Model behaviour

As many voices sound the death knell of legal aid, Law For All and South-West Law are offering alternative models of advice that could prove its salvation, reports Nick Gillies

Can the collapse in legal aid work be stemmed? Leading firms are giving up, and the average age of legal aid lawyers is rising.

Yet there is a widespread belief in the profession that this work must be kept going.

Various new models are being tried.

There are two main types - not-for-profit (NFP), and partnerships.

The Law Society has suggested that NFP may be the way forward.

In its consultation paper, 'The Future of Publicly Funded Legal Services', the Society commended two models - Law For All and Bristol-based South-West Law.

Yet both practices are cautious about recognition, as both maintain that it is too soon to say how widely applicable their models are.

Both of the NFP models are limited companies.

Law For All has charitable status, and is managed by a non-lawyer, Ulla Barlow, whereas South-West Law is managed by a lawyer who has stepped out of fee-earning.

Ms Barlow taught psychology with a leaning towards employment, which led her into management and becoming director of education at the London Borough of Ealing.

Her daughter Anna, meanwhile, qualified as a solicitor at London-based human rights firm Bindman & Partners.

She is chief executive of Law For All, which employs 12 qualified lawyers.

Ulla Barlow says: 'It grew out of our belief that if you did it right, you could manage a legal aid practice.

You are working with people who are individualists and have their own ideas about where they are going.

You have to take into account their needs.' What she describes is a 'Theory Y' organisation.

Most practices, and most traditional businesses are, she says, 'Theory X' - hierarchical, ruled by command and discipline.

'Theory Y' is much more consensual, with people being kept informed, and their views and needs taken into account.

As an example of how it works, Ms Barlow says that people have been told off for putting in too many hours.

'We want people who have a life - they need to be inoculated against the stress of doing "misery work".'

One characteristic of Law For All's practice is flexible working.

But this is also spreading to conventional legal aid partnerships, such as London-based TV Edwards, where the necessity to get and retain experienced lawyers - rather than management theory - has led to the introduction of job-sharing.

At the heart of Law For All is a recognition that professional people are best employed earning fees, and management tasks should be taken away from them.

It has done this in two ways.

All lawyers do their research and writing in one building (they meet clients in other locations, some of them unconventional, such as a church hall).

Once a month, they have a day with an administrator, who goes through all the files, checking that everything is up to date, and an accountant who establishes what work they have done.

They also meet Anna Barlow to talk about how things are going.

Ulla Barlow suggests that this system can be widely used by legal aid practices, but they require an acceptance by lawyers that managers are respected senior members of the team.

It is also part of the scheme at South-West Law, where Helen Peake - a qualified matrimonial lawyer - handles all of the administration and none of the fee-earning.

Her husband John, one of the company's four directors, says: 'She is an experienced legal aid lawyer, so she knows why things have to be done.'

He adds: 'You have to separate fee-earning from running the business, because for a lawyer fee-earning will always take precedence.'

Ms Peake sees nothing magical about being a limited company rather than a partnership.

'Lenders will require such extensive personal guarantees from the directors that it means little in [joint] liability terms.

There are some tax advantages in being employees at this stage.' The company is only ten months old.

All the models have beliefs in common.

One is that this is a commitment, not something you do because you fail as a commercial lawyer.

The second is that 'advice and assistance' work (the old green form work) can only be profitable if done in bulk.

This results in a fear that people are being processed through factory firms.

'We are unable to hold clients' hands on matrimonial as we used to,' says Jenny Beck, managing partner of TV Edwards.

Danny Simpson, head of the legal aid criminal law team at Sheffield-based Howells, says: 'People are trying to drop out of advice and assistance.

'The reality is that we'd be a lot richer as partners if we dropped immigration and consumer credit, but because we have a determination to continue, we subsidise them.'

Another core faith is that only by concentrating resources in large offices can the work continue.

This has two effects - one is that firms are moving from several offices to one, and more than one commentator says off the record that vast swathes of the country are losing legal advice.

Legal aid practices have not had much surplus space anyway, so this involves buying new offices.

That is fine for new practices, but for existing large firms it involves a long-term commitment of capital.

Stephen Hewitt, managing partner of south London firm Fisher Meredith, says: 'In 2004 [Legal Services Commission] civil contracts are going to have six-months' notice periods written into them [previously they were five or ten-year open contracts].

We are an A-list firm, but how can we create a long-term strategy when the government changes its mind every ten minutes?'

As to covering the country, two models are suggested.

One is the Law For All model, with lawyers being available at certain times in places such as church halls or community centres for interviews only.

This is a compromise, as the individual lawyers do not have at their disposal the resources of the large firm, but that is how the duty solicitors have always operated.

The other model is proposed by Mr Simpson.

He suggests video conferencing to Citizens Advice Bureaux, as the cost of the technology is falling rapidly.

The extra equipment required would be video cameras fitted to existing computers, plus a scanner for documents, and a fax machine.

Mr Simpson says that unless things change, 'legal aid will die with this generation'.

He did an informal survey of the age of solicitors on the duty solicitor scheme in Sheffield - two were in their 20s, ten in their 30s, 25 in their 40s and another 20 were older.

As Ms Beck says: 'We are just hoping people will have their eyes opened before it is too late.'

Nick Gillies is a freelance journalist

The generation game

The collapse of legal aid has led to a different demographic for legal aid trainees and assistants - in general they are much older.

Because of student loans, fewer graduates are attracted to a profession that pays less than teaching.

Five years after completing teacher training, a teacher in inner London will get, from September, 30,000 (26,460 outside London) plus an abatement of their loans, and a good pension scheme.

Danny Simpson says that in Sheffield 'anyone competent' among lawyers will want 25,000, and in inner London, Stephen Hewitt says '30,000 seems about the market price'.

Jenny Beck adds that legal aid firms are not able to offer additional benefits to staff such as loan abatements.

Indeed, a high proportion of recruits to legal aid practices are coming to the profession from less conventional routes - as experienced social and other care workers who have put themselves through law degrees, or who have spouses who support them.