The Law Society is seeking practitioners’ help to make the case to government for less legal aid bureaucracy – commissioning an economics consultancy to identify unnecessary burdens imposed by billing processes and supervision requirements.
Chancery Lane’s research project, which will be conducted by Frontier Economics, comes at a pivotal moment for legal aid. Last week the House of Commons justice select committee declared that the lord chancellor was failing in his statutory duty on legal aid – a damning report that will undoubtedly be brought to the attention of new prime minister Andy Burnham and his new justice secretary, Alex Norris.
The Society said: ‘Legal aid practitioners face administrative burdens and payment delays that impact their financial viability. This research will help us show the impact of this added bureaucracy on you and your organisation and help us argue for change.
‘It is an opportunity to help key decision-makers in the government better understand the steps they can take to make legal aid work more economically viable for firms.’
Frontier Economics will collect data on billing processes and supervision requirements and conduct short interviews to gather more on-the-ground details.
Research conducted by the Legal Aid Practitioners Group prior to the cyber-attack on the Legal Aid Agency's services found that lawyers spent a quarter of their day on unbillable work.
The consultancy has previously conducted independent analysis on housing legal aid work for Chancery Lane, which found that lawyers were losing money doing the work but felt morally obliged to keep going. Housing was one of two areas the government subsequently prioritised for fee uplifts.
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