Your recent report demonstrates all too clearly the looming disaster that is publicly funded work (see [2005] Gazette, 14 April, 1).

I marvel at the cocoon of complacency that surrounds the Legal Services Commission (LSC). You reported that the LSC 'raised doubts that the majority of firms across the country were unhappy or pessimistic'.


Those who do not undertake publicly funded work express disbelief at the system we are forced to operate. I am still struggling to work out the justification for the fixed-fee regime imposed on us since


1 April 2005 in respect of legal help. I have conducted a modest survey of firms in my immediate area. My firm will now be paid the princely sum of £196.45 plus VAT for every matter start. The large proportion of our matter starts are in family law and are, of course, for a divorce. In those cases, we may need to obtain a certified copy of the marriage certificate (£7). We may need to obtain a translation of the marriage certificate (possibly £30 or more). The affidavit of evidence will have to be sworn and may cost £9. Those disbursements will have to be met from our profit costs. I do here use the term 'profit' in its loosest sense. The reality is that each case will represent a loss to the firm.


There is likely to be a substantial increase in our professional indemnity insurance. All the other overheads in our practice continue to rise inexorably and yet legal aid rates do not.


My partners continue to think that I am mad to want to continue with publicly funded work. I do so because I am a bleeding-heart liberal, who believes that people should have access to lawyers. The changes to the eligibility rules that have been mooted will make it easier to for me to give up on my social conscience as yet again the numbers who qualify for public funding will be further reduced.


Law should be accessible to the wider public. Previous Conservative governments embarked on the destruction of the legal aid system. The Labour government is apparently content to follow where the Tories led. It is the dispossessed and the disadvantaged who are left with no voice.


Suzanne Sutherland, Scott Bailey Solicitors & Mediators, Lymington, Hampshire