Pro bono legal advice is a direct threat to the long-term survival of the legal aid system, a leading member of the advice sector warned delegates.

Steve Hynes, the director of the Law Centres Federation, told a session on pro bono that legal aid lawyers were increasingly frustrated by the government's reliance on free advice while it continued to reduce rates of pay for state-funded work.


'Pro bono is definitely a threat to legal aid,' said Mr Hynes. 'There will come a time when the profession may have to say that it will withdraw its good will and stop doing pro bono work, because that pro bono work is being taken advantage of by the government.'


He maintained that it was a myth that the profession was generally embracing pro bono as a concept and increasing the amount of free work it offered to disadvantaged sectors of society. 'On the ground in the provinces, there is much less pro bono work going on than used to be the case. That is down to a loss of goodwill over legal aid.'


Mr Hynes said 'there will eventually come a tipping point when lawyers take the view that they are not prepared to do that little bit extra for free.'


Also at the session, Professor Andy Boon, head of law at the University at Westminster, said law firms should separate the concepts of pro bono and corporate social responsibility. Prof Boon suggested that pro bono should relate specifically to the free provision of legal advice, while corporate social responsibility had a wider more general ambit, covering areas such as charity work.


However, Steven Butts, head of community support at Birmingham-based commercial law firm Wragge & Co, responded that large practices preferred to see pro bono work forming part of the firm's wider policy of corporate social responsibility. 'That way we are likely to get more resources,' he said. 'And you take the pressure away from individual lawyers and move it to the business as a whole. That creates programmes that are more sustainable.'


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