Pushing firms to the wall

The Law Society is in an impossible position when it comes to the proposed fee cuts. Trying to please all their members is always a tough task, and never more so than now.

But whatever can be said about these cuts they certainly cannot be described as a victory. Instead they are more like a slow death to the majority of firms that have provided quality legal advice for many years. I'm sure it will be claimed that by client choice remaining it allows firms to carry on providing criminal advice to their clients. This is correct but misleading at the same time. Firms will only really survive in the short term, if at all. There are two reasons for this; the 17.5 per cent cut and the likelihood that the majority of firms will lose that vital stream of revenue realised from duty work.

It will no doubt be argued that cuts had to be made in our industry but why did our fees have to be targeted, again? The government has failed to realise that legal aid firms are already cut to the bone when it comes to swallowing fee cuts. Let's not lose sight of the fact that the rates have not increased for many years. This, in real terms, already equates to a reduction in revenue made even worse when you consider the ever increasing 'out of court disposals'. The work going through the courts now is nothing like it was four or five ?years ago.

So where can the profession make the money back? Less overheads? Can any firm really absorb cuts in fees initially of 8.75 per cent, but ultimately totalling 17.5 per cent when fully rolled out? The biggest irony is that the next best place to have mitigated our losses would have been duty work. But even that is being taken from us. For years solicitors were encouraged to train and hire duty solicitors to increase their share of the work from the market. This not only carried increased training costs but also a duty solicitor salary which came at a premium when compared to others less qualified. We are now being told that come 2015 if firms do not win a 'duty contract' there will be no duty work for duty solicitors to undertake let alone the firms. What then will be the point of attaining such a qualification in the future? I fear that mark of quality will unfortunately disappear from our profession.

But loss of quality should be last of the Law Society's worries. It's the loss of members it should be more concerned about. I think the profession has totally underestimated the effect that losing duty work will have on firms. Yes in the short term they will survive, but where will they be in ten years time? Let's make no mistake, firms will close down as ?a result of these cuts. SJ