Who you gonna call?

Children

The proposals to cut legal aid for education work would affect 90 to 95 per cent of our education clients '“ that's around 35 cases per month. The largest group within this is children with special educational needs, whose families come to us because their children are refused a statement of special educational needs to provide the educational support they need by their local authority. We deal with around 30 of these kinds of cases per month.

We also offer legal representation to families who miss out on the school place they would like '“ this tends to occur around March every year and we deal with 20 to 25 clients. A minority of our cases are school exclusions '“ around five per month.

All of these people would no longer be able to get our help through legal aid if the proposals to cut it do go ahead.

Judicial review will be the only publicly funded education legal work which will be freely available for people to take advantage of. But the problem with that is that a JR costs the taxpayer as much as £20,000 '“ whereas straightforward representation costs around £3,000. Additionally, the majority of people on the street do not know what a JR actually is '“ let alone how to go about appointing a solicitor to do it.

Finally, to proceed with a JR, preliminary work will need to be conducted by a solicitor. This will no longer be funded by legal aid. It is difficult to see how JR will be accessible to those people who cannot access legal aid.

Edward Duff is a trainee solicitor at the Children's Legal Centre

Family

If the green paper were implemented I estimate roughly 30 to 40 per cent of our current legal aid client base would lose out. As the only firm in our procurement area that does legal aid matrimonial work, we have expanded our capacity because of a huge demand which we cannot always supply. Currently we have five solicitors doing nothing but matrimonial and, of these, three do nothing but legal aid matrimonial. I suspect we will have to radically consider our staffing levels in the years to come.

But one in three marriages end in divorce. That is something that will not change. How clients will deal with this trauma without professional help I cannot begin to fathom.

Unforeseen problems will crop up in 'low-value' divorces, with council tenancies not being properly transferred, properties sold under the nose of a spouse and married women's notices not served at the Land Registry.

Courts and social workers will suddenly face a deluge of unrepresented litigants who will have nowhere to turn. Crucial court orders will not be requested and some degree of chaos will take its place.

There is, of course, a further problem. Many divorces involve a 'rich' husband and a 'poor' wife. The proposals will not affect the husband who will remain able to instruct Manches or Withers. Where will the wife go?

The answer '“ nowhere as no one will be able to represent her. Equality of arms? I don't think so. The decision makers at the MoJ are largely men '“ and it shows!

Russell Conway is a senior partner at London-based legal aid firm Oliver Fisher

Immigration

This change affects about 50 per cent of our caseload based on the matter start allocation we have split between 'asylum' '“ which will remain in scope '“ and 'immigration other' '“ which largely will not. In many ways the changes make sense.

I suppose you could say that underlying the change is the concept that representing those seeking asylum is part and parcel of our humanitarian obligations (not to mention legal obligations under the ECHR), whereas the 'immigration other' category could broadly be categorised as relating to economic migrancy. If that is a fair comment, then some of the areas taken out of scope can be justified.

Take the example of an international student. Although their families may be able to afford many thousands of pounds of fees, it is also true that they may qualify for legal aid in respect of student visa applications because their own means are below theeligibility criteria.

The difficulty, of course, comes in drawing the line in the middle to ensure that those people who the safety net of legal aid is supposed to exist for are actually protected under the new rules.

Threshold cases which now appear to be out of scope but should still be within include spouses whose status is dependent on a violent partner, but who cannot access legal aid to regularise their status if they separate, compassionate applications; for example where children have been brought up in the UK and wish to oppose removal directions and family reunion cases.

Adam Makepeace is practice director at Duncan Lewis

Medical negligence

Between 50 and 75 per cent of our clients will be affected, although the importance of the changes goes much further than the impact on any specific case.

The clients affected will be anyone with savings, however modest, so it's easier to work on the basis that it is mostly children who are likely to remain eligible for public funding.

An OAP who has paid off their mortgage but doesn't have an expensive house and has a few hundred in the bank would have been eligible for legal aid before but probably will not under the proposals.

The major difficulty with medical law is that the cases are complicated and can involve life-altering injuries. There is an 'upfront cost' to assessing cases which may need to be spent before no win, no fee or other insurance can fill the gap.

Cases are currently run only by specialists who have been assessed and approved by the legal aid board according to their methods and results. Cases that were concentrated in firms which had skills and experience will now be spread widely, probably according to price. The changes mean poorer quality advice, less efficient handling of cases and money wasted.

Complex cases, sometimes at the edges of medical knowledge and sometimes with foundations in issues about medical ethics, have traditionally been run with legal aid and have contributed to medical practice, risk assessment and patient safety. These are exactly the cases which may not be litigated under the new proposals and this contribution will be lost for all patients.

Ben Gent is a partner in the clinical negligence team at Simpson Millar

Housing

We estimate that some 50 to 60 per cent of current clients' matters would fall wholly or partly out of scope of the green paper's proposals, so will not receive any public funding.

Of these, many involve claims for disrepair, usually by local authority and housing association tenants who have suffered from serious if not life-threatening defects for years despite their efforts.

There are also many being assisted with re-housing matters, where they need an emergency transfer due to threats or actual violence and the local authority has failed take any steps, or where they should have transfer priority due to medical, care and/or overcrowding reasons but have not been awarded it. These are usually frightened and vulnerable people who have done their best to get landlords or local authorities to carry out their duties, but have either been ignored or face flawed decisions.

The green paper only mentions legal aid for homelessness matters for appeal to the county court. Many clients come for assistance in seeking a review and continued temporary accommodation when their application as homeless has been refused. Others come when a local authority fails to accept their application in the first place.

If the green paper is right, these clients will not receive legal aid. As a county court appeal is only on a point of law, restricting public funding to that would have a catastrophic effect on homeless applicants, who are highly vulnerable, and cannot be aware of all the complexities of a homeless decision review process which is their last chance to challenge on the facts.

Giles Peaker and Sara Stephens are solicitors in the housing and public law department at Anthony Gold

Welfare

If the recommendations made by the green paper are introduced, all current advice provision for welfare benefits would be abolished. There would be no assessment of merit or means for the purposes of establishing whether an appellant should be represented in bringing an appeal.

Few private sector solicitors still offer specialist welfare benefits advice. The recentprocurement round saw the welfare benefits contracts transferred to the not-for-profit sector.

Their survival has been dependent on funding from other sources including local government. That funding appears largely now to have been withdrawn.

Therefore removal of legal aid funding as well means the whole specialist advice network disappears.

The vast majority of clients who seek assistance from a solicitor or adviser with an appeal are incapable of pursuing the process alone.

As identified in the green paper, these are the neediest groups, often disabled and highly vulnerable. The law and its application in this area is complicated, often involving concepts of Human Rights Act breaches or technical interpretations of regulation.

DWP statistics show that, from October 2008 until February 2010, 40 per cent of tribunal appeals against the new benefit assessment of 'fit to work' for employment and support allowance were successful. We know the DWP are getting it wrong.

The reality will be a large-scale reduction in the number of appeals brought and therefore large reductions in the number of applicants successfully, and rightly, claiming benefits they are entitled to '“ benefits which are often their only means of survival.

Jane Pritchard is head of domestic violence and housing at Blacklaws Davis LLP and is also a specialist in welfare benefits advice