The Gazette 1980

GAZETTE

JULY-AUGUST

19

the Legal Services Committee that has been working very successfully for the past few years in Greater Manchester which was set up by the Law Society and which brings together some 20 members from a variety of organisations concerned with the provision of legal services in that community. The regional committee would make an annual report to the National Council which in turn would submit an annual report to the Lord Chancellor and through him to Parliament. The annual reports of the Lord Chancellor's Legal Aid Advisory Committee have over the years proved a very important source of policy making as well as being the way in which the system is accountable not only to the responsible Minister but to all those concerned with the legal aid system — MPs, the press, the legal and other experts, academics and ordinary citizens. The Irish scheme provides for the submission by the Legal Aid Board of an annual report and I have no doubt that you will find this an immensely important device. I am a little concerned only whether the Board will feel absolutely free to be independent in so far as several of its members are civil servants. Research and Experimentation The quality of the work done by the Board will also be influenced by the extent to which it disposes of funds and other resources to undertake or commission research. The Pringle Committee in its report urged that the Legal Aid Board should have the duty to undertake 'research and experimentation in the provision of legal aid and advice services' and the English Royal Commission made a similar recommendation for its Legal Services Council. Regrettably however there is no mention of such a duty or even power in the Gove r nmen t 's announced scheme.' Of course much depends on what persons are appointed to the Legal Aid Board, but even more will turn on the climate of opinion in the community generally. In England the current climate of opinion is one of concern about the unmet need for legal services reflected for instance in the willingness of individuals and organisations to involve themselves in activities designed to improve the system. The Legal Action Group which publishes the influential monthly Bulletin devoted mainly to problems of legal services for the poor has over 4,000 subscribers. The Citizens Advice Bureaux (roughly the equivalent I think of your Community Information Centres) has over 10,000 workers, most of whom act on a voluntary basis. They have persuaded the Law Society to institute a fixed fee interview scheme under which anyone irrespective of means can get half an hour's diagnostic advice for £5 including VAT. Over 80% of solicitors' firms now operate the scheme. The Citizens' Advice Bureaux have also succeeded in establishing more than 200 rota schemes of private practitioners under which solicitors provide advice in the CAB for its clients and then take them back to their own offices if the client's problem requires continued assistance. The solicitors taking part in such rota schemes need a waiver from the Practice Rules but the Law Society has been granting waivers without difficulty. The session in the CAB is free to the client and the solicitor can claim no remuneration for it from the state scheme but if the client is taken back to the office for further help the solicitor is then acting either on a private paying basis or under the legal advice and assistance scheme. The legal advice and assistance scheme has also been utilised increasingly to provide

services in magistrates courts through duty solicitor schemes under which solicitors attend to give advice to unrepresented prisoners in the cells — as to their plea, whether to ask for an adjournment, how to apply for legal aid etc. There are now over 100 such schemes. Another comparable development is the idea of a 24 hour emergency advice service on the telephone, manned by a duty solicitor whose telephone number is advertised locally. The rules about advertising by private practitioners have been relaxed to permit the Local Law Society to insert in the local newspaper details of the name and address of local firms and of the work they undertake. The Royal Commission has gone further and recommended that solicitors should be able to advertise on their own behalf and to publicise not only their existence but also their standard fees. The Law Society has just announced that it is not in favour of this proposal but similar proposals have been adopted not only in the US but also in Canada, and most recently now in the Report of the Royal Commission for Legal Services in Scotland. Insurance against Legal Costs Another development that I regard as of great potential value is the initiative taken by several insurance companies to provide policies against legal costs. The premium for extensive coverage is low and this offers the possibility of providing for the disaster of litigation at a reasonable cost. Legal costs insurance is a way (perhaps the only way) of providing for the ordinary wage earner who is either outside the means test limits of the legal aid scheme or is subject to a prohibitively high contribution. It will be difficult to persuade individuals to take out policies but groups, such as trade unions, may come to see the value of subscribing to policies for their members. In the United States this is a major growth form of legal services showing benefits not only to those covered by the schemes but also of course to lawyers who provide the services. There is also another United States development that may in time prove to be of importance in other countries under which private practitioners offer low cost, routine legal services in so called clinics which make their profits by high turnover. This is hardly what the fastidious professional man regards as the traditional form of practice but from the customer's point of view it is proving to be a highly marketable service and one that I suspect is likely to spread. Non-Lawyers and Legal Services Quite apart from the developments of services by lawyers there are of course a great variety of new ways of providing help with legal problems from non-lawyers. The do-it-yourself movement is flourishing in England in the field particularly of divorce, small claims in the county court and applications for probate. Advice on legal problems is being provided not only by enterprises such as banks but by neighbourhood advice agencies, Citizens Advice Bureaux, consumer advice centres, housing aid societies and a variety of other non-lawyer organisations. The National Consumer Council is a pamphlet published in 1977 referred to the recent explosion of lay advisory facilities as forming in effect a new social service ( The Fourth Right of Citizenship: A Review of Local Advice Services). There are some lawyers who criticize and fear

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