Cold call

The government green paper on the provision of legal aid is a substantial document running to over 200 pages. There has been much wringing of hands and tearing out of hair in relation to what are savage cuts to a system which in many respects is already on its last legs.

About ten years ago I joined the Law Society's access to justice committee which is now effectively the Law Society's legal aid committee. The agenda in those days concentrated on trying to increase the rates paid to legal aid lawyers '“ and now it has been completely turned on its head as we try to preserve what remains of the system.

It is sad that, although we live in times where the divorce rate is rising and there are major challenges in relation to welfare benefits and housing benefit in particular, over the last ten years the number of solicitors prepared to advise the man in the street on legal aid has reduced drastically.

My practice in Kensington is the only practice that offers legal aid for matrimonial. All the others have slipped away quietly. The green paper is likely to herald perhaps not a major migration or exodus but this is certainly going to lead to a diminution in the number of solicitors who are prepared to do highly complex work for extremely demanding clients for very low rates of pay.

Dangerous territory

Nevertheless, it is easy to get hung up on the bulk of the green paper and miss the small print. I believe the proposal that all specialist advice should be offered through the community legal advice helpline is the most pernicious proposal of all within the paper. Effectively the deal is that you can only reach a lawyer by first ringing the helpline. They will be judge and jury as to whether you need a lawyer and it will be up to them to decide who to refer you to. They will of course have a choice in most cases, and who knows how that choice will be exercised.

I cannot speak for all areas of practice, but in housing matters the legal advice helpline deals with some £50,000 enquiries every year and only about 12 per cent of these are referred out to specialist solicitors.

And sometimes those advising a client over the telephone do not always give the best advice. One case that was referred to me involved a vulnerable 15-year-old girl who was homeless on the streets of Kensington. She was advised through the helpline by a worker in Wales who for obvious reasons had no knowledge of the Homeless Persons Unit in the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea. In the end the client was referred to me but it was an eleventh-hour job which put my firm under pressure and must have been enormously stressful for the client.

Providing a 'daykeeper' for the provision of legal aid is an extremely dangerous route to travel. Will the Treasury impose limits on the service and tell them how many cases can be referred for specialist advice? Will some clients be referred to certain firms who do cases more cheaply? Will some clients simply be unable to find their way to the service in the first place? Many clients find it challenging to make a phone call; especially if English is not their first language, they are mentally ill or educationally sub-normal.

Large numbers of my clients come to me via agencies that refer them and often someone will accompany them to my office which may seem a scary place. Quite how these people will manage to access the telephone advice line I don't know.

Unwelcome transformation

What is odd is that the current referral system works relatively well. Most solicitors that do legal aid have networks built up from Citizens Advice Bureaux, law centres and a variety of other agencies. People in the business of advising vulnerable people know who is a good solicitor and who it is appropriate to send that client to.

Completely transforming the system and taking away access to justice and most importantly the right of choice from a client is going to present enormous challenges. Ultimately the customer will bear the brunt of this upheaval and I believe passionately that this section of the green paper '“ which is something that Kenneth Clarke never even mentioned when introducing the paper in the House of Commons '“ should be resisted at all costs. Not out of any undue interest on the part of solicitors, but so that vulnerable clients up and down the country can continue to receive access to justice.

As I write this Cosmo sits at my feet dreaming of the bones that the new year will bring. At least he eats bones with a bit of meat on. Legal aid has been reduced to a skeleton and is further diminished by the instigation of a 'gatekeeper' '“ and a lot of legal aid practitioners like me will probably be looking for the door.