LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

WOMEN'S RIGHTS

Reading the Gazette over the past few years shows that the story for women solicitors remains the same.

Many women continue to experience lower pay, sexual harassment, less favourable treatment when pregnant, and more than half of those with children say that having a family has adversely affected their careers.

One of the main barriers is the long hours culture, with some firms demanding 40 chargeable hours per week, that is to say, a minimum of 60 working hours.

Achieving partnership often means accepting a culture of sexual banter, long hours, and either prejudice as a mother or having to pretend that life continues as a single person.

No wonder that relatively few women achieve partnership, and many drop out when they have children.

The position will only change if firms are forced to accept that long hours are not the only criterion by which solicitors are judged.

Some women resort to claiming indirect sex discrimination.

The money they receive, which is usually as a result of a confidential settlement, does not compensate them for losing their jobs.

It is almost impossible to get a part-time job as a lawyer and those that do are often as professional support lawyers, where partnership prospects are not the same.

Others find alternative careers.

Although it is important that research is carried out about working practices, this needs to be followed by Law Society and Equal Opportunities Commission guidance on good practice, and for those who are brave enough, legal proceedings for indirect sex discrimination.

One tip for those thinking of challenging their employers - ensure you have legal expenses insurance to cover the costs.

Camilla Palmer, partner, Palmer Wade, London

TIME FOR CHANGE

The calculation by Richard Meere (see [2002] Gazette, 13 June, 19) produces the startling conclusion that to match the cost of the courts and tribunals modernisation programme each firm of solicitors would need to spend 70,000.

This scaremongering has no basis in reality, because the plan for the courts involves installing networked computer systems with training, setting up 'paperless' files, and creating hearing venues separate from business centres, which would deal with 'back-office' administration.

No additional expenditure is assumed from practitioners because the 2002 firm should have installed a computer system with Web and e-mail access, and nothing more would be required to cope with computerised courts.

At Preston we have already piloted PREMA, a system for making applications by e-mail, which is now being extended to assessment of bills of costs, and may next year include issue of certain processes.

The benefits to practitioners - it has been restricted to them to date - include orders within days rather than weeks, reduced cost of submitting applications, and avoidance of hearings.

Yet take-up has been small and largely restricted to consent applications despite the fact that the protocol - written with official approval - is freely available (including on the Court Service Web site).

We continue to promote PREMA and we are even offering free training - a practical demonstration by a district judge and staff to a small group from any firm that requests this.

The regionalised Court of Protection is a taste of what is to come.

As deputy master, I hear contested cases in my court at Preston, but all administration is dealt with in the Public Guardianship Office at Archway Tower in London.

I would point out that communication by e-mail on a network is so effective that I feel as if my chambers are within that building, and the file is only sent to me the week before the hearing.

Even this may become unnecessary when MERIS (the new computer programme) produces paperless files next year.

After being the Cinderella of the justice system, the Court of Protection now leads the way in the use of technology.

Although under PREMA the objective is to deal with applications without reference to the physical files, I have doubts as to whether under any modernisation we shall ever be able to dispense with these entirely.

A procedural judge spends many hours browsing through substantial files and this cannot (yet) be done effectively on a computer screen.

But who knows what might be achieved with a good indexing system and efficient scanning of multi-page handwritten letters from litigants in person.

The courts are often criticised for being old-fashioned and unwilling to change, but could it be the profession that remains set in its ways? Those of us who are actively seeking to move the civil justice system forward need the support of practising solicitors above all else.

District Judge Gordon Ashton, Preston Combined Court Centre

PAYING THE PRICE

My jaw dropped when I read your recent article concerning Legal Services Commission plans to fund legal aid trainees, and it reached the floor when I read your editorial in which you welcomed the LSC's proposals (see [2002] Gazette, 13 June, 1).

It seems to me, as a criminal practitioner, to be one of the most cynical proposals to have come out of the LSC recently.

This year is simply one of many during my professional lifetime when the criminal legal aid authorities have chosen not to increase legal aid payment rates, and at present the LSC appears to be intent on pushing through the allegedly "costs neutral" step in which the amount of remuneration available for out-of-hours telephone advice work will be greatly reduced.

It is probably true to say that trainees in predominantly criminal legal aid firms are among the worst paid in the industry, and this is a result of the fact that year on year the profit margins in this sector have been squeezed, so that it has become virtually impossible for us to be able to compete in the field of recruitment.

If the LSC now offers direct funding to trainees it will probably have the effect of scaring off potential candidates to this area of law rather than attracting them.

It will give the impression to youngsters that their potential paymasters are so impoverished that they would not be able to keep them without outside help.

If people thinking of setting out on a career in this field were to get this impression, they would surely be less inclined to join, even if they feel a strong vocational calling.

The real solution to the funding problem is for the LSC radically to overhaul the current rates of pay for criminal legal aid work, so that talent can be attracted inwards and retained.

