The Defence Brief

The Family Court This is a blog about legal aid, but first I want to set out the facts of a case. A few weeks ago, the Court of Appeal heard the case of M (A Child) [2018] EWCA Civ 240 in which a mother appealed against an order that would have permanently separated her from her five-year-old daughter. The facts are that on the 23 rd October 2014 and on the 8 th May 2015 the mother administered to her daughter an epi-pen and subsequently called an ambulance reporting that her daughter was having an allergic reaction. On both occasions, the doctors at the hospital felt that the epi-pen had been unnecessary. It is worth saying that the mother is a qualified nurse who later accepted that she had over-reacted because her motherly concern for her child had overridden her medical training. In 2016, the local authority and mother would sign a threshold document agreeing that the mother’s error had in part been made because she was not aware of the severity of her daughter’...

Legal research can be dull but the main facts are right there on the net for journos to see The Daily Fail Heil er I mean Mail today reports on two awful Albanians who tricked the Supreme Court into letting them stay in the UK despite their having lied to the wonderful, faultless British Government by claiming they were from Kosovo. They report that “Dinjan Hysaj and Agron Bakijasi pretended to be victims of ethnic cleansing when they came to the UK in the 1990s, but were ordered to leave the country when their lies were exposed.” Lawyers for the pair wracked up bills of “£1million in legal aid” (yeah right – in fact the Supreme Court ordered a detailed assessment of costs and no figure was quoted in the case but in any event a cool mil sounds unlikely to me) fighting deportation by arguing that lying about nationality was not enough to remove British citizenship… oh did we forget to mention that they are British citizens and the case is really about whether they should be...

Royal Courts of (in)Justice O n the 1 st July 2015, the government introduced a cut to solicitors legal aid fees, this was about a 9.51% cut from the rate applicable on the 30 th June 2015 (nb at the same time the  head of the Legal Aid Agency was awarded a 10% pay rise ) and is part of an overall 17.5% cut in fees since the March 2014.  In reality, the cut is far more than a mere 17.5% because fees have been changed in other ways that need not concern us here, suffice to say that some of the cuts to fees are as high as 50% reductions! Since the 1 st July 2015, a very large number of criminal legal aid solicitors have been refusing to work for the new fees.  I am not surprised by this; I began handing back my legal aid contract in 2011 and ceased all legal aid work in June 2012 partly because the rates then were so low that I could not earn a living and simultaneous provide clients with the level of service that a) they deserved; and b) my obligations as a...

I have come across this document from the Justice for All campaign that highlights a few myths about legal aid . It's interesting and worth a read. Incidentally, the salary figure for a solicitor is probably accurate in London, where salaries are between about £23-26,000 p.a.  Outside of London I've seen job adverts for newly qualified solicitors starting as low as £19K p.a.

Yesterday I represented a man accused of criminal damage.  I collected the papers from the prosecutor but when I went through them I thought I must have been missing something.  He was accused of causing just £40 worth of damage to a piece of plastic on a car, he had no previous convictions and had spent 10-days in prison thus far. Given that on conviction he was likely to receive a fine in the region of £100 plus costs and £40 compensation for the repair I was pretty surprised that he had been remanded for so long. When I spoke to him it emerged that he was technically homeless, which in the minds of many magistrates seems to equate with untrustworthy and thus inclined to skip bail.  It also turned out that he hadn't received any legal advice prior to speaking with me, nor had he seen the papers in his case and was thus mostly unaware of the accusation against him. Yesterday's hearing was the third listing as the Prison Service failed to produced him for the last h...

“Legal aid is a service which the modern state owes to its citizens as a matter of principal.   It is part of the protection of the citizen’s individuality which, in our modern conception of the relationship between the citizen and the State, can be claimed by those citizens who are too weak to protect themselves.   Just as the modern State tries to protect the poorer classes against the common dangers of life, such as unemployment, disease, old age, social oppression, etc., so it should protect them when legal difficulties arise.   Indeed, the case for such protection is stronger than the case for any other form of protection.   The State is not responsible for the outbreak of epidemics, for old age or economic crises.   But the State is responsible for the law.   That law again is made for the protection of all citizens, poor and rich alike.   It is therefore the duty of the State to make its machinery work alike, for the rich and the poor.” Dr E....

The Labour Government sought to introduce plans to prevent acquitted defendants to criminal cases from recovering their costs from the prosecution.  In all cases, whether civil or criminal, it is said that "costs follow the event", which means that the losing side gets to pay the legal costs of the winning side.  In criminal courts up and down the country you will daily see defendants who have been convicted or pleaded guilty being ordered to pay the costs claimed by the prosecution.  Equally, if a defendant chooses to pay for his own defence and is acquitted then the prosecution has to repay him the money he spent defending himself. So, to be clear what we are talking about are people who have been accused of a crime and found to be not guilty of that crime by either a jury or a bench of magistrates. The Labour Government was judicially reviewed by those concerned about civil liberties (and no doubt some lawyers concerned about their income - let's not pretend that l...

