Last July, the Lord Chancellor sent the Law Society two sets of proposals for standard fees for civil legal aid.

One covered family litigators and the other covered advocacy in all civil cases.

Attention so far has been concentrated on the proposals for litigation in family cases.

The Society has emphasised:-- the crudeness of those proposals.

Particularly crude is the proposal for a single standard fee to cover all family work except domestic violence;-- the inopportune timing of the proposals.

A system of standard fees based on the cost of cases conducted in the past is suggested, but major procedural changes are about to be made to ancillary relief procedure and to the divorce process generally;-- the proposals are based on an inadequate survey, the 'Lord Chancellor's Department survey of civil legal aid bills', which looked at 28,000 bills between September and December 1995.

The survey on its own admission fails to reflect the true average cost of bills paid by the Legal Aid Board (LAB).Less attention has been given to the proposals for standard fees for all civil advocacy.

Those proposals have some bizarre features of their own that should not be overlooked.The Lord Chancellor aims to set standard fees for advocacy in civil cases based purely on the length of hearing.

The same fees would apply across the whole range of cases.

No allowance would be made for the different complexity of different categories of case, nor for any differences in the amount of preparation normally needed between the different c ategories.

No escape clause would apply, however complex the case.That, though, is not the strangest feature.

The government proposes that advocacy fees should be payable only when an advocate who does not work in the same firm as the litigator is instructed.

Otherwise, the current solicitors' rates would be paid for non-matrimonial work, and no payment at all would be made for advocacy in a matrimonial case.

This proposal is difficult to treat seriously.

Within the last few days, the Lord Chancellor has signed regulations to introduce graduated fees for Crown Court cases.

This was an order specifically to establish the principle that exactly the same fees should be paid to advocates of equal status whatever their professional background.

The proposals for civil fees cannot be reconciled with that principle.

It cannot be right that an additional fee would be paid if counsel (or a different firm of solicitors) was instructed, but no payment would be made if the advocacy was done in-house.One key purpose of the Courts and Legal Services Act 1990, which first introduced rights of audience in the higher courts for solicitors, was to make it easier for clients to have their cases dealt with by the same lawyer throughout, including any court appearances.

The Lord Chancellor cannot possibly justify proposals that would prevent clients receiving that sort of service.The proposal results from the incompetent way in which the survey of civil bills was carried out.

The survey failed to separate solicitors' advocacy costs from litigation costs.

As a result, the Lord Chancellor's Department (LCD) has no idea how much is spent on solicitors' advocacy.

It simply does not know by how much it should reduce the standard fees for litigation to allow for payment of separate sums for advocacy.

The most sensible course -- and the one it will be obliged to follow in the end -- would be to conduct a fresh survey in order to gather the information needed to prepare sensible proposals.

Instead, it has twisted the proposals to fit the defects in the survey.

It beggars belief that a government department can take such a cavalier approach on a matter of such public importance.The government's proposals also involve a major change in the arrangements for the grant of legal aid in civil cases.

At present, practitioners are free to instruct counsel, or a solicitor advocate from a different firm, or to do the advocacy themselves.

This flexibility is essential.

It increases client choice because it enables clients to instruct solicitors who do not wish to undertake advocacy as well as those who do.

Under the government's proposals, the standard fees for advocacy would be paid only if the practitioner obtained authority in advance from the LAB for the instruction of a separate advocate.The government gives no reasons for this new restriction.

It cannot justify the proposal in terms of the way civil cases are conducted at present.

The proposal is simply a control mechanism, made necessary by the plan to pay the new fees only where an advocate outside the litigating firm is instructed.The Lord Chancellor also intends to reverse the principle enshrined in the present legal aid regulations that legal aid rates should not apply when an inter partes costs order is made.

Reasons for this proposal have not been given.

It would reduce legal aid lawyers' income and clients would find their choice of solicitor reduced.

The main beneficiaries would be the insurance companies that stand behind most defendants in civil legal aid cases, and the more they failed to make pr ompt and proper settlement offers, the more they would benefit.The proposals for standard fees in advocacy are crude, unworkable and are not intellectually sustainable.

The LCD must withdraw them and start again if it is to have any hope of devising a practical scheme.