The reshuffle and the business of law
Under the coalition government, the Ministry of Justice has been marked by a phenomenally loose grasp of detail at the top. When it comes to the business of running a legal practice, this, more than the left-right positioning of ministers, has been a problem. In areas such as the implementation of the Jackson reforms, that has exasperated supporters of the ministry’s policies as much as its opponents.
In the top three ministers – Clarke, McNally and Djanogly – the MoJ has had what might politely be termed broad-brush people in a rush. That their time in office has coincided with a monumental pocket-money shortage has compounded the problem.
So for insurer-lobby lawyers, supportive of Jackson’s proposed reforms, the MoJ is proving a flakey agent of change – among other errors, set to muddle an increase of the small-claims track limit with extension of the RTA claims portal. On legal aid, all proposals for ways of cutting that would have mitigated the impact on access to justice were placed in the ‘too-difficult’ box.
The increased costs arising from a dramatic increase in litigants-in-person were never calculated. And while pro bono advice might take up some of the slack, ministers have not looked at what might help that happen. Legal advice centres and citizens advice bureaux continue, but with diminished resources and swamped with demand for their services. And cuts to numbers in the government legal service, department by department, led off with the sort of voluntary redundancy programme that provides an active financial incentive for the most able and experienced professionals to walk.
Meanwhile changes to employment law and red-faced outrage at the European Court of Human Rights have tilted at windmills the size of crazy-golf course replicas.
Incredibly, such is the devil-may-care slackness in justice policy that sensible lawyers with no political axe to grind mutter in private about ‘malfeasance in public office’ (maximum sentence for willfully wasting public funds, a 25-year stretch) and breaches of the civil service code.
So for everyone in the legal sector – be they insurer lawyers, legal centre volunteers, City litigators, public law specialists, law students, general counsel, government lawyers, company law specialists, private practice advisers to central and local government – the interest in whether the MoJ tacks right or left politically should be a secondary consideration.
To serve their clients’ interests, and build their own viable businesses, practices and departments, the legal community mostly needs ministers who have a grip on their own policies. In the last two years, they’ve not had that.
Eduardo Reyes is Gazette features editor
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Comments
business
Well one should hope that ministers have a grib on their policies, surely that is the fundamental point. Great post.
- Sue
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Has the Minister been handed a poisoned chalice?
With so many ill thought changes being made in such a short time, I wonder if the new Minister of Justice has been handed a poisoned chalice. It’s bad enough being a personal injury solicitor with the uncertainty surrounding the future changes to the whole claims process – but I’d rather have my job than his!
Shambles
Excellent article, it has been catastrophic how a perfect storm has been created by these ill meaning amateurs. The financial crisis arrived at a time when we had a team of ministers who had half knowledge and a little learning of the areas they were dealing with; more dangerous than ministers who knew nothing about the law and the legal system.
Clarke and Djanogly were clueless about social welfare law based on their experiences as a criminal lawyer and as a corporate finance bod. They therefore wreaked complete havoc on legal aid, based on what their prejudices told them. They have both gone in the reshuffle, but they should have gone ages ago.
Jackson reforms
Djanogly will not be missed by claimant PI practitioners that's for certain but what has I think upset people most of all are the utterly shameless and deliberate efforts by him to railroad through reform without even paying lip service to both sides of the argument. I fear it may be too late as the bulk of the reforms are already happening but it will be very interesting to see what happens now to the main final undecided plank of extending fixed costs. What level those costs are fixed at will make or break PI and there may now still be some breathing space for reflection rather than destruction.