Law Society seek City firms support for LASPO effect
Industry News : 11 June 2012
The support of big City law firms is being requested by the Law Society for a high-profile initiative which is hoping to help high street practices and their clients meet the challenges that they are now facing due to legal aid cuts.
A key focus is to ensure that the appropriate legal services remain accessable to people on low incomes after the cuts in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act (LASPO) come into force. The Law Society hopes to secure funding from the philanthropic sector and practical help from City firms in order to develop a strategic litigation function that will challenge LASPO’s implementation. This will focus particularly on the operation of the proposed telephone gateway, through which clients will access civil legal aid, and the use of the exceptional cases funding mechanism.
A large percentage of social welfare and immigration cases are a result of poor decision-making from public bodies. LASPO will remove legal aid for the majority of them and it is hoped that the new mechanism will help to fill the justice gap.
The Law Society will look for any evidence of errors made by local councils and government departments and use it to improve standards and encourage better decision-making. Lucy Scott-Moncrieff, vice-president of the Law Society, did not rule out the possibility of seeking judicial reviews, but hoped that change could be brought about without the need for litigation.
Scott Moncrieff stated, ‘These projects will need a lot of research. But some of the big City firms are very interested and they have the resources to put a [significant number] of lawyers to work on them.’
The other segment of the group’s work will focus on helping high street firms to survive the legal aid funding cuts and increased competition from big-brand alternative business structures. Chancery Lane will invite practitioners to share ideas about how firms can successfully adapt, with discussions due to be taking place on business networking site LinkedIn once a group has been set up.
‘All over the country there will be examples of good practice and firms doing innovative things. Cutting overheads and identifying new income streams will be at the forefront of this debate’, Scott-Moncrieff suggested.
Last week, Chancery Lane held an initial strategy involving legal aid lawyers, pro bono solicitors from City firms and representatives from the advice sector.