Legal aid heading for crisis, LSC report finds

The Legal Services Commission (LSC) this week provided official confirmation that cracks are developing in the legal aid system and warned that they will get bigger unless pay is increased to a level which allows firms to operate profitably.

The LSC's annual report, published this week, showed that 6% of Community Legal Service suppliers dropped out of legal aid between March and April 2002, and that around half of firms are thinking about stopping or reducing CLS work.

Concerns about the dwindling number of new criminal lawyers have also been fuelled by 'evidence that the average age of those practising in crime is growing, with few young lawyers willing to do this kind of work'.

Firms with small criminal departments have also told the LSC that they are considering leaving, which would particularly hit non-urban areas.

The report said: 'We believe this to be overwhelmingly because of remuneration and profitability.

Our studies show that at current legal aid rates many firms are at best marginally profitable.'

A Law Society spokesman welcomed the recognition 'that there is now a serious problem of ensuring there are enough solicitors to do legal aid work', adding that the problem will get worse unless more resources are provided.

'The government must heed the LSC's warning urgently and increase legal aid fees to a more realistic level,' he said.

Legal Aid Practitioners Group director Richard Miller said: 'This demonstrates that the poor rates of pay, and in particular the failure to increase rates this year, have had a direct, measurable and severe detrimental effect on access to justice.'

Legal Action Group director Karen Mackay said although the LSC's admission that there was a problem was worrying, 'what is even more alarming is that it appears to have no discernible plan of action.'

The Lord Chancellor's Department reiterated its line that there is no current legal aid crisis, but

that there is a need to look to the long term.

However, it said that further funding would need to be balanced against other government priorities.