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There are no two ways about it, the law is extremely complex, and it's frankly absurd to expect LIP's to be able (1) to come to terms with what can be very abstract legal concepts; and then (2) navigate through the nightmare of the CPR, which were written for lawyers, not laymen.

Unfortunately, the legal issues can be just as complex in a case involving £500 as one involving £5m, and ironically the type of cases that LIP's get sucked into involve areas of law that can be extremely impenetrable - the Consumer Credit Act, for example, or the Distance Selling Regulations.

If we're honest, many of us who have been qualified for many years can struggle to understand both individual legal issues and the ever-changing CPR. I sometimes read judgments and I’m astonished at just how complicated a dispute that appears superficially straightforward can be, and how abstruse the legal arguments can become. Yet we are all highly educated, highly literate and we've received intensive training.

To expect people who are often the exact opposite to cope with a court action is like expecting a lay person to correct a software glitch or administer chemotherapy to themselves.

And all the rubbish talked about `unbundling' is just that - utter rubbish. Legal issues have to be dealt with in the round – it’s the difference between watching a film and looking at a series of snapshots, trying to piece the story together. Or to extend the previous metaphor it's the equivalent of advising which particular chemo drug would work best and then leaving them to it.

So it's unarguable that people faced with court proceedings need legal representation, both for their own benefit and for the public benefit in that such representation will help to keep the courts operating instead of grinding to a halt.

The big question is how to pay for it.

Although there's a good argument for reintroducing legal aid it's never going to happen with a government that actively enjoys hair shirt policies (at least for the lower orders). Legal expenses BTE policies seem to work fairly well in some countries, Germany for example, but people here are notoriously reluctant to pay, and in my experience LEI companies are notoriously reluctant to finance a claim. They often seem to be little more than a cunningly disguised source of work for their `panel' firms, accepting those cases where costs are likely to be recovered anyway, and rejecting everything else.

One possibility that occurs to me is reintroducing a form of legal aid on an `opt-in’ self insuring basis via National Insurance contributions. For example, one could agree to pay an additional rate of, say 0.25% on NIC’s in order to gain access to the equivalent of the old legal aid system. There would still, of course, be a merit test to pass, but if the case was accepted you would be indemnified in respect of legal costs.

Such a scheme might even replicate the behaviour of some LEI’s in that in very low value cases it would, having confirmed the merits of the claim / defence, simply pay the value of the claim, thereby removing lots of low value claims from the courts altogether.

It should be relatively easy to set up and operate, in that the mechanism for collecting contributions is already in place, and as it would be run on a not for profit basis, unlike commercial LEI’s, it should be relatively cheap.

I’ve no doubt that there are plenty of flaws with this proposal, as with any other, but the ridiculous pretence that the courts can be effectively used by anyone if they just spend a bit of time mugging up on the government websites needs to be killed off once and for all.