EDITORIAL

Timely Damascene conversion

Welcome aboard, Mr Orchard.

Legal aid lawyers have been awaiting your arrival for some time.

Better late than never

Battered by stagnating rates of pay, shackled by bureaucratic red tape and pilloried by Whitehall as the 'criminal's friend', legal aid lawyers now find that their greatest champion is a man who has been their historic bte noire - Steve Orchard.

The west country straight talker, who first headed the Legal Aid Board and then became chief executive of the Legal Services Commission, oversaw years of declining pay in real terms, franchising and then contracting.

There are probably plenty of high street law firms with his face on their office dartboards.

Yet now Mr Orchard - undoubtedly speaking more plainly than usual with his, albeit delayed, retirement looming - has told practitioners that ministers are being naive in their handling of the long-term future of both criminal and civil legal aid.

There has, he explained wearily, been a falling out between the LSC and the Treasury, with the Lord Chancellor's Department in the middle.

Welcome aboard, Mr Orchard.

Legal aid lawyers have been awaiting your arrival for sometime.

But better late than never, and his views may yet cause some unease for the government.

Its recent gambit - to tear up the current contract and not indicate what will replace it for 2004 - created significant unease.

Now officials are ominously and obliquely mentioning payment by results.

The Lord Chancellor's Department is talking in terms of case preparation at the moment.

Solicitors in the field will be anxious for that to be fleshed out.

Keep your eyes peeled, Mr Orchard.