Showing faith in legal aid

Good news stories are few and far between for legal aid lawyers, so it is without hesitation that we praise the Legal Services Commission for mooting an idea that could go a significant way towards rectifying the current skills shortage in publicly funded work.

Pumping an estimated 1.7 million annually into trainee recruitment for the legal aid sector - as the commission's consultation paper released this week proposes - would be much overdue and truly welcome.

For far too long the Lord Chancellor's Department has ignored warnings from both the LSC and from practitioners on the ground that legal aid firms walking the tightrope of profitability cannot afford to take on trainees.

The medium and long-term effects of that recruitment shortfall should be obvious, even to ministers who rate access to justice well below the health service and eduction as priorities in the public spending pecking order.

The detail of the commission's proposal to fund a certain number of legal practice courses and training contracts annually needs to be discussed in detail during the consultation.

One potentially valid suggestion is that the money should be spread more widely and thinly than has been proposed.

However, the detail apart, the principle of what the LSC is proposing is to be applauded.