Short-sighted politicians and government economists of every political persuasion are oblivious to the fact that a good criminal justice system needs good defence lawyers as well as good prosecutors and good policemen.

This is the only way in which efficiency and fairness will be preserved in the long run.

Peter Belshaw, Belshaws, Stockport, Cheshire

CHEAP JUSTICE

For the Legal Services Commission to spend more than 1.5 million per annum in funding the training of future legal aid solicitors both beggars belief and misses the point.

If the government reduced the Stalinist regulatory burden we face, remunerated legal aid work properly, put the necessary resources into the system to make it work, and stopped treating publicly funded matters as justice on the cheap, then perhaps there would be no recruitment problem.

Simon Hutchence, associate solicitor, DP Roberts Hughes & Denye, Ellesmere Port, Cheshire

FORMS HEADACHE

I find myself wondering what the point of the costs limitations on public funding certificates really is.

Upon assessment on a claim for costs, the court or the Legal Services Commission (LSC) will decide whether costs were properly incurred or not, so a solicitor has got to be able to justify the costs.

The limitation can only duplicate the purpose of the assessment, while creating work and costs for both the profession and the LSC.

Any application to increase the limitation has to be done on the lengthy CLS App 8.

This involves six to 30 minutes chargeable work by the solicitor to be paid either by the commission or by the client where the statutory charge applies.

It then has to be considered by the commission.

My area office cannot keep up with its paperwork and this is just another unnecessary burden.

If an extension of the costs limitation is refused, subject to appeal, the public funding certificate effectively becomes useless because the solicitor will not be paid for any further work.

I suspect that the commission would reply that by totting up the total of the costs limitations on all issued certificates it knows its maximum total exposure to costs at any one time.

However, many claims for costs are well below the limitation, and in many cases the statutory charge will apply so that the total of costs limitations is in no way a sensible figure for budgeting.

Would it not be much more practicable to set a 'generous' costs limitation, well above the average for cases of the relevant type, so that there would have to be justification for the truly exceptional case, while leaving solicitors to justify their costs on assessment in all the others.

The limitations which particularly trouble me are the 1,500 for general family help which can cover ancillary relief cases up to the financial dispute resolution appointment, and the 250 for help with mediation on financial issues.

Many cases will be concluded within these limitations, but many will not without in any way being exceptional.

I would rather not have to fill in so many App 8 forms and not to be paid for doing so.

The commission could surely deploy its staff more efficiently if it was not having to wade through so many forms.

Andrew Grand, RJR Solicitors, Newport, Isle of Wight

CONVEYANCING ILLS

I read with dismay the suggestion that e-conveyancing will be the 'cure-all' for the ills brought about by house-moving delays with which we are all too familiar (see [2002] Gazette, 30 May, 1).

One is tempted to ask how e-conveyancing will assist in the following scenarios:

l The potential borrower who over inflates his income only to be caught out when the references are received.

l A mortgage lender incapable of responding to any enquiry as it operates a call centre manned by staff of limited ability.

l The ability of a buyer to provide any sensible deposit on exchange of contracts because they he is obtaining a mortgage for more than 100% of the price.

l Vendors who say that they will vacate their property to allow an incoming purchaser early access only to change their minds when it looks as if there is a prospect of tying in a related purchase.

It is difficult to see how any of these problems which are regularly encountered in day-to-day practice would be overcome by the introduction of e-conveyancing.

Perhaps the government would suggest a little re-programming of its citizens so as to produce greater integrity and honesty.

I would submit that the problem with the conveyancing system today lies in human nature, and while not perfect the current system has the peculiarly British virtue of being extremely cheap when compared with our continental brothers and sisters, whose systems are frequently held up as examples of more efficient systems.

Perhaps it should be borne in mind that the British system, like so much else in this country, is cheap with the consequent results.

P J Harrison, Giffen, Couch & Archer, Milton Keynes

PUBLIC DISMAY

Am I the only one that is having problems with the Public Guardianship Office (PGO)? I sent in an application to be made a receiver on 1 November 2001 and requested an urgent order to sell the house.

I have been told that the order has now been made but I still have not received any paperwork.

I have written, faxed and telephoned over the months but nothing has had any effect.

Telephone calls are not returned and the attitude of some of the staff is far from helpful.

I appreciate that the PGO has problems but my clients' elderly family just do not understand it.

The nursing home has been sympathetic but there is a limit to everyone's patience.

Rowena Warrington, solicitor, Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire

ContributionsThe Editor welcomes letters and contributions for the Comment column.

Shorter letters (max 250 words) have a much better chance of publication.

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They should be sent to the Editor, the Law Society's Gazette, 6th Floor, Newspaper House, 8-16 Great New Street, London EC4A 3BN; LDE 100; fax 020 7831 0869.E-mail your letters to jonathan.ames@lawsociety.org.uk