By Catherine Baksi


Lawyers and politicians this week called for an even more hardline approach to counter the controversial legal aid reforms.



At a Law Society panel discussion on the future of legal aid, attended by about 150 solicitors and chaired by Guardian journalist Polly Toynbee, civil liberties specialist Jim Nichol said the Law Society should organise a national demonstration in protest over the reforms.



The call came as a survey of London criminal law solicitors showed that almost half will be forced to cut down or quit legal aid work (see page 4).



Meanwhile, Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat shadow justice secretary, told the meeting that the Legal Services Commission (LSC) should be put under new management, with decisions taken by people who understood the consequences of them.



Mr Nichol said the plans for fixed fees and price-competitive tendering risked haemorrhaging the best solicitors and leaving unrepresented clients not seen as profitable.



'The quality of representation and advice will decline and there will be miscarriages of justice,' he said, calling for the Law Society to take more action. He added that he did not care about the restrictions of the Competition Act, which prohibit lawyers from taking any collective action that would affect the market in legal services. 'And I don't think many others do either.'



Law Society chief executive Des Hudson said Chancery Lane would look into what else it could do. He did not rule out the possibility of leading a national demonstration.



Vice-President Andrew Holroyd said the Society understood how deeply the profession felt. 'Everyone is at the end of their tether,' he said, 'and we are doing and will continue to do everything we can - we've commissioned an expert report, given evidence to the select committee, lodged two sets of [judicial review] proceedings and joined the action commenced by the Black Solicitors Network and Society of Asian Lawyers.'



To coincide with the event, the Society also took out full-page adverts in The Times and The Guardian to highlight the issue.



Leading mental health practitioner Lucy Scott-Moncrief told the meeting the LSC did not understand business and would be bailed out of its mistakes by the government, while law firms went bankrupt.