The Gazette 1975

Solicitors' Fees

Extract from National Prices Commission Monthly Report, January 1975 294. On 24 July 1974, the Incorporated Law Society of Ireland submitted an application to the Minister for Justice for increases (ranging from 43% to 308%) in the fees payable to solicitors under the Criminal Justice (Legal Aid) Regulations 1965 as amended in 1970. The free legal aid scheme is administered by the Minister for Justice under the Criminal Justice (Legal Aid) Act 1962. Regulations made by the Minister set out the procedures relating to the Scheme and prescribe scales of fees and legal expenses with the consent of the Minister for Finance. Under the Scheme a person charged with an offence may apply for a certificate of free legal aid. Each court has a panel of solicitors who are willing to act in such cases. A certificate will be granted if the court considers that a person's means are insufficient to enable him to obtain legal aid. One of these solicitors will then be assigned to the case. 295. The application of 24 July 1974 from the Incorporated Law Society of Ireland was based on tjie following considerations: (a) The main volume of work was handled by about 20 solicitors, and several of them are contem- plating resignation from the Panel. (b) There was an extreme dissatisfaction with the fees at present payable. The Scheme of Criminal Legal Aid was introduced on an experimental basis, and pending experience it was agreed by the profession that the fees payable would be on a charity basis and therefore, lower than those obtaining normally. Despite the significant fall in the value of money in the meantime, no adjustment had been made in this low scale of fees since 1970. Given that the Scheme is now of a permanent nature, the participating practitioners consider that the fees payable should be on a par with those payable in private practice. (c) Solicitors and District Court Clerks alike experience difficulty in operating the regulations and, in particular, in having claims certified and processed. (d) For a solicitor engaging in a significant amount of Criminal Legal Aid work, the present delay in payment presented severe cash flow problems. (e) Any attendance at a District Court in Dublin represented a morning or afternoon out of practice and would have to be paid for accordingly. (f) No allowance was made for the increasing problem of being called out at very short notice to advise a prisoner in Mountjoy, St. Patrick's, the Curragh or in Portlaios. Failure on the part 9f the solicitor to attend such calls, no matter how unreasonable, leads to criticism at Court and adverse comment from the Bench.

296. The Department of Justice passed the Society's application to Prices Division for considera- tion on 6 December 1974. The Department of Justice stated that most of the solicitors on the legal aid panel in the Dublin area had resigned from the panel due to the low level of fees. The Department of Justice pointed out that the Consumer Price Index has risen by about 55% since fees were last fixed in 1970, that the fees fixed in 1970 were not excessive, and than an increase in fees was justified, more especially as it appeared that fees relating to certain cases in the Court of Criminal Appeal, the High Court and the Supreme Court should be increased by a higher than average amount, due to the difficulties and volume of work involved in these cases. 297. The Department of Justice did not make any specific recommendation, because it had been hoped that the actual increase in fees to be allowed, would have been recommended by the National Prices Com- mission acting in the role of arbitrator. This proposal had been made to the solicitors concerned, on the basis that the Commission's findings would be accepted by the Ministers for Finance and Justice and that the solicitors could present their case as they thought fit. The solicitors declined to adopt this procedure, but did not object to the Commission con- sidering the case in the normal way. 298. The Department of Justice also pointed out that some parts of a solicitor's business (such as defending persons accused of crime) were not profit- able work (such as conveyancing, probate, etc.)- Accordingly, the principle applied by successive Ministers for Justice, when dealing with scales of fees for the more profitable work, had been to allow a certain amount of charging "what the market would bear" in the cases of fees for such work, provided the solicitors concerned were also engaged on a proportion of less profitable work. The introduction and expan- sion of the Criminal Legal Aid Scheme, and the likely introduction at some date in the future of a scheme of civil legal aid and advice (which would relate to a certain amount of work in the unfitable category) raised the question as to whether this type of approach to solicitors' fees should continue. 299. Since the present application related to un- remunerative work, the Department of Justice requested that the Commission should indicate if whatever increased fees that they might recommend, on the basis of the present application, could be con- sidered as adequate in themselves, without reference to any more profitable work a solicitor might have. The Department of Justice was not in a position to indicate how many of the solicitors participating in the legal aid scheme had practices that included a substantial amount of the more profitable business, but it was understood that a small number of those in the Dublin area concentrated almost exclusively on free legal aid work. 300. We considered this application from the 34