Nearly Legal: Housing Law News and Comment

Readers may remember that I was concerned to the point of cyncism about the revelation that the Community Legal Service Direct phone line managed a referral rate to solicitors of 13%. I have now heard that the contracts for the pilot Community Legal Aid...

Jonathon Freedland has an eminently sensible opinion piece in the Guardian on why legal aid matters and where Carter is a disaster. The article is clear and impassioned, but also sadly true in suggesting that this is unlikely to be an issue that leads to the...

Some of those of us metaphorically stripped to the waist at the civil legal aid coalface will be impressed or envious at the fast work of Scott-Moncrieff Harbour & Sinclair, who have decided that it is better to pre-empt the Legal Services Commission's...

And just in case one wasn't depressed enough about legal aid... Yikes. I'd missed this in the Observer, as I was out of the country. Thanks to Tessa Shepperson again for picking it up and for her considered post. I share her misgivings about the reported...

Interesting whispers are circulating about the planned direction for civil legal aid funding, previously discussed here. The initial plan for Community Legal Networks, or CLANS, was that these would be supported for rural areas and advice deserts. Firms...

First day of the new regime, as the firm where I worked is absorbed into another larger firm. All the usual issues over supervision, disbursements, etc., etc.. All the necessary adaptions to working practice, culture of firm etc., etc.. But beyond that, the whole takeover represents a more serious symptom of what is happening to the sector that does publicly funded work, particularly for civil legal aid.