One particular focus of our efforts was our 2011 research into the impact of the legal aid cuts on MPs, illustrating what would happen to their constituency work should large areas of law be removed from the scope of legal aid. Our follow-up report in August 2013 confirmed the earlier fears that following the implementation of LASPO, there had been a marked growth in the number of constituents demanding help and advice from their MPs; it was increasingly difficult for MPs to refer their constituents for appropriate legal advice as many local agencies had closed; and MPs were concerned for the future.

After LASPO was implemented, YLAL’s efforts moved first to the regulations issued under the act – among them the residence test and the evidential criteria for the domestic violence gateway – before submitting evidence to the various parliamentary committees which were considering the impact of the changes, including the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Justice Select Committee. In time, our focus shifted to the cuts to criminal and civil legal aid which followed the ‘Transforming Legal Aid’ consultation, together with the restrictions on access to judicial review, which formed part of what is now the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015.

This work has been complemented by the inspirational efforts of the Justice Alliance, run by experienced and enthusiastic campaigning lawyers, including YLAL’s committee member Camilla Graham-Wood. In recent months, events have come full circle, with the National Audit Office and Public Accounts Committee, in turn, returning to the impact of LASPO. The latter inquiry, to which our members contributed, criticised the government heavily for the lack of evidence underpinning the cuts, and its failure to measure or even understand their wider impact.

In 2012, we undertook a survey of our members. The findings (published in October 2013 with a launch event at London South Bank University with Baroness Hale) were stark. They showed that high levels of debt from education combined with low salaries in the legal aid sector made the work unattractive and unsustainable for lawyers from a lower socio-economic background. The survey also found that the prevalence of unpaid work experience was creating a barrier to social mobility. The inescapable conclusion was that, without reform, there will be fewer lawyers willing to work in legal aid in future, and less diversity in the sector. These were points which we sought to hammer home when responding to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), the Bar Standards Board (BSB) and ILEX Professional Standards (IPS) Legal Education and Training Review, and when campaigning against the SRA’s decision to scrap the minimum salary for trainee solicitors. A recent survey carried out by the Junior Lawyers Division of the Law Society has reinforced these concerns with only four per cent of respondents to the survey either working in legal aid or interested in working in the sector in future. Proof, if it were needed, that YLAL has plenty of work to be getting on with on this front.