Frontline | Unleashed

Returning home from work I was surprised to see my house in total darkness. My in-laws were staying and there should have been a few lights on. Entering the house and clicking the switch by the door I discovered that there were no lights working. My in-laws, rather apologetically, explained that something had happened with the lights and there was a problem. So it was out with the torches and candles and in a rather old fashioned way I grabbed the yellow pages and, having looked at the fuse boxes and determined that the problems were beyond do-it-yourself tinkering, searched for a local electrician...

The electricians were extremely efficient, answering on the second ring of the phone. They explained that their rate was £79.50 per half hour plus VAT but they were confident that they could get my lights on. Trundling into your home in total darkness after a tough day in the office puts you in the frame of mind to say yes to anything.

Again, very efficiently, the electrician arrived within about forty minutes and he, like me, took a look at the fuse boxes but realised that was not the problem. The root of the problem was a transformer in a ceiling void, which involved cutting out a part of the ceiling and, to cut a long story short, the electrician was there for one hour and ten minutes, by which time his fee had reached £238.50, three lots of thirty minutes (as we had impinged on a third thirty minute spell) and, with VAT on top, the total bill was £286.20 for one hour and ten minutes work.

Value for service

You are probably beginning to see why I have told this rather sad little tale of electrical mishaps. What we were dealing with here was a young man who, by his own admission, was only qualified to deal with certain electrical problems and had not yet passed all his electrical exams and would not be allowed to give me a certificate at the end of his work. I would put him at about 28-years-old. Yet for little over an hour’s work he was charging £286.20.

Legal aid solicitors, who tend to be highly qualified, quite often with a degree and thereafter professional qualifications, are averaging somewhere between £50 and £60 per hour. If I deal with a legal help case on behalf of a client I receive a fixed fee of just over £50 for a housing matter and, if I spend four hours on that case – which may not be unusual – my fee plummets to £38.50 per hour. Even on certificated work I struggle to get beyond £71 per hour and, remember, the certificated work is the work that involves court work, advocacy and the specialist legal knowledge that the client is seeking and which I, for one, have spent thirty five years acquiring.

Off the agenda

There has to be something really rotten at the heart of our legal system when lawyers are treated with such contempt by all and sundry that we are allowed to do extremely difficult, challenging work and yet be paid a pittance for it. We are now hearing that legal aid is off the agenda. At the Conservative party conference apparently it was not mentioned once. Yet everybody in the profession knows that there is a storm approaching.

Recently some quite large providers have gone under. My guess is that quite soon some other providers will begin to feel the pinch and shut up shop. Certainly, after April next year, when the cuts really begin to bite, there will be firms of solicitors out there who will no longer be able to carry on with the legal aid side of their practice. It will become uneconomic to do so.

The chap who mended my electrics peered around in my ceiling void, found the broken transformer and repaired it. In the middle of all this he took three personal phone calls, asked me for a phone charger so that he could charge his own phone, made use of my lavatory facilities and gratefully took advantage of the cup of tea made by me as a matter or course. He went away very pleased with his £286.20. I did not begrudge him the money on the basis that I got my lights back on. I am not even sure if he noticed Cosmo, by dog, lurking in the dark rather confused that he could not see his dog bowl.

This is a true story. I could probably have told similar stories about plumbers, tree surgeons and carpenters. Why is it that in a relatively sophisticated democracy that takes delight in pouring scorn on the lack of legal services in countries such as Russia, we are continuing to pay our solicitors doing legal aid work so very miserably?

I suspect these are questions which may currently be off the agenda but, come next year, they will certainly return.