Pay up before it's too late

The Gazette recently dipped a toe into a pool of legal aid practitioners to gauge their opinion of the future (see Gazette [2002] 10 January, 1).

The results were far from encouraging.

Most suggested that they would bail out of doing some if not all areas of publicly funded work, citing poor pay and onerous bureaucracy as the reasons.

Several months later, the situation had hardly improved.

The Lord Chancellor disappointed legal aid solicitors by freezing pay for the eighth time in 11 years (see Gazette [2002] 5 April, 1).

In delivering that shock, Lord Irvine maintained that there was no recruitment crisis for legal aid and that general Whitehall belt-tightening meant that solicitors would have to grin and bear it.

This week there is further evidence that he has got it wrong.

We report on a Law Society survey, the results of which illustrate a deepening crisis for publicly funded work.

Like the Gazette survey, it fires a warning shot that in as little as five years' time, as many as 50% of current practitioners could have turned their backs on legal aid.

Interestingly, the Legal Services Commission has recognised the recruitment difficulties faced by legal aid practices.

However, as our postbag will testify, the LSC's proposal of providing a training grant for 100 trainees and 100 legal practice course students a year (see Gazette [2002] 13 June, 1) is little more than a sticking plaster on a gaping wound.

At a time when the government is giving such high profile to the ills of the criminal justice system, it must also consider the issue of access to justice.

Lord Irvine must look again at pay rates.