This post is about paralegals and barristers in legal aid work. Which means that it will mostly turn out to be about solicitors. The latest Legal Action (March 2008) has a rather dispiriting, but unsurprising piece on the results of a Young Legal Aid...
Obvious filler 6
My occasional attempts to get cheap laughs at the expense of passing bewildered internet searchers are getting more difficult. Virtually all of the search terms that have brought people here recently are legally related and most even make sense. I hate it...
LSC Judicial Review Mk 2
The Law Society is (just about) to file the second Judicial Review application of the Civil legal aid Unified Contract, this time arguing that, following the Court of Appeal judgment in the first JR, the LSC has to address the illegality of the current fixed...
Legal aid, negligence and the clients from hell
It's not a housing case, but Leonard & Leonard v Byrt & Others [2008] EWCA Civ 20 caught my eye as being of practical interest for legal aid practioners and potential amusement for everyone else. This was an appeal against a summary judgment against...
More in sorrow than in anger
or rather, a good slapping. A sequel to the last post on barristers refusing to sign up for the VHCC contract. A hat tip to Charon QC for the link to the response of the Chairman of the Bar, Tim Dutton to Richard Collins' letter from the LSC accusing...
Lacking Support
Tempted though I am to get caught up in Jeremy Paxman's baggy pants revelations (and don't you just love the image of Paxman raising his best inquisitorial eyebrow as he questions the occupants of his gym and, of course, the House of Commons as to the...
Exodus Part 1 (of many)
The Guardian reports on a survey by the Association of Lawyers for Children. The results are not surprising to anyone facing a legal aid future (although the survey was done before the LSC decision to terminate the unified contract). One-third of individual...
LSC throws rattle out of pram
Good heavens. In an announcement carefully made at 5 pm on 21 December 2007, the Legal Services Commission states that intends to terminate the unified contract. Yes, that civil legal aid unified contract that we mostly signed up to in March/April 2007 and...
Badness in courts, of courts and of law lecturers
A quick outline of a busy news day... The Court of Appeal says that (some) provisions of the Legal Services Commission's Unified Contract are unlawful, specifically the most sweeping of the unilateral amendment clauses. The judgment is pretty devastating,...
Legal Aid. Could be clearer. Will be smaller.
The judgment in Minister for Legal Aid v Main, R (on the application of) [2007] EWCA Civ 1147 might be of limited general applicability, concerning as it does the provision of 'special case' legal aid funding for inquests, but one passage in the judgment...
Statistics can be fun at the SHLA
The Social Housing Law Association has released a 'Policy Statement' on the need for legal aid reform. Briefly, they claim that far too many weak cases are brought against social landlords by legally aided tenants and that the subsequent litigation costs to...
Through the Looking Glass
'It seems very pretty,' she said when she had finished it, `but it's RATHER hard to understand!' (You see she didn't like to confess, ever to herself, that she couldn't make it out at all.) `Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas -- only I don't exactly...