Study of legal advice at a local level

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has published a study of legal advice at a local level. The study examines the following four areas:

• The impact of the recession on the demand for civil legal advice
• The impact of civil legal advice fixed fees on local providers – financially and in terms of the type of work they are taking on
• The initial experience of Community Legal Advice Centres, including the impact on other providers in the area
• Trends in funding from sources other than the Community Legal Service, including local authority funding, national lottery funding, charities, central government departments, and others.

The review makes it clear that the purpose of the study was not to propose changes to existing legal aid policy. However, the paper draws conclusions and makes recommendations for further work. We understand that the MoJ plans to take these forward and we welcome that initiative. However, whilst we support a number of the recommendations, in other cases we are disappointed that the report did not go further.

Impact of recession

The study concludes that the recession is clearly increasing the demand for legal advice, particularly in debt, housing and welfare benefits. Advice providers reported that many of the new clients seeking advice in these categories were not eligible for legal aid as they were self-employed, still employed or owned their homes. This new client group is increasing pressure on the advice sector.

Ecology of provision

The study recognises that the legal aid fixed fee payment system does not allow for providers with a case mix focused on more complex cases or clients who are more difficult to assist. It therefore does not support what the study refers to as an "ecology of provision" where some organisations specialise in more difficult and longer cases whilst others deal with shorter, less complex ones. We support the recommendation that more work should be carried out to consider the role of providers who focus on more complex cases and difficult clients. We would argue that the current payment system makes it very difficult for providers to continue to do this kind of work and that there should be a reconsideration of where the exceptional case threshold lies.

Cherry-picking and paralegalisation

The study acknowledges providers' concerns that fixed fees act as an incentive on some providers to select the easiest, shortest cases and to allocate legal help work to the most junior staff. The report recommends that consideration should be given to developing a monitoring system to identify the impact of these incentives on services to clients. We support this approach but are disappointed that the report has not acknowledged the key role that the peer review can and should play in this process.

CLACs

The report states that it is very early days to draw firm conclusions about the impact of CLACs and recommends further monitoring of their impact on local advice provision and other funding streams. We support these recommendations but would also like to see an analysis of the full cost to the LSC of establishing the five existing CLACs. Without this, we do not believe that it is possible to carry out a proper evaluation of the CLAC policy.
 
The full report can be found here:http://www.justice.gov.uk/publications/docs/legal-advice-local-level.pdf