Why leave it so late to scrap the LSC?
Between them justice secretary Jack Straw and former civil servant Sir Ian Magee hammered the final nail into the coffin of the Legal Services Commission this week.
Straw accepted the proposal of Magee, made in his review of legal aid governance and delivery, to transform the LSC from an arm’s length non-department public body into an executive of the Ministry of Justice.
Magee’s review, commissioned by the MoJ, followed the qualification of its accounts for 2008/09 and two highly critical reports of the LSC by the National Audit Office, and the Public Accounts Committee.
Since it was created more than 10 years ago, Magee said the LSC has undergone ‘considerable change and reform as it moved to commissioning, procuring and paying for services’.
‘It has moved a long way from its roots in the Legal Aid Board as personnel and focus have changed,’ he said, and its role has developed ‘piecemeal’.
He concluded: ‘There is too much that requires fixing to leave things as they are.’
In particular, Magee was scathing of the financial management within the organisation, which he found to lack even ‘basic financial controls over fund expenditure’.
‘It is surprising that, with responsibility for such large sums of public money, the LSC appears to have no overall system of integrated internal financial control,’ he said.
No doubt most practitioners will regard Magee’s findings as statements of the flipping obvious, which many have drawn attention to for some time.
So the question has to be asked how the LSC had been able to get away with things for so long? Why has it been given such a free rein for so long? And why did the MoJ, which has been so concerned with making budget savings elsewhere, not step in earlier?
After all, such lax financial management within law firms doing publicly funded work would not have been tolerated by the LSC.
Comments
And your point is?
What point are you exactly making with this article? Considering you are a journalist for the "lawyers/solicitors" gazette do you think this is a good move for your mainstream readers?
Pathetic commentary...merely repeating/cut and pasting the Magee report is neither commentary or journalism for which I pay your wages through my practicing certificate fee...do better Ms Baksi!
Whilst there are some salient
Whilst there are some salient points raised here I do agree that this article is poorly written.
Her point is why did it take
Her point is why did it take everyone so long to realise the LSC is dysfunctional? Perfectly valid commentary, in my view. And if you have a problem with the standard of journalism (I don't), write your own article. The Gazette is always open to submissions.
Will it make any difference?
Changing the name of the LSC and transforming its governance will be of little assistance to hard-pressed legal aid solicitors. The only really pressing issue for those firms still doing publicly funded work is rates of pay. Most are already uneconomic and the legal aid system only survives because many firms cross subsidize publicly funded work [often unknowingly]. Changing who's responsible for paying legal aid lawyers doesn't affect the fact that the entire legal aid system is doomed to collapse as solicitors find they have no choice but to pull out of legal aid work or go bust
The LSC and MoJ
What the civil servants don't seem to get is that law firms are, on the whole partnerships. A partner is paid out of the profit. Civil servants seem to equate law firms to companies in which the directors are paid a salary and then take a dividend or bonus. The reforms of legal aid are based upon the idea of large firms exclusively undertaking legal aid and therefore being able to generate enough profit through high turnover of work undertaken by the least qualified people suitable for the job (commoditisation), supervised by a suitably experienced person so that all the legal aid forms are filled in properly and files are organised in such a way that they can be audited and peer reviewed so that some semblance of quality control can be put into place internally and externally by the LSC.
What this does not take account of is how the vast majority of legal aid firms are constituted and how they are run. It does not place any worth or value on experience beyond that which is required to meet the basic minimum requirements of legal advice and quality control (which is why the LSC is in love with CLACs and the CLA call centres) and why the LSC thinks the CLAC and CLA model is appropriate for the delivery of nearly all legal aid services.
If the LSC and MoJ understood how partnerships work, what motivates partners, they would have realised years ago that the warnings of how their reforms would reduce participation in legal aid work by experienced solicitors and how this would affect quality of advice were true. Solicitors have, through necessity, maintained an involvement in legal aid and supported ie funded legal aid through private client work or through HCA work.
As a result of the 2010 tendering process for family law work, if we obtain a contract, we will employ a paralegal/trainee solicitor who will undertake legal aid work, suipervised by a solicitor who meets the supervision requirements (whose own case load will be mostly private client) whilst more experienced solicitors build up private client work and lose the knowledge of and connection with legal aid.
Legally-aided clients are now definitely going to get a second rate service, designed and implemented by the Labour Party!!
Well done Carolyn Regan and all your fellow Executive Directors and Jack Straw and his civil servants!!
Would this be tolerated in health care or education??
Exploited Trainees
A trainee solicitor is there to be trained. Not to take on a caseload from Day 1. No wonder this profession is such a mess.
SCRAPPING OF THE LSC
First it was a good article and we are fortunate that in Katherine Baksi we have a journalist who consistently gives excellent cover to criminal legal aid when others ignore the subject so perhaps at least one of the contirbutors who was so critical of her should bear that in mind.
The LSC has paid the price for it's absurd devotion to BVT which was totaly unsuited to our CJS. I with others predicted that BVT carried the seeds of the LSC's destruction but the would not listen. In the end even the MOJ realised that BVT was a bastardised and distorted version of the Carter reccomendations and pulled the plug. The issue now is whether the present proposals for BVT mark 2 survive the general election with volume compensating for fee reduction or whether under a new Government new income streams are brought into the legal aid fund as early indications seem to indicate.
