LAPG | Legal Aid Practitioners Group

The shortlist for this year’s Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year awards has been announced.  As always, the finalists are an incredible group of legal aid lawyers and organisations, showcasing the life-changing work of those working in publicly-funded legal advice.

For more information and a full list of finalists read the our press release here.

This year LAPG has also decided to recognise the exceptional contributions of three legal aid champions through LAPG Committee Special Awards. For more details see our Special Awards press release here.

This year’s awards ceremony takes place in London on 10 July 2019 and once again promises to be a truly uplifting and inspiring event. To book your tickets please visit our dedicated LALY awards ticketing page here.

The post Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year awards – Finalists Announced! appeared first on LAPG.

Download the full press release here

Download the Flyer here

The 2019 Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year (LALY) awards are launched today (Monday 4 January). There are 12 awards in total including Children’s Rights, Public Law, Mental Health, Access to Justice through IT, and Criminal Defence (see full list, below).

LAPG CEO Chris Minnoch says:

”The LALYs continue to play a vital role in recognising and celebrating the lawyers who go the extra mile to achieve life-changing results for their clients. Just last week, for example, we saw the winner of our 2018 Public Lawyer award, Harriet Wistrich, break new legal ground with her victory in the appeal court on behalf of her client Sally Challen. I would encourage everyone who knows a lawyer who deserves recognition for their work – whether in the highest or the lower courts; whether by bringing once-in-a-lifetime, precedent-setting cases, or by being at the legal aid coalface day in, day out – to nominate them for a LALY award this year. We want to hear about their achievements and to ensure such vital contributions to access to justice are acknowledged.”

The winners will be announced and receive their awards, which will be presented by Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, at a ceremony on 10 July.

Chris Minnoch says:

‘We are delighted that Baroness Kennedy will be presenting the awards, as she is well known as a champion for justice and is held in the highest esteem by our profession. We would also like to thank Baroness Doreen Lawrence OBE, our outgoing presenter, who previously presented the awards for us. Everyone in Team LALY would like to thank Doreen for her stalwart support for the LALYs over so many years; and to welcome Helena on board. ‘

For the fourth year running, LALY19 will be crowdfunding for sponsorship for the popular Legal Aid Newcomer award, allowing supporters to show solidarity with the profession by donating to become Friends of LALY19. In 2018, 76 supporters donated a total of £5,070. All money raised through crowdfunding will go towards the cost of staging the event, and to keeping ticket prices affordable in order to encourage newer members of the profession to attend.

The crowdfunding campaign goes live on 5 March and will end on 30 April. For full details of how to become a Friend of LALY19 see:

www.lapg.co.uk/laly-crowdfunding

All LALY nominations must be submitted online via: www.lapg.co.uk/laly-nomination

The 2019 award categories in full are:

• * Children’s Rights
• * Criminal Defence
• * Family (including Mediation)
• * Mental Health
• * Public Law
• * Social Welfare
• * Legal Aid Newcomer
• * Legal Aid Barrister
• * Practice Manager
• * Legal Aid Firm/Not-for-profit Agency
• * Access to Justice through IT
• * Outstanding Achievement (see below)

LALY19 award category sponsors:

• Accesspoint
• Anthony Gold
• The Bar Council
• Doughty Street Chambers
• DG Legal
• Irwin Mitchell
• The Law Society
• The Legal Education Foundation
• Matrix Chambers
• Resolution
• Tikit

LALY19 media partner:

• Legal Action Group

LALY19 supporters:

• Bidwell Henderson
• Garden Court Chambers
• TV Edwards

The post It’s LALY time! Nominations now open for the 2019 Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year awards appeared first on LAPG.

Press Release

Ministry of Justice’s Post-Implementation Review of Part 1 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO)

The report is an overdue recognition of the crisis in access to justice, triggered by LASPO.

Many of the recommendations for the future are positive, but much more is needed to remedy the legal aid and justice system now.

We particularly welcome the call for restoration of early legal advice, which is something we have been pushing for. Every day LAPG members see the impact of LASPO’s removal of early legal advice, on people whose problems with, say, debt or housing, have spiralled out of control. Often, these are things which could have been solved quickly and easily if they had been able to seek our members’ help earlier. Plans to expand the provision of family legal aid, are a positive way forward but this needs to happen quickly because people are in urgent need.

We welcome the recommendation to end the mandatory nature of the telephone gateway, which was misconceived from the start, and has only served to stop people with special educational needs, debt and discrimination problems from getting access to justice. We are interested to hear how the government will ensure adequate provision of face-to-face in these areas.

The government has committed to review the legal aid means test, which is welcome as the current rules exclude many of those in genuine need. However this needs immediate attention and we urge the government to expedite this aspect of its commitment.

The call for government to mount an awareness campaign is also positive. If done well, that could be a game-changer for those with legal problems and could transform lives, as too many people currently don’t know where they can go for help.

