Last month, Chris Grayling announced that the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) would be issuing a further consultation on a set of modified proposals for legal aid in September. After meetings with the Law Society it seems he has conceded that client choice should remain for criminal cases. He has also indicated in a letter to Sir Alan Beith, chairman of the House of Commons Justice Committee, that discussions with the Law Society over a managed consolidation of the market for criminal defence services are ongoing, 'using quality and capacity criteria to achieve this'.

 

LAG understands that the Law Society and the MoJ are continuing their dialogue, but that the Law Society is determined to resist any attempt by the MoJ to introduce competitive tendering for criminal defence services. We believe that the Law Society is taking a sensible approach in engaging with the government. Some consolidation in the market for criminal defence services is probably inevitable as practitioners over recent years have been telling LAG that there is not the volume of work in many areas of the country to sustain the current number of firms.

 

Stoke-on-Trent firm, Carney Solicitors, called in the receivers two weeks ago. Speaking to a local paper, Steve Kirwan, secretary of North Staffordshire Law Society, said that the plight of Carney Solicitors was 'unsurprising'  as the 'changes to legal aid have affected a lot of firms, especially those like Carney specialising in criminal law which is almost entirely funded by legal aid'. LAG also understands that the firm Gani and Co in south London went out of business recently after its sole partner, Zarina Gani, was adjudged bankrupt.

 

The London Criminal Courts Solicitors' Association (LCCSA) has held a ballot of its members on whether they should oppose any moves to consolidate the market. A small majority voted in favour of the Law Society’s managed consolidation approach. They also voted in favour of continuing the link between duty solicitor slots and duty solicitors. LAG believes that establishing a fair system of distributing duty solicitor slots is one of the most significant challenges facing the profession, as there are limited opportunities for new entrants to get on to the rotas and evidence of some abuse of the system, with a few solicitors choosing to sell their slots. Many firms try to maximise coverage of the duty slots in the hope of picking up lucrative serious crime cases, such as murders and sexual assaults.

 

Whatever emerges in the new set of proposals from the MoJ, some change will be inevitable for firms. The key battleground in criminal legal aid for the Law Society and other representative groups is whether competitive tendering can be fought off. It is over the issue of the allocation of police station duty slots that the cracks could start to appear in the so far united front solicitors have presented, as it is clear that these have a value which some firms might be willing to pay for or at least undertake the work on a loss leader basis.