legal aid = negligence

I have posted a blog re self reppin v sols....only one persons experience but supports the view that many sols neglect their clients and is par for the course.
Seems drastic....but it got me in the Court door and it was empowering to see x2bs sol being constantly reprimanded by the Sheriff sitting!
Whilst it is daunting and scary......it is less so than being bullied/derided by a sol that clearly doesnt have your best interests in hand.
Elle

I have just received my legal aid bill and been told that I will have a charge put on the house and will have to pay 8% interest. (I knew about the charge but 8%?)

The longer my divorce has gone on and the more I speak to people, I realise I was ill advised. For 9 months I have been trying to get through to my solicitor about the domestic abuse.

Have now been given independent advice that the Undertakings re my non-mol are not worth the paper they are written on, the defined contact order is more likely to punish me for non conforming than actually protecting my children from their father and that my financial settlement was very poor.

Thanks to a Legal Aid solicitor who has no time for me as she has so many cases I am still suffering abuse from the ex-husband, the kids are not having beneficial contact (in fact they are having detrimental contact) and we now face losing the house because I was poorly advised re: the finances.

In hindesight, would I have self-repped? I wish I could say yes but I would not have been emotionally strong enough because of the domestic abuse.

But I am happy to share my knowledge of the process with anyone who wants to go down that route.

Well, they say you get watch you pay for! Think this time, they may be right!

Sorry for the rant but going to see solicitor's assistant (sol can't grace me with her presence) to talk about the breech of both the non-mol and the defined contact order. Am I going to get anywhere?

I am going to tell them what I want today as I have had enough. Can't do anything about my finances, but that is just money. Where my children are concerned I will do everything in my power to protect them.

Have also rec'd a letter asking me if I wish to attend court re my legal fees?

Well, must go and prepare for sols appointment.

Regards, Sarah

I know you are probably going to all shout at me for this, but I have some sympathy with legal aid family solicitors.

To run a legal aid practice and even to open a legal aid file takes an inordinate amount of administration which the practice cannot charge for - it is in effect free work. Although it is 1999 since I worked in a legal aid firm (before buggering off to the bar), I can remember spending at least an hour, if not more per day doing the andministration required. Every lawyer in the family department had to do the same, and then there was the additional administration of the department head and or partner. All told, in an average family department, if you add up all the free hours in a week, there were probably 40 or more - and it is my understanding that it is far worse since I left back in 1999.

On top of the "free" work that running a legal aid practice entails there is also the issue of the appalling rates of pay that the government deigns to pay legal aid lawyers, which is less than half, and in some places less than a third, of the hourly rate a privately paying client would pay.

This means that the legal aid lawyer has no option but to take on more cases to attempt to make the family department break even. Legal aid family practictioners are the lowest paid lawyers in this country - indeed some surveys demonstrate they are one of the lowest paid professionals in the country. Remembering that to become a solicitor, they have been to university for 4 years and then trained for 2 more on top of that, alongside their yearly requirements for updating training.

Legal aid family work is one of the most emotive and stressful areas of law that can be practiced. It involves not only divorce and finances, but care work - that is cases where children have been abused and the local authority are attempting to permanently remove the children from the care of the parents. These cases involve voluminous paperwork while trying to make your client's case and frequent hearings. It goes without saying that the client care required when parents are facing these cases is very high.

Additionally, the legal aid family practitioner also deals with non-molestation applications - these are emergancy cases where literally, you can have your client walk in still bleeding from their assault and simply have to drop everything to get them to court to get the orders.

No-one becomes a legal aid family lawyer for the money. Everyone does it for the job satisfaction and to try and make things better. I completely understand that some of you have had very bad experiences, and that undoubtedly there are some bad apples - but all I would say is by and large they try their best in a system that puts the practitioner under ridculous pressure and frequently takes them away from doing what they are trained to do.

Right, I'll duck now while you all throw things at me!
Amanda

Amanda,
With all due respect and agreement to some of what you say, my experience was that my sol was getting £250 an hour of my hard earned cash when she did bother to turn up at Court as well as a tidy sum for repeated valuations and really bugger all else....indeed my case file is no more than letters with invoices attached....his poor legal aid solicitor on the other hand was in no hurry to progress proceedings, deploying expensive counsel to help him against a party litigant, lying to the Court, Appealing the judgement pronouncing his deceit.....all at a hefty cost to the taxpayer. I understandably have a poor view of the legal profession and this has been noted by a few retired practitioners that have helped me along the way.
Elle

Hi Elle

I agree that it is understandable in your case that you have a poor view of lawyers per se, and as I say in my post, there are undoubtedly bad apples in every profession including the legal profession. As everyone on here is aware, I have little patience with anyone who practices law badly or treats clients contemptously.

However, my post was just to point out some of the difficulties that face legal aid practitioners, who really do get it in the neck from all quarters when most are trying to make the best out of a very bad and poorly funded situation.

Amanda

I've no vested interest but I with agree with divorcelawyer. It's very difficult now in Scotland to find a family lawyer who will undertake legal aid recently in one case a father who was in desperate need was actually represented by a criminal lawyer. The Glasgow Bar Association very recently voted to take industrial action against reforms they believe will make matters worse.

Like any other profession there are some bad lawyers and it's in everyones interest to take them to task but there are also some very good ones. I think lawyers are frequently made scapegoats because they cannot achieve what their client wants them to achieve despite the client being unrealistic or not understanding the law or the fact that without evidence lawyers, and indeed judges, have their hands tied. Unfortunately all too often an objective judicial decision may bare no resemblance whatsoever to the subjective justice which people hope for.