How to Find Solicitors in Sevenoaks
It’s impossible to precis the events of 2011 in a manner that is of universal relevance to an ever more polarised legal profession. So much has happened; so much has still to happen. Clearly, it was a dreadful 12 months for legal aid lawyers, with an ideologically driven government impervious to reason on swingeing cuts that will cost more than they save. Personal injury claimant lawyers are also smarting, for obvious reasons.
The coalition government’s consultation on the UK’s competition regime, published on 16 March, puts much more up for debate than competition lawyers, consumer bodies, or various business lobbies were expecting.
Ministers in the coalition government don’t talk about ‘fat cat lawyers’.
This may be because policy-makers are moving on from an unhelpful cliche as they prepare to cut legal aid, or it could be because any focus on high rewards turns the public’s mind to the bank bonuses government has been unable or unwilling to stem.
Many of these bonuses are larger than the rewards available to many lawyers.
While the Law Society has proposed capping annual earnings from legal aid cases by barristers at £250,000 a year, ministers had not proposed any such cap.
Amid the last fortnight’s coverage of the government’s planned legal aid cuts, one potential alternative area of savings didn’t get any column inches: the millions of pounds that remain uncollected by the courts system every year.
Some £1.33bn currently floats in this pool of outstanding fines, confiscation orders, compensation orders and legal costs, compared with £920m in 2005/06.
Legal aid providers as a whole will see their income slashed by up to £154m annually, it emerged today, as the government unveiled its plans for reform of the system.
A wide range of civil cases will no longer be eligible for legal aid, and fees paid in civil and family cases will be cut by 10% across the board, according to Ministry of Justice plans set out in a consultation paper, Proposals for the Reform of Legal Aid in England and Wales, released today.
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