We were proud to a sponsor of the Legal Aid Practitioners Group annual conference on 10th October and as usual the day was both informative and inspiring.
The day started with a powerful video from Justice Alliance titled ‘Are You for Justice?’ . Nicola Mackintosh, co-chair of LAPG followed by highlighting the number of challenges that had faced legal aid lawyers over recent months and years. Despite the difficulties being faced by the profession she felt that ‘in the dark wilderness there were signs of a fight back’ and pointed towards recent progress that had been made in challenging the residence test and the application of the exceptional funding scheme. The clear message was ‘we will not give up’.
Delegates then heard from a panel consisting of Hugh Barrett, Director of the Legal Aid Agency, Andrew Caplan, President of the Law Society, Lord Low and Cat Little, Director of Finance and IT at the Legal Aid Agency.
Hugh Barrett focused upon the progress he felt that the LAA had made in respect of reducing errors in payment, rejections, waiting time on calls to the LAA, and processing times for applications and bills. However he did indicate that there would potentially be further years of difficulties ahead in respect of the legal aid budget.
Andrew Caplan maintained the Law Society’s opposition to the cuts and changes to civil and criminal legal aid. He confirmed that their view strongly remained that the cuts were a false economy and have endangered the most vulnerable members of society. He confirmed that the Law Society were putting forward their manifesto to political parties and that they had their clearest indication yet that Labour would not undo the changes. He called for everyone to provide as much evidence as possible of the damage that the cuts had caused.
Lord Low raised the question ‘what next for legal aid?’ before jokingly answering his own question with simply ‘read the low commission report’. He did of course then go on to discuss the main recommendations of the report, the impact and the next steps.
‘Making sure you get paid and leading digital transformation’ was Cat Little’s description of the responsibilities of her role. She talked about why CCMS was being introduced and the ‘better user experience’ that she felt it would provide. It was made clear that whilst CCMS was a new case management system and a new ledger system for the LAA it was not a case management system for Solicitors. The statistics given showed that 550 of 1609 providers had used CCMS in some way so far and that there were currently 11,389 cases live in the system. She felt that although the system was fit for purpose and functioning well, it has some complexity and quirkiness and there were improvements being progressed in respect of certain issues. The final message was to encourage everyone to do the training sessions, and to engage with their contract managers who would be able to assist in walking Solicitors through the system in the early stages.
Throughout the day there were a number of workshops for delegates to attend, including LAA top tips, Family Update, Social Media and Marketing and Facing the Future in Legal Aid. Our Training Director David Smith led a session on maximising family costs and Megan Kutter from our Haywards Heath Office presented a session with Jane Pritchard from TV Edwards looking at maximising civil costs. The aim of both sessions was to ensure that firms were dealing with their billing efficiently, were claiming for everything they were entitled to and were aware of potential pitfalls that can result in reductions to costs and/or lead to rejection of claims.
As the afternoon was drawing to a close Henry Blackland QC offered some entertaining advice for legal aid lawyers.......drink heavily! It was of course a reminder that Garden Court Chambers were sponsoring the drinks reception at the end of the day.
The day was rounded up as excellently as ever by Carol Storer Director of LAPG, who was full of praise for the vital role that Legal Aid Lawyers play. She also highlighted the work that LAPG does through the year, the ways to get involved, and most importantly why the fight for justice must go on.
And then it was time for everyone who continues to work so tirelessly to fight for legal aid to have that well-earned drink.