Solicitors handling legally-aided immigration work are in crisis.

Bad press, low pay and inadequate contracting arrangements mean that firms are now either folding or making the morally tough decision to take only private clients.The current public perception that immigration lawyers are crooks was given a boost last month by the high-profile closure of east London immigration practice Malik Law Associates, after it was alleged to have offered clients false identities to assist asylum claims (see [2000] Gazette, 20 January, 4).

This was the sixth closure of an immigration firm in the past year.

It follows the Legal Aid Board's (LAB) May 1999 report which emphasised that there were a number of unscrupulous immigration solicitors.

Home Secretary Jack Straw has repeatedly attacked practitioners in the field.Immigration lawyers believe these attacks on their professional standards are directly related to the appalling rates of pay for their work.

Reputable practitioners are leaving the practice area in droves because they are unable to break even.

The only people who are able to make a profit through immigration work are those who cheat the LAB, solicitors say.'It's ironic that, while the government and the LAB say that they are committed to good quality immigration advice, their actions are likely to produce the reverse effect; that abuses in immigration law practice are greater than those in other practice areas,' says Mark Philips, bitterly.

Mr Philips is the head of immigration law at Birmingham firm Tyndallwoods.

His firm has just made the painful decision not to take on any more legally-aided cases apart from those involving human rights abuses, and to market themselves actively to the private-client sector.'An analysis of our work shows that for the last two years the Legal Help Scheme [the new name for green form work] has not enabled us to break even,' says Mr Philips.

'Every hour we spend doing legally-aided work we're losing money.

When the Lord Chancellor indicated that there was no prospect of an increase in legal aid rates this year, we had to look for ways in which we could keep our immigration team solvent until next year.

Firms that work in this field are committed to their clients and provide a subsidy from other departments to do it.

But they can't go on doing so indefinitely.'The way in which work is front-loaded in asylum cases means that it is nearly all done at the Legal Help rate of £45.50 an hour, and never reaches legal aid certificated levels.

A Lord Chancellor's Department (LCD) spokeswoman told the Gazette that the Lord Chancellor was currently looking seriously at the issue of low remuneration in immigration cases.

However, she would give no indication of the likely outcome of his consultation, the results of which are expected to be announced at the end of next month.Earlier this month, Mr Philips had a hearing before an immigration appeals tribunal in relation to a case which has been running since 1991, and which has generated thousands of pages of documents.

'Partners have been working on this case at rates which trainees in commercial firms wouldn't touch,' says Mr Philips.

He and other immigration practitioners stress that the seriousness of the issues which their cases involve -- often the life or death of their clients -- are such that very experienced solicitors are needed to deal with them.The demand for immigration advice has never been greater, as refugees from Balkan atrocities pour into Britain.

However, firms are not only unable to break even, they are often unable to a void redundancies.

Andrew Holroyd, head of immigration law at Liverpool firm Jackson & Canter, is working closely with the only other specialist immigration practices in the area and his local citizens advice bureau to cope with a flood of clients from all over the north west of England.He says: 'Because the work is not properly remunerated, we can't recruit people to deal with these clients, who are in a desperate situation.

I've just taken instructions from a Kosovan who was found in Liverpool docks with his tongue cut out.

We can't leave these people in the lurch, they're the raison d'etre of our firm.

But, although I've had 50 start-ups in legally-aided cases and 25 in fee-paying cases since the beginning of the year, it's very hard to break even.

We have had a 20% reduction in the rates since 1993, at the same time as the cost of administering the new legal aid scheme has been put on our shoulders.

The time has come when practitioners are asking why they should have to subsidise work for the socially excluded.'Mr Holroyd is the Law Society Council member who tabled a motion -- passed in December 1999 -- calling for a ballot of franchised firms on whether they should consider industrial action over legal aid remuneration rates.

This could take the form of refusing to take new contract starts so as to avoid breaching contracts.

The legal profession has just been consulted on whether to pursue this line of action, and the results of the consultation are being evaluated.In addition to low hourly rates, a number of issues with the way in which franchises and contracts have been granted by the LAB are exacerbating immigration solicitors' problems.

In anticipation of the introduction in April of the measures in the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 stipulating the dispersal of asylum seekers outside London, potential clients are flooding into the provinces.Few legal aid franchises have been granted to immigration law practices in the provinces.

Solicitors believe that there has been little co-ordination between the Home Office and the LAB in order to ensure that refugees are sent to regions in which there are firms which are able to represent them.The LAB also appears to practitioners to be severely restricting the number of start-ups which it gives to firms with contracts.

Tyndallwoods is the only firm in the country to have a 'second tier' franchise, enabling it to provide specialist support to less experienced firms.

Despite this accreditation, Mr Philips says this year, the LAB has only guaranteed 72% of the new matter starts compared with last year.

'So we can't start as many cases as we did last year, although demand has increased.'The secretary of the Immigration Law Solicitors' Association (ILPA), Julia Onslow-Cole, says: 'ILPA is extremely concerned about the way in which contracts have been granted.

Practitioners were invited by the LAB to expand their practices and to bid for franchises, and effectively the LAB has cut the work back.

Some respected practitioners have been given two new cases a month.

The whole situation is absolutely awful, and at ILPA we're doing everything we can to help members face this dreadful time.'However, LAB policy adviser Allison McGarrity explains that the Board is waiting to see what will happen when the dispersal measures come into force.

'We've held back 15,000 new start-ups which we will place once we see where the refugees are sent,' she says.

When these are all released, she says firms should have more matter starts than they did last year.

On the issue of the paucity of franchis ed firms in the provinces, she adds: 'Historically, the vast majority of immigration work has been in London, so it's not entirely surprising that in the provinces there are not many immigration firms which meet the franchise standards.'Legal aid immigration solicitors are reluctantly turning towards the private sector, seeking high-quality work permit and business cases.

Many are also putting up their private-client rates.

However, they may not face an easy ride in the private sector.

Ms Onslow-Cole, a partner at City firm CMS Cameron McKenna, warns: 'Private-client work involves a completely different area of law.

In the same way as I could not take on an asylum case, I can't see that legal aid solicitors would be well placed to start acting for businesses.'In addition to lobbying the LCD on legal aid rates, the Law Society is attempting to provide immigration solicitors with an additional marketing tool by establishing an immigration law panel.

The panel was set up last year and now has 34 members, including its 11 assessors, of whom Mr Philips is one.

The panel -- which assesses all cases on an individual basis but whose basic criteria for entry is to have carried out 350 chargeable hours of immigration work per year over the past three years -- aims to have about 400 members.

But at the moment only 20 applications are pending, while eight have been turned down.Law Society policy adviser Rachel Rogers says it is hoped that panel membership will drive up the standard in the field, and will also provide a way of meeting any standards imposed by the new Immigration Services Commissioner when that post is filled in October.The commissioner will be primarily responsible for regulating non-legally-qualified immigration advisers.

However, it is feared that if the government remains unhappy with the performance of the Office for the Supervision of Solicitors (OSS), it may decide that immigration law practitioners should be regulated by the commissioner rather than the Law Society.OSS spokesman Geoffrey Negus says the office will vigorously oppose any attempt to remove its regulatory role.

However, he concedes that immigration practice is a particularly difficult area to regulate.

'The disreputable immigration solicitors are basically in it for a quick killing,' he says.

'Many dealings with clients are not recorded, and firms are popping up and disappearing all the time, changing their names and addresses.'