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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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