MR backs legal aid for early advice

The master of the rolls has thrown his weight behind calls for early advice sessions funded by legal aid – and suggested the idea is being discussed.

Appearing before the House of Lords Constitution Committee yesterday, Sir Geoffrey Vos said lawyers were needed at an early stage to triage cases and prevent them escalating.

A huge advocate of technology, Vos said sites such as ChatGPT are worthwhile tools for those seeking legal help. He said that, after seeking advice from a solicitor recently, he then made the same enquiry of ChatGPT and received the same answer ‘but for rather less money’. But he acknowledged that there are nevertheless limits to how much generative chatbots might be able to help people, and he advocated that public funding be available for early intervention.

Vos said: ‘You can have such a chatbot but many people won’t ask the right questions… in many cases it is not actually the answer that is lacking, it’s the question. Although you can train chatbots to get to the right question, sometimes people just are not able to understand how to converse.

‘Those people will need to be transmitted to legal advice, and often I believe in half an hour, talking on a screen to a real human being these problems will be resolved before you even get to a court. The best use for legal aid money for civil justice would be to provide such a service – it is not there yet but I know it is being considered.’

Legal aid for early legal advice has been long discussed but rarely had the backing of someone so senior in the judiciary or apparently the consideration of those holding the purse strings.

The Bach Commission backed the idea in 2017 and the Law Society has consistently campaigned for the restoration of early legal advice to prevent homelessness and reduce the need for costly court proceedings. In 2020, the Ministry of Justice announced pilot schemes for early legal advice in housing cases but this was not deemed to be a success.

Asked by peers whether solicitors in general would be replaced by ’bots’, Vos insisted there will be lots of employment opportunities for those willing to adapt.

‘We will find that lawyers will be front and centre of new technology,’ said the master of the rolls. ‘When the luddites were around and we started building railways and factories everybody thought it was the end of life as we knew it, but actually new opportunities are created by new technology.

‘But we all have to learn and some of the things I hear about new technology is quite ignorant because people say “I am not learning about it, I am too old”.. But nobody is too old and everybody has to learn. Technology can help everybody in different ways and you are perfectly entitled to say “I don’t want to use it, I’ve tried” but then you must accept the consequences in modern life because we are living in a society where everybody will be using it.’