This week has seen some rioting in the streets.  I am pleased to say that despite smashing up pretty much all of our neighbours my office on Mare Street, Hackney was left untouched.  I can only assume that having the massive words "CRIMINAL DEFENCE SOLICITORS" in the front window helped.  In fact, when I showed up on Tuesday morning the windows looked as though they'd had a good clean over night, which is nice if somewhat strange.  The offices appeared on the news throughout the night and during much of Tuesday - you probably caught a glimpse although there's no reason you would have realised it was a solicitors office from the TV.  If you saw the pictures of Ladbrookes being attacked in Hackney then we are a couple of doors along, mostly just out of shot.  Although, I have been wanting to check out our roof for a while as we have a leak and the HDTV shots gave me a great chance and happily it all looks good. Having watched the TV coverage on Monday night...

I have just listened to the latest Today programme on the BBC website catch up service. I had to laugh when I heard Ken Clarke accuse the head of the Bar Council of being disingenuous for comparing the legal aid spend in England and Wales with that of our closest neighbours in Europe only then go on to point out that our spend is four-times that of New Zealand. New Zealand seems like an odd choice I thought.  I've never been but I always thought it was quite a small country in terms of population. When faced with points like that my first reaction is to turn to the CIA for assistance.  As ever the Central Intelligence Agency was very helpful in pointing out that the UK (admittedly including Scotland and Northern Ireland) has a population of 62,698,362 while New Zealand has a population of 4,290,347.  The CIA also helpfully point out that London has a population of 8.615 million, which while I've never been very good at maths looks like more than twice the size of Ne...

The new Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill has been published. Clause 12 allows for suspects in police custody to be represented.  This is good as the right to free legal advice has been with us for a long time now.  A lack of legal advice has also led to convictions being overturned by the appeal courts for various reasons that would not have occurred had a solicitor been present. However, clause 12 appears to be slightly different to the current position, which allows for representation to be provided quickly for most detainees.  Clause 12(6) is concerned with regulations that a civil servant (probably the head of the Legal Services Commission) will be able to make regarding the hoops that must be jumped through before you can receive advice from your police cell.  It reads: Regulations under subsection (5) may, in particular, include——       ....       (b) provision permitting or requirin...

Following Ken 'The Beast' Clarke's announcement of his policy of reducing sentences for sex offenders by 50% in return for a guilty plea a lot of solicitors and barristers felt that this was a bad idea and that it should be scrapped.  Low and behold it now has been scrapped.  But where does that leave the lawyers? There is talk that scrapping this plan will cost in the region of £130 million.  This means that the Ministry of Justice will have to find another way to save that money or they could ask the Treasury for a hand out.  If the Treasury gives them the money then all the other departments will coming running with their begging caps held out.  So, a Treasury bail out looks pretty unlikely to happen; the MOJ isn't a bank after all. What then are the MOJ to do? They could scrap the Victims' Commissioner but I doubt that would save much money and would definitely make bad headlines in the Sun, although I know a few bloggers who would be pleased to see th...

Between today and the 25th April 2011, HM Court Service/Legal Services Commission will be moving the administrative job of granting (or refusing) legal aid application away from local courts in London to Havering Mags Court. This doesn't sound very interesting and probably that's because it isn't.  But, it is a big waste of money that is being done for very short sighted reasons. The hope, as is the hope with everying the LSC/HMCS do, is that centralising the work will mean quicker decisions reached at a lower cost.  But, it will not work.  It will cost more than the old system. Previously, if you as a member of the public needed legal aid you could complete a form and hand it in at the court where your case was to be heard.  This was changed slightly last year when courts were clustered so that if you had a case at Redbridge Mags, for example, you had to hand the form in at Highbury Corner, which is just up the road. Highbury quickly became the least efficie...

I have just read in the paper that the cost of MPs legal aid bills were "increased substantially after they attempted to avoid criminal proceedings by claiming the ancient right of parliamentary privilege." I am not sure how that happened since criminal legal aid for solicitors is based on the number of pages served by the prosecution and how many days the trial lasted.  Any legal submission would not have counted toward either the page count or the number of days trial. Counsel would have received a little more money for the hearings, but I think we are talking in the region of a few hundred pounds rather than "substantial" amounts.

Following the Second World War the Government of the day thought that it would be a jolly good thing if people had access to the legal system so that they could protect themselves from wrong doing and make life for everybody better.  For example, in the 1960s if a husband and wife split up, the wife had few if any rights to the family home etc.  That changed when a wife who had been the victim of domestic violence and who had been told by the High Court that she had no right to stay in the family home as it was in her husband's name, was able to bring a case before Lord Denning in the Court of Appeal where Denning told the legal world, and every judge that had come before him, that they had misunderstood the law and that the wife had every right to the house and that it was her violent abusive husband who would not be allowed to set foot in there again.  That one decision advanced the rights of women more than most things I can think of. One important aspect of the lega...