WHEN THE LEGAL AID RUNS DRYLegal aid campaigners have often during the last few years invoked doom-laden predictions for the future of the system.

But last week, an individual practitioner held himself out as a stark example of the difficulties solicitors face in the legal aid field.Devon sole practitioner Ralph Bell has ended his practice after 26 years in business, blaming financial problems following changes in the legal aid system.

The 52-year-old closed down his Torquay firm, Ralph E Bell & Co, in December.

He dismissed his staff of 24, which included nine fee-earners.

When the recession hit his private practice, especially conveyancing, at the end of the 1980s, Mr Bell, who qualified in 1966, sought to build a niche practice in legal aid.

By 1995 more than 80% of the firm's £500,000 annual turnover was funded by legal aid.

The firm was in the process of app lying for a legal aid franchise.'With hindsight I would defy anybody to make legal aid work viable.

When you're in legal aid you feel guilty because you can't make it pay.

When you're out of it, you can't see how it could have been possible,' he told the Gazette last week.He had spent the past six years computerising his offices and said it was run extremely efficiently.

This claim was supported by a partner in another Torquay firm.Mr Bell said he was awaiting £137,000 of bills currently being taxed at court.

He admitted the firm was under-capitalised, but said that delays in legal aid payments were behind his firm's collapse.

'Somehow they've got to cut the lead time in payments, as well as increasing the money available for legal aid work.

I am very pessimistic for the future of legal aid,' he said.He lashed out at the quality of legal aid work possible within the green form limit.

He gave the example of a client whose NHS hospital operation was cancelled four times.

The case involved many hours of work and complex negotiations.

'In the end we had him treated in a private hospital, but we had to do that for under the green form limit of £84,' he said.

Responding to Mr Bell's complaints, the Legal Aid Board said it could not comment on individual cases, but pointed out that in 1994/95 it had paid 83% of its civil taxed and assessed bills within five weeks and 96% within eight weeks.Ralph E Bell & Co's caseload and files have been taken over by local Torquay firm Kitsons, which has substantial experience of legal aid work.PUSHED OFF THE BENCHThe Lord Chancellor's Department will introduce a new system for recruiting recorders next month, and competition is expected to be fierce with more than 20 lawyers applying for each post.In this situation, bad publicity is the last thing an existing recorder needs if he is to be reappointed at the end of his term by Lord Mackay.Rivers Hickman, the recorder and sole practitioner at the centre of a media furore after stopping a trial to go on holiday, told the Gazette that he believed a generous dollop of unfair reporting was the reason he was not reappointed at the end of last year.Mr Hickman, one of the most experienced recorders in the Midlands with almost 20 years' service, said he had been given no reason by the LCD why he should not continue.

'If enough people throw enough mud some of it sticks,' Mr Hickman, said, angry at a recent article in The Mail on Sunday on his failure to be reappointed.'People at the LCD have obviously said to themselves: "Here is a good opportunity to remove a slight embarrassment."'The former recorder, who said he will be writing to the Law Society President regarding the issue, stopped a case at Wolver-hampton Crown Court in September 1994 before taking a three-week holiday in Cyprus.He said he had agreed to take on the case on extremely short notice and was promised it would only last three days.

It turned out, during the retrial, that the prosecution case alone lasted five days.After the media seized hold of the case, and a reporter followed Mr Hickman to Cyprus, the recorder had a private meeting with the Lord Chancellor at the House of Lords.

'He completely absolved me from any blame, and agreed that the matter was basically one of incorrect listing,' Mr Hickman said.

Mr Hickman said he offered to resign on the spot, but the Lord Chancellor wanted him to continue.He said he faced a grim future as a high street practitioner in Pershore, Worcester-shire.

A spokesman for the LCD refused to go into the reasons why Mr Hickman w as not reappointed.