Civil legal aid providers at breaking point
Legal Futures, Solicitors Journal and Today’s Conveyancer cover the Law Society’s final report from Frontier Economics, which worked with providers of housing and family legal aid to understand their operating model and financial situation.
Law Society president Nick Emmerson said: “This research reveals an untenable situation where reductions in fee levels by successive governments mean fee-earning staff cannot even recover the costs of providing legal aid, let alone generate a profit to make the organisation sustainable.
“Those who remain in the market are only able to do so by cross-subsidising from other areas and relying on the goodwill of staff to regularly work overtime, leading to real difficulties with recruitment and retention – especially at senior levels of the profession.
“Others are taking the decision that legal aid work is simply no longer viable and exiting the market, leaving areas of the country with no legal aid provision at all.
“With the Civil Legal Aid Review now in its final stages, this research provides a model for future analysis and setting of fee rates at a realistic and sustainable level that is fair to both providers and taxpayers.”
Digital accessibility guidance
Practical Law (£) and LawCareers.Net cover our new guidance to support disabled people in the workplace by highlighting how organisations should prioritise digital accessibility.
Law Society President Nick Emmerson said: “At a time when the legal sector is increasingly being encouraged to explore the use of legal technologies to enhance legal practice, it’s important that law firms and organisations are not inadvertently creating barriers by failing to consider accessibility at a baseline level.
“Instead, firms and organisations should use the opportunities that technologies bring to create a more accessible and inclusive profession for everyone.”
Demi Rixon, vice chair of the Law Society’s Disabled Solicitors Network committee, who led on the production of the guidance, said “It is exhausting and sometimes soul destroying tackling the vast amount of barriers trying to enter the legal profession as a disabled person. Then once you are in, there are even more barriers making it difficult to stay in, and accessible technology is one of these.
“Technology is innovative and exciting and can be a powerful tool to create better inclusion for everyone. Importantly, it can shatter some of those barriers disabled people face.”
Read our press release & our new guidance
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