand odd of new offences since 1997 have anything to do with it? Might the record prison population be somehow linked to it? Or perhaps the introduction of new sentence structures while failing to ensure that the necessary support services are in place? You know that tends to mean expensive appeals, particularly when the Government won’t actually let any judgment go unappealed. That’s a fair few tens (or hundreds) of millions down the drain for starters.

Or in the civil sector, might the increase in social services activity, and its underfunded support services (do you see a trend?) bring about an increase in Family cases, mostly in long drawn out child care cases?

You see, Jack, if I can call you Jack. (I feel I can, since one of your jogging bodyguards once stood on my foot as I approached Waterloo Bridge, and it is hard to be formal once you have seen someone in a sweaty vest, even if accompanied by two glowing close protection officers in shiny shorts.) It isn’t just legal aid lawyers that drive up legal aid costs. In fact, I would go so far as to say it isn’t legal aid lawyers driving up legal aid costs, full stop. As is evidenced, Jack, in the fact that you are wrong to suggest that the:

“astonishing” increase in the cost of legal aid had also spurred a rise in the numbers of lawyers and their incomes.

From 1980? Maybe in numbers - although not income - adjusted for inflation. But, I’m sure that, being Minister for Justice, you have noticed that the number of legal aid lawyers has been falling dramatically over the last few years. Oh, sorry. hadn’t anybody told you? And the reason why? Because it is very hard to make a decent living off a legal aid practice, perhaps.

And I have to say, Jack, I am sad to see you deploying the old resort of the desperate hack, the irrelevant comparison, when you said:

it could not be right that in England and Wales £34 was spent per head on legal aid, compared with £10 in New Zealand, £7 in the Irish Republic, £4 in Germany, £3 in France and £1 in Sweden.

Of the five comparators, three have completely different legal systems (and hardly any legal aid worth speaking of), two have vaguely similar systems but much smaller populations, far fewer offenders, far fewer offences per head of population, less legal redress against the state or other private bodies, and, as far as I can tell, desperate and embattled ‘public’ lawyers.

So, one reason our legal aid system costs more is that it is (still despite everything) better. For one of the pillars of the welfare state, (you remember Jack, like Education and the NHS), the aim should surely be to be quality for all.

I hope this has been of some help, Minister, because whatever ‘advice’ you are receiving appears to be, shall we say, a bit lacking in detail, honesty and that vision thing.

Oh and as someone just about to become a solicitor, I would like a legal aid sector to work in. Thank you.

Yours sincerely

Nearly Legal

Stop Equal Pay Claims - EOC

Published
by
Nearly Legal
on 22 September 2007
in job
. 0 Comments

I was, to put it demotically, gobsmacked by the content of a ‘warning’ from the Equal Opportunities Commission that the Employment Tribunal system is creaking under the weight of claims brought by those naughty ‘no win no fee’ solicitors. When they have exhausted the public sector, says Chair Jenny Watson, they will turn on the private sector.

And now the truly jaw dropping part:

The majority of cases involve local authorities, but the commission says the private sector is just as vulnerable to claims.

It warns that “no win, no fee” lawyers will continue to fuel the number of women challenging employers. The commission suggests a new system in which employers must agree to check their pay system for discrimination to ensure it is fair.

In return they would get breathing space - a period of two to three years when they would not have to face any individual pay claims. The Commission’s chairwoman, Jenny Watson, said: “In return for accepting a legal obligation to check their pay systems are free from discrimination and taking robust steps to put their house in order should they find they have a problem, we think employers should have some breathing space from individual claims for a limited period. “This approach - what we’re calling a ‘protected period for transitional arrangements’ - is the kind of modern approach that’s needed.”

So, the system is collapsing under the weight of equal pay claims. This is not because the public and private sector persist in unlawful pay discrimination, it is because of the ravening hordes of no win no fee lawyers bringing cases. That these cases are merited and the claims largely successful is beside the point.

