VERY HIGH COST CASES: solicitors can negotiate fees with non-panel barristers under new rules


Criminal law solicitors on the very high cost cases (VHCC) panel will be able to instruct non-panel advocates, the Legal Services Commission (LSC) announced this week.



The LSC admitted that too few barristers had signed up to its new contract terms to make the original scheme work.



The VHCC scheme to create a select panel of experienced solicitors and barristers to cover the most complex and expensive criminal cases was expected to start in January. But it was put in jeopardy after the majority of barristers boycotted it in a dispute over fee rates and contract terms (see [2008] Gazette, 24 January, 1).



The LSC revealed that only 130 of the 2,300 barristers who were offered contracts had signed up to the panel.



Under the arrangements revealed this week, solicitors will be able to instruct advocates who are not on the panel, where no panel advocate is available. The fee rates will be the same as in the original contract, but where the solicitor instructs a non-panel advocate the payment will be made to the solicitor rather than the barrister. Solicitors will then be able to negotiate the fees they pay to barristers. Panel advocates will receive payment directly form the LSC, however. The LSC said it will consult on the new proposals for two weeks.



Rodney Warren, director of the Criminal Law Solicitors Association, said: 'It's a pragmatic way forward. It would have been a nightmare for solicitors who had put in so much work preparing their bids [to be on the panel], if the whole thing had been scrapped.'



But Roy Morgan, chairman of the Legal Aid Practitioners Group, said: 'Combined with anecdotal evidence of solicitor firms which were put on the panel without fulfilling the criteria, this makes a nonsense of the whole scheme.'



Meanwhile, the LSC has also published a consultation on a new general criminal contract for solicitors to replace the current contract, which expires in July. The commission has proposed the introduction of new key performance indicators and alterations to the duty solicitor allocation.



Ian Kelcey, chairman of the Law Society's criminal law committee, said the pace and amount of change was 'untenable' and practitioners found it 'almost impossible to plan their businesses' to meet the changes.



Tan Ikram, President of the London Criminal Courts Solicitors Association, called on the LSC to stop and reflect on the impact of all of the recent changes before 'blindly rushing on with even more'.



Catherine Baksi