Report comment

I have had 44 years of representing clients in the criminal courts and 30 years representing clients in the Police station and I am all too familiar with firms using ghost solicitors. My firm has only one solicitor on the duty rota and that is myself. I was very much in favour of the LAA introducing the 14 hr rule until I fell foul of the rule. My contract manager discovered I was about 50 hrs short of my 6 month quota of 364 hrs. This has come about for the following reasons,
(1)They have closed the local magistrates court and I now have to travel 25 miles to the allocated court for my area whereas before it was a 10 minute walk away. This means I use far more often my police station representative to attend duty call outs at the Police station.
(2) With the closure of the local magistrates court I now share court duty slots with solicitors from a city court so I am now given fewer slots.
(3) Due to the appalling fees paid to criminal solicitors I am forced to look for other areas of more remunerative work which again means I rely more on my police station rep.
(4) I m getting to the age that getting up at 2.am to go to the Police station and then do a contest at 10.am in the Mags court is not in the best interests of my clients.
I accept that I signed the contract and should have realised that 14hrs a week may be difficult to achieve but I do urge the LAA to look at the matter again as I am afraid the courts and the Police station will loose a lot of experienced criminal solicitors