Rather than improve or enlarge the system so that unlawful pay discrimination can be adressed, the answer is to offer firms a moratorium on claims while they have a bit of a think about maybe not indulging in pay discrimination. The implicit threat being that if they don’t have a bit of think, the ravening hordes will be waiting, clawing at the door for when the moratorium period ends.

And this, astonishingly, from the Equal Opportunities Commission itself. The EOC’s website boasts the motto:

The Equal Opportunities Commission is working to eliminate sex discrimination in Britain today. If women and men had equal chances in life, things would be different. We’re working on it…

Apparently not by enforcing the law.

Whether this approach persists when the EOC vanishes into the Blob-like CEHR, we will have to wait and see.

Enough already

Published
by
Nearly Legal
on 20 September 2007
in whatever
. 2 Comments

My last post on the Hyman affair (at least unless or until something else interesting turns up) is just a pointer to this story, an ‘exclusive’ interview with Hyman’s client. I had missed this on the entirely justifiable basis that it was in the Mail on Sunday. It manages, in a quite glorious way, to make you loathe everyone involved in the whole saga.

Unsurprisingly I was right a week or two ago. Hyman’s client, the former ‘radio executive’, naturally being skint because ‘I had not worked since my marriage broke up’, is suing him. Ms Sanders Young demonstrates the creative flair that supported her media career by deftly avoiding cliche: ‘My life was turning into a Kafka novel’, she said.

But the overall reliability of the story may be judged by the assertion that Hyman didn’t know when he sent the fatal email that emails could be traced:

What he didn’t know, until Karen explained to him later, was that emails could be traced.

He walked into his legal chambers in some distress a couple of days later and resigned.

Nah. One doesn’t suddenly borrow an internet connection from a shop in the Tottenham Court Road to send the email if you don’t know emails can be traced.

A reminder that, as ever, when principles are lost, the circumstances are not dramatic, let alone glamorous, just tawdry.

Hyman and Doughty Street

Published
by
Nearly Legal
on 19 September 2007
in whatever
. 14 Comments

Doughty Street Chambers have a press release on their front page about Bruce Hyman. It reads:

There have been several false press reports that Bruce Hyman, a barrister who has pleaded guilty to an attempt to pervert the course of justice, was a member of Doughty Street Chambers. Mr Hyman was in fact a pupil, attached to Doughty Street Chambers only for a few months of his training period, having successfully completed a 12-month pupillage at Blackstone Chambers. He resigned before he could be considered for membership of Chambers and nobody here had any inkling of his criminal behaviour.

Frankly they should have said so earlier, as the rest of us were left to make do with items such as this, this (third column from the left, bottom), this and this, some of which are from Doughty Street, all of which clearly identify Hyman with Doughty Street or ‘at’ Doughty Street.

Certainly rumours have been circulating about Hyman and Doughty Street since news of his guilty plea broke. That would have been the time to clarify matters.

Although this actually makes matters murkier. Some accounts say that Hyman only resigned from Chambers when told to by the Judge in the criminal proceedings. Does this mean he was still a pupil at that point? Was he therefore a pupil when he was acting in the case that was his downfall?

Nice smearing of Blackstone Chambers in the press release, though.

[Edit 20/09/07. In the comments to this post, a barrister with knowledge of the history has confirmed that Hyman was a pupil, probably third six, and given some background to the mitigation argument and Hyman's resignation from Chambers.]

Coming soon - Hyman, the Prison Diaries

Published
by
Nearly Legal
on 19 September 2007
in whatever
. 2 Comments

So Bruce Hyman got 12 months for perverting the course of justice, thanks VM for the details. The Beeb has a photo of Hyman looking furtive, as well he might.

That may be longer than other media people have received for looking at child porn, but I have to agree with VM that, considering Hyman was entirely prepared to see the opponent he framed go to prison, it doesn’t seem like quite enough. Perhaps a new charge of ’stamping repeatedly on justice’s weeping face while laughing maniacally’ should be introduced for these occasions.

One presumes he will now be disbarred without further ado.