The Corruption of Civil Legal Aid

Civil Legal Aid is a scheme to help pay for representation by a solicitor or an advocate in the civil courts. Services provide free legal advice to disadvantaged people about issues that have affected them. Some factors that determine eligibility for being helped from the civil legal advice (CLA) include:

• being in debt or if you are homeless/at risk of eviction
• if you are a victim of domestic abuse
• separating from an abusive partner
• if you have had a child that’s been taken into care
• if you are a victim of discrimination

Depending on your income and savings, legal advice may be free, or you may have to make a contribution towards the cost. You must provide proof of your financial difficulty to be eligible. However, as of recent months, the civil legal aid system is close to its breaking point.

The civil legal aid system is one that is a huge pillar in our justice system, and is often overlooked. But for a family going through a horrific domestic dispute, CLA could be their only means to uphold their legal rights, when they would otherwise have no support whatsoever

However, Civil legal aid is being corrupted. A generation of cuts and rates of pay staying the same have pushed many firms close to bankruptcy and forced many solicitors to continue their work in other areas of court. The changes to the system in 2012 have meant that legal aid is generally no longer available for early advice. This has meant that issues can quickly escalate, leading to homelessness or debt, instead of being resolved quickly and effectively like they would if CLA was put back in the reach of the millions that are facing eviction, denied welfare, or other issues that they cannot receive the correct support for due to financial difficulties. To do this, we need to fund our system correctly, to ensure there is enough civil legal aid providers.

Cuts to legal aid have led to more people having to represent themselves in family courts. The legal cuts from April 2013 meant many areas of law were taken out of scope for legal aid, which had an enormous impact on areas such as coverage for housing, family law, employment and welfare benefit payments. As a result of this, from 2013 to 2020, the number of cases where neither party had legal representatives almost trebled, and increase from 13% to 36%. When representing yourself in court, there’s a risk that you may become defensive, angry and upset when the charges are presented to the court. Everything you say and do when representing yourself will be penalised in the courtroom meaning this reaction could influence the judge or jury’s decision in a negative way. Justice should be accessible, despite the wealth or background, and everyone deserves representation, regardless of who they are or where they come from. How is it expected that people will be able to represent themselves with no prior knowledge (in most cases) of how the legal system and courtrooms work. This number will only continue to increase unless we review the sustainability of the civil legal aid system.

To improve the system for both citizens and legal aid providers, we must review the process that solicitor firms gain entry to the civil legal aid market, as well as the fees paid for different types of work. We must produce evidence bases to show the vast scale of legal needs of those eligible for civil legal aid, to prove how important this system really is. Legal aid provides access to justice by ensuring equality before the law, the right to counsel and the right to a fair trial. But how is it fair or just that the system is continued to be allowed to degrade and these legal rights have become inaccessible to the people who need them most.