The decline in the number of experienced duty solicitors is cause for great concern, despite what the LSC says

Derek Hill, director of the Criminal Defence Service at the Legal Services Commission (LSC), puts his name to some curious correspondence (see [2008] Gazette, 3 July, 11). He writes with glee about 45 new duty solicitors. How long has it taken them to get onto the rota? Eighteen months to two years. At what expense (time and money)? Quite a lot.

Derek should be worried there are only 45. By the end of the year more than that will have left or retired, and next year and the year after that there will be fewer and fewer experienced solicitors acting as duty.

The LSC does not like listening to doomsayers. Those of us who criticise it are often castigated for acting out of self-interest and lacking concern for the ‘public interest’ or the taxpayer. The truth is that what the LSC and Ministry of Justice are doing is destroying the knowledge base that currently advises and represents detainees and defendants through public funding.

If you went to a conference of NHS cardiac surgeons and the vast majority were aged 23-26, because the older/experienced ones had left, would you not be worried? The LSC does not care about the value that solicitors bring to the process. They do not care about the client. They care only about price, saving money and saving face.

I know the police are concerned that fewer and fewer solicitors are attending for VIPER viewings as a direct consequence of the police station fixed-fee system, which offers no compensation to a fee-earner for working in the wee small hours, or at weekends and bank holidays. Higher standards from less experienced people for less pay is what ‘efficiency’ actually means.