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GAZETTE
JULY-AUGUST
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the local authority to spend much more money on
highway maintenance. Another law centre acted for a
group of pensioners worried about getting heating
allowances to help them form an association and to get a
lease. The general experience of law centres the report
said was 'that people need and demand to have their
problems approached in a way which differs from that of
private solicitors. It is a way which makes it necessary for
the law centre employees to be available outside the
centre — in the tenants' and residents' associations, in the
youth clubs and luncheon clubs, at meetings in the
evenings or at weekends, providing legal services which is
innovative and imaginative' (Law Centres Federation
'Response to the Royal Commission on Legal Services',
p. 15). The proposed Irish scheme I believe will not easily
be capable of providing legal services that are innovative
and imaginative if the lawyers are restricted in the ways
outlined in the Government's paper.
Local Committees
The Government's proposals do however recognise
albeit in a somewhat halfhearted way, the concept of local
consultative committees for law centres. Local
Committees consisting in the main of local residents have
proved to be a very valuable aspect of the English system.
Under the proposals the Legal Aid Board would have the
power to establish such committees if it thought 'that legal
services could be provided more effectively in a particular
area if consultations between persons representing local
interests and the person responsible for the management
of the centre were provided for' (para. 5.3.2.). This puts it
very tentatively. It would be greatly preferable I believe if,
as proposed by the Pringle Committee, the Board were
expected to establish such a committee in each locality
where a law centre was set up. The consultative
committee can perform the crucial function of keeping the
law centre in touch with local problems and conditions
and of helping it to decide its priorities.
But although the Government seem to be equivocal
about the need for lay participation in running law centres
at the local level it seems to be persuaded of the value of
having this arrangement at the national level.
Legal Aid Board
The Legal Aid Board has 12 members of whom only
two are practising barristers and two are practising
solicitors. Several of the first appointees are civil servants
but two at least are ordinary laymen.
In England civil legal aid is of course run by the Law
Society — under the watchful eye of the Lord
Chancellor's Legal Aid Advisory Committee. (The
Government have just announced that it intends to
implement the recommendation of the Royal Commission
that criminal legal aid should also come under the aegis of
the Lord Chancellor and therefore presumably within the
scope of the Advisory Committee.) In England therefore
the scheme gives the professional body the responsibility
for managing the scheme but there is a broadly based
advisory committee with a lay chairman and a substantial
number of other laymen to act as the watchdog —
monitoring developments.
Some of the evidence to the Royal Commission,
notably that of the Legal Action Group, suggested that
legal aid should be taken away from the Law Society and
given instead to a new Legal Services Commission which
would have the task not only of running the legal aid
scheme but of acting as policy maker and review body.
The Royal Commission preferred that legal aid should be
left with the Law Society but that a new Legal Services
Council should be created with the task of keeping under
review the provision of legal services in the whole country
whether provided by private practitioners or by law
centres and whether from the public or the private purse.
The Council would have mainly advisory functions
though it was also said that it should have such executive
functions, if any, as might be allocated to it by the Lord
Chancellor.
The Irish scheme provides for a very different set-up.
The running of the scheme would be in the hands of the
Board which would therefore have to make provision not
merely for policy management but also establish and run
systems to handle the processing of applications. It would
run law centres, determine and collect contributions from
clients and generally manage the fund. In this proposal
the Government has followed the recommendation both
of the Law Society and of the Pringle Committee but I am
not convinced that it will provide the best answer. In one
sense it appears a more accountable system than the
English where so much power seems to lie with the
professional body. But in fact the Law Society has little
real power — its main task is simply one of stewarding
and administration. In my estimation there is much value
in separating the day-to-day administration of the scheme
from the review of policy. That is why in my own
evidence to the Royal Commission I urged that the Law
Society be left to run the scheme and that the Advisory
Committee be given the widest possible terms of
reference. This was in fact the scheme adopted by the
Royal Commission.
Administration of scheme
Under the Irish proposals the Board will have the job
of day-to-day administration even though most if not all
of its members will be part-time. Obviously it will have to
employ persons to carry out its administrative functions. I
imagine that the membership of the Board is likely to be
broad and there will therefore be a variety of viewpoints
represented to feed in ideas about the ways in which to
develop legal services. But there will be no one outside the
Board to act as Greek chorus on a continuing basis. One
problem is of course that it would be inappropriate I
suppose to ask the Law Society to run a scheme which
consists wholly or mainly of salaried law centres. Some
concept such as that of the proposed Board was probably
inevitable. But ways will have to be found of keeping the
Board in touch with continuing developments.
One technique that the Lord Chancellor's Advisory
Committee has instituted is to hold conferences at which
the main interested parties assemble from time to time on
a regular basis to discuss current problems. Those who
take part in these conferences include representatives of
the government departments concerned, the Law Society,
the Bar Council, the Law Centres Federation, the Legal
Action Group, the TUC, the Child Poverty Action Group
and the National Association of Citizens' Advise
Bureaux.
Another idea worth attention is the recommendation of
the English Royal Commission that the proposed Legal
Services Council have regional off-shoots similarly
constituted to assess the need for legal and para-legal
services in their areas and to co-ordinate regional services
and agencies. The model for such regional committees is
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