One of the areas where we strongly disagree with the review is with the conclusion that the network of advice providers, whether law firms or advice agencies, is sustainable. That is contrary to all the evidence we provided, which shows providers are struggling to keep afloat, following years of static or reduced fees, and increased bureaucracy. Law Centres and advice centres have closed down and high street legal aid practitioners have pulled out of legal aid. Much more needs to be done now to make sure that we have a justice system for the future.

The report identifies many areas for improvement and we are wholeheartedly committed to working with the government to bring about positive change sooner rather than later.

Jenny Beck and Nicola Mackintosh QC (Hon), co-chairs of LAPG state:

‘Whilst we cautiously welcome the recognition that the system is no longer delivering access to justice, we are concerned to ensure that addressing the problems identified could deliver significant improvement.  There is a need for solutions to be properly resourced and delivered expeditiously because access to justice is in crisis right now’.   

The post MOJ Publishes the LASPO Post-Implementation Review – Does It Go Far Enough? appeared first on LAPG.

The government released the official legal aid statistic on 13 December 2018, brining the data set up to date to 30 September 2018.

Worryingly, crime expenditure and workload have both decreased. Fewer civil legal help matters have been started, continuing the trend since the Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO). Mediation cases have reduced and are still under half the number of cases pre-LASPO.

There have been two important increases in applications – in domestic violence cases, where the evidence changes have been brought in, and in exceptional case funding, although these remain well below the expected levels touted by government as necessary for the scheme to be an effective safety net.

See here for our initial analysis of the statistics.

The post Latest legal aid statistics show worrying downward trend in access appeared first on LAPG.

With Director Carol Storer OBE stepping down on 20 November 2018, LAPG’s Committee has appointed a new leadership team to steer LAPG into the future.

Chris Minnoch steps up to the role of CEO, with Kate Pasfield joining from Swain & Co. to take on the role of Director of Strategy.

Read the full press release here.

The post LAPG Appoints A New Leadership Team appeared first on LAPG.

Read Catherine Baksi’s interview with Carol Storer, Remaining diplomatic in a turbulent decade, here.

The post Legal Action Group interviews outgoing LAPG Director Carol Storer appeared first on LAPG.

Carol Storer, who in November 2018 steps down from her role as Director of LAPG after more than 10 years of service, is amongst the shortlist for the LawWorks 2018 Annual Pro Bono Awards. Carol is a finalist in the Outstanding Contribution to Access to Justice category.

The winners will be announced at an awards ceremony and reception at the Law Society on Monday 3rd December 2018. The annual Awards lecture will be given by Rt Hon David Lammy MP, and the evening will be hosted by Clive Coleman, the BBC’s Legal Correspondent.

A full list of those shortlisted can be found here.

The post Carol Storer nominated for 2018 LawWorks Pro Bono award for Outstanding Contribution to Access to Justice appeared first on LAPG.

Costs firm John M Hayes, great supporters of LAPG’s work over many years, recently climbed Mount Snowden to raise money for access to justice and the London Legal Support Trust.  And on top of that, they lugged up copies of LAPG’s Manifesto for Legal Aid!  An excellent effort by the JMH team!

Read more about their exploits here.

The post LAPG Manifesto Reaches New Heights appeared first on LAPG.

Crest Advisory and CGI have undertaken a partnership research project to identify ways to address the twenty-first century challenges of tackling domestic abuse across the justice system and beyond.

Domestic abuse is a prevalent, high-impact crime with widespread and lasting consequences. Today in England and Wales there are estimated to be 6.5 million adults who have directly experienced domestic abuse, and overall one in four women and one in six men will experience domestic abuse in their lifetime. In 2016-17, eighty-two women and thirteen men were killed by a partner or former partner.

They found that the police and criminal courts often lack clear and robust processes for working with the civil justice system. In practice this means that:

• basic information is not routinely shared between the police and civil courts
• where information is shared, it is not always timely
• there is sometimes a lack of understanding among practitioners about what civil orders mean in practice
• criminal and civil justice systems do not always take full account of each other’s judgements.

For a copy of the full report see here.

The post Joining the Dots: Domestic abuse, civil and criminal justice and technology appeared first on LAPG.

Duncan Lewis Solicitors have successfully challenged the Legal Aid Agency’s refusal to backdate legal aid certificates, even where solicitors have made a legal aid application as promptly as possible and it is necessary to begin work in order to secure access to justice for a client before the Legal Aid Agency has granted a certificate. Their contention in the litigation was that the Legal Aid Agency and Lord Chancellor have failed to recognise that the legal aid regulations must contain an implied power to backdate certificates, or are ultra vires.

In response to that claim, the Government has agreed, in open correspondence, to amend the Civil Legal Aid (Procedure) Regulations 2012 to expressly allow for legal aid certificates to be backdated to the date of application for legal aid.

Read the full press release here.

The post Duncan Lewis wins access to justice challenge against LAA and Lord Chancellor appeared first on LAPG.