Better The Devil You Know
The real reason why this has been done is lax fiscal management within the LSC. That means the LSC is seen to have wasted money because it did not know enough about its supplier base. The MOJ will boost the bureaucracy to collect this information and will ignore the CLSA and LCSSA and The Law Society's complaints about this. They will implement the master plan, which is to make the Magistrates Court a Solicitor free zone and then they will cut and cut. Soon Mr Murray and his ilk will be wailing for the return of the LSC.
Better the Devil You Know
It is difficult to take seriously anyone who posts under anonymous cover. Gosh I've got an ilk. Is it legal? I don't do 'wailing'. What I do is to fight and anyone who knows my history over the last few years will know that. What do you do?
I have not the slightest doubt that we are in for a real struggle with the MOJ. But can I remind Mr. Anonymous that the LSC was 48 hours from beginning to implement BVT or as I like to call it 'Death by Auction'. As far as I am concerned because of this and their serial incompetence the LSC do not deserve to survive. The LSC completely failed to protect their ‘partners’ from the worst excess of the MOJ and it is ironic that the MOJ, at the last moment protected us from the LSC by pulling the plug on BVT.
At least we have no doubt as to whom our target will be which will end the LSC hiding behind the MOJ and vice versa. MOJ ministers are directly answerable to Parliament and cannot avoid responsibility by blaming a Quango. Members of the profession who felt a cosy familiarity with the LSC seem unable to come to terms with the fact that they tried to kill you and many of your colleagues
Better the Devil You Know
I love the posturing and grand rhetoric. Forty eight hours to doom. I wonder where you picked that up from? The original quote was forty five minutes wasn't it? Forty five minutes from Saddam’s WMD, I think.
“What I do is fight“. The implication being that I do not.
Nice! And wholly typical of a profession that does not understand that disunity and bickering amongst ourselves has led to a situation where New Labour has walked all over us. You are now governed by an appointed board which is overseen by an appointed quango when five short years ago you were governed by your own elected representatives. Do you even know this? Do you even care? Where were you when the Law Society Council surrendered their powers? Were you fighting then? No you were not.
So, just understand this. We have a full scale public spending crisis. The new government will not be able to afford Legal Aid, as it is now and therefore, they will seek ways to cut the budget. Before they do this they will need proper statistics. That is where you come in. You are going to provide those statistics. You and all the new forms which will be created for you to do so. Once you’ve done that, then BVT will be back. Small firms, such as yours, will be history.
There are people in the criminal defence part of this profession who have given years of their lives to negotiating with the LSC and the government. Despite this, criminal defence has lost out consistently. What makes you think that trend has been reversed? No, the trend will accelerate after the election. We can all see that.
Scrapping of the LSC
Michael Robinson asks whether what the LSC has done would be tolerated in healthcare or education. Some, including I, believe that is precisely what has happened - witness reports in the Sunday Times that the DoH has buried a critical assessment by a Consultant on standards of patient care that led to thousands of needless deaths.
The obsession with reducing professional duties and complex pieces of work into commoditisable target driven/easily auditable forms has indeed resulted in death, illiteracy, innumeracy and lack of justice to those unable to afford to pay for themselves .
The LSC was scrapped because it failed to carry out the government's mission to destroy the legally-aided sector of our profession. We need to prepare ourselves for a fresh onslaught by the MOJ.
The irony is that if the money spent (and wasted) on the LSC, Carter, BVT etc over the years had instead been spent on delivering justice to the needy and vulnerable the LSC would now be a shining beacon in a sea of government mediocrity.
No tears for the LSC than, but we must remain on our guard, because the threat has not vanished, merely retreated in order to regroup and return even stronger.
Better the Devil You Knows
Mr Murray. Your Legal Aid cheque is going to be late this month. Better get that political pressure going that you spoke of above, now the MOJ is in control. Good luck.
MoJ has always had ultimate
MoJ has always had ultimate control. Why would anyone think things are going to be any better now?
Everyone's legal aid cheques
Everyone's legal aid cheques are going to late this month - not just Mr Murray's. See story: http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/lsc-delays-payments-due-cash-position-p...
Pariahs
Yes, indeed. It just shows how important we are. Two months before an election the MOJ decides that solicitors can wait. Would they do that to the police? Or even the teachers. Absolutely not and certainly not just before an election. Take note and realise that criminal defence solicitors do not matter. We are the new pariahs. That bodes very ill for direct MOJ Rule.
Anonymous on Wed, 10/03/2010 - 02:50.
Mr. Anonymous. Why are you hiding your identity? The MOJ pulled the plug on BVT just 48 hours before the pilot areas were going to have to bid. The only 'posturing grand rhetoric and bickering' is coming from you. You made a comment -‘Mr Murray and his ilk will be wailing for the return of the LSC' ,which anyone who knows anything about me would have considered misdirected. That is why I responded sharply. No doubt you are the very titan of heroic opposition to the evil 'powers that be'. and just remain anonymous due to your intense modesty about your efforts.
I have been involved in direct action over the last contract (day of action), resistance to virtual courts, opposition to BVT. My greatest critics could not suggest that I am soft on HMG, MOJ or the LSC.
Actually it is rather self demeaning to debate with a faceless anonymous albeit sharply tongued individual and I am going to wean myself of this encounter.
I think we agree on one thing at least. The real enemy is not among our ranks but Governments who have brought legal aid to the point of destruction. So who ever you are Mr. anonymous I wish you well and hope (if you are still practising as a legal aid lawyer) that you survive the present threats to us all and to live to debate another day.