No extra pay for ‘speedy’ justice

Working all hours
Thursday 19 July 2012 by Catherine Baksi

Solicitors could end up working seven days a week without extra pay to cover anti-social hours under government plans to extend court sittings.

Proposals to introduce early morning and evening sittings and Sunday courts were among measures set out last week in a white paper which aims to speed up the criminal justice system.

Criminal justice minister Nick Herbert said: ‘During last year’s riots we saw cases that normally take weeks and months being dealt with in just hours and days. We want this to become the norm, not the exception.’

But the chair of the Law ­Society’s criminal law committee, Richard Atkinson, voiced scepticism about the proposals, which he said defence solicitors had not been consulted on.

While duty solicitors are paid an extra 25%, he said there is no provision in current Legal Services Commission contracts to pay other solicitors more for working anti-social hours. Atkinson warned that defence firms, which are mostly small businesses, will be particularly badly hit by the plans.

‘If courts open on Saturdays and Sundays, it will mean that criminal solicitors in small practices will be working seven days a week, but without getting enhanced pay rates for working anti-social hours,’ he said.

Atkinson said the Society would support ‘appropriate’ efficiency changes, but it is concerned by the government’s ‘obsession with speed’. He questioned the need for weekend courts at a time when the number of criminal cases is declining.

President of the Association of Prison Governors Eoin McLennan-Murray said there had been no formal discussion with the Ministry of Justice over the details of the proposals, which he said will ‘present challenges’.

An MoJ spokeswoman said the department is aware of the contractual provisions for solicitors, which are part of its ‘ongoing discussions’.

Comments

More speed for effectively less money...

is the upshot of the proposals; should we be surprised ? I suggest we be as surprised as if apprised of the lavatorial habits of certain ursine omnivores in forested areas.

Well, this government knows

Well, this government knows we will work saturdays for free as we have bee doing for years since the introduction of fixed fees.

Whenever faced with any change to our detriment, we fail as a profession to do anything about it.

The Law society are literally no use in these circumstances.

Compare to Scotland when in a recent case as published in the Scottish papers (and got no cover here, not even in the Gazette unsurprisingly) where a lawyer had already undertaken many more hours than she could ever get paid for under the caped fixed fee available for the type of case and so she decided to withdraw on perfectly reasonable grounds - she was losing money. she failed to get at least 5 other firms to take on the case and this evidence was given to the court which held the fixed fee cap was unlawful and denied the client in this case to access to justice.

Heaven forbid the law Society in this country could make such an argument. It is so obvious, but the fools we are forced to pay to fight these injustices on our and our clients behalf can only fail to justify their failure to act which is somehow wrongly based on anti competition laws and the legal requirement to commit to the terms of the LSC contract.

In scotland there was no mention of the solicitors attempting to price fix or fall foul of anti competition laws, nor was the lawyer criticised for failing to honour her obligations under the contract- the reason being is that these points are nonsense.

Come on law Society, earn your fees: challenge caped fees, challenge the lack of even an inflationary rise over the last 15 years, challenge the latest obstacle to justice for privately funding individuals who cant recover their costs unless in the magistrates court as an individual and limited to the rates as set by the government.