A legal aid lawyer reading the papers over the holiday period might have to be forgiven for thinking that press criticism about the Dome and other millennium celebrations was intended to be applied to the new legal aid scheme.The Dome stories highlighted real problems over access, and the end product was reported not to live up to the hype.

One of the chiefs of the steering team publicly admitted that too many critical decisions ended up being taken at the last minute in December.The most objectionable element was the braggadocio with which each scheme was announced.

In the case of legal aid contracting, 'quality assured' and 'access' were the mantras of the consultation documents.

They are about as appropriate as the epithets which preceded the capital's damp squib of a river of fire.As a result of the changes and the failure to increase legal aid remuneration in six out of the last eight years, the number of solicitors' firms willing and able to undertake high-quality publicly-funded work has fallen dramatically.It is no longer possible for a firm offering the highest quality advice automatically to move a client on to a legal aid certificate when private funds have run out.In my local area, in one modest town where there are half a dozen law firms, the only publicly-funded legal help which can now be obtained is restricted to matrimonial advice and that is provided by a single firm.

The poor must get their assistance ten miles away in the nearest city.The government tries to propagate the impression that it is in favour of small businesses.

It flies the banners 'joined-up thinking' and 'transparency'.

These sentiments ring holl ow to the legal aid practitioner.

For instance the formula being used to determine how many new cases a lawyer is permitted to start is not published.

Law firms are receiving inconsistent and unlikely contract offers.The Legal Aid Practitioners' Group and the Law Society made representations about problems likely to be posed by the new scheme.

We were led to believe that significant and suitable improvements would have been made by 1 January this year.The run-up to implementation in December was chaotic.

Even after the beginning of the new year, some firms still did not know how many new cases they would be allowed to commence during the following 12 months.

At the same time, they have endured endless lecturing on the merits of budgeting and business plans.When it comes to the critical question of whether the final system will work to the satisfaction of clients, the new scheme and the Dome are in the same position.

Neither was adequately tested on the public in advance.

But failures in the new legal aid scheme will not be featuring on the front pages of the national papers.

Complaints from the disadvantaged do not have the same immediacy as the protestations of the editors and their spouses who had to wait at a desolate tube station for hours on end before getting to the big party.A newly-formed law firm of highly regarded mental health practitioners, Mackintosh Duncan, has already had to resort to making an application for judicial review.

On 12 January it will discover the extent to which the High Court agrees that it is impossible for it to trade under the new legal aid scheme.

There are likely to be further legal challenges to the scheme as firms start to behave more like businesses responding to cash limits.The Lord Chancellor famously commented that he would know that his reforms were working when the lawyers started 'squealing'.

Legal aid practitioners commit themselves to ruinously paid work because they recognise that their effort is of value to the underprivileged.When policies are put in place which truly promote access to high quality legal help, lawyers will begin to believe that the reforms are not just double-speak for reductions in levels of service to the socially excluded.