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Legal Aid was transferred from the Law Society to the legal aid board in about late 80's. Franchising was introduced in early 90's and lasted until about 2000 when contracting came in. Before then it was optional for firms to go for franchising with the legal aid board. The trial period came to the end in about 2000 when firms with out a legal aid contract will be out completely. Legal Aid Board was renamed as Legal Services Commission. At that time firms doing legal aid would have been able to make some profits due to some firms dropping out after 2000. Committed legal aid firms have no problems of getting clients. Some large firms stayed doing legal aid in some areas of work such as family. The idea of contracting or franchising was good in that it ensured quality control and safe guarding public funds. However the way Legal Services Commission implemented this was questionable. Its annual audit may be a nightmare and some firms had their contracts withdrawn, or they dropped out voluntarily. About ten years ago the government started cut back legal aid funds. The major change came in 2013 when a lot of legal aid firms went out of business or some smaller ones gave up legal aid or closed down. We were lucky that the change had no impact on our firm as we have not had legal aid work at all for many years. Recently Legal Services Commission changed its name again to Legal Aid Agency which is more appropriate representing the relationship between the provider and the funder. We had civil contract for three years from 2000 and had stopped doing legal aid work for over ten years. Sometimes we receive phone calls from desperate clients but we could only say sorry to the caller we do not offer legal aid work. Sometimes we do undertake the work on low cost basis on individual cases. That is how the legal aid landscape has changed in the past 30 years or so, correct me if the chronology is wrong.