Download or read book Legal Aid in Crisis written by Moore, Sarah and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2017-04-12 with total page 105 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally introduced as a form of social welfare with near-universal eligibility, legal aid in the UK is now framed as a benefit external to the legal system and understood in primarily economic terms. This book is the first to evaluate the recent reforms of UK legal aid from a social policy perspective and assess their impact on family law courts and advocacy. Written by experts in the field, it focuses on the rise in people representing their own legal case and argues that the reforms effectively ‘delawyerise’ disputes, producing a more inquisitorial justice system and impacting the litigants, court system, staff and process. Arguing for a more holistic concept of the reforms, the book will be of relevance to students, academics, policy-makers, judges, campaigners and social workers, not just in England and Wales, but in other jurisdictions instituting cuts to their legal aid budgets, such as Australia, Scotland, France, and the Netherlands.
Download or read book Proposals for the reform of legal aid in England and Wales written by Great Britain: Ministry of Justice and published by Stationery Office. This book was released on 2010-11-15 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In ’The Coalition: our programme for government' (ISBN 9780108509179, May 2010), a review of legal aid in England and Wales was promised. This paper puts forward proposals which aim to support wider plans to move towards a simpler justice system; one which is more accessible to the public, which limits the scope for inappropriate litigation and the involvement of lawyers in issues which do not need legal input; and which supports people in resolving their issues out of Court, using simpler, more informal remedies. Against a backdrop of considerable financial pressure on the Legal Aid Fund, the proposals have been developed with the aim of providing a substantial contribution to the Ministry of Justice's target of a real reduction of 23% in its budget, worth nearly £2bn in 2014-15. Sound finances are critical to the delivery of the Government's ambitions for public services: reducing the burden of debt by reducing public spending is essential to economic recovery. It is estimated that the proposals set out in this consultation would, if implemented, deliver savings of some £350 million in 2014-15 from legal aid.
Download or read book Legal aid reform in England and Wales written by Great Britain: Ministry of Justice and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-06-21 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the Government response to Cm. 7967 'Proposals for reform of legal aid in England and Wales (ISBN 9780101796729) and sets out the plans to deliver the goals stated in that paper. The legal aid programme put forward includes: reform of the classes of cases and proceedings retained within the scope of legal aid; exceptional funding; amendment of merits test criteria for civil legal aid; establishment of the Community Legal Advice Telephone helpline; financial eligibility reforms; criminal remuneration; civil and family remuneration; expert fees and alternative sources of funding
Download or read book Legal Aid Reform written by Great Britain: Department for Constitutional Affairs and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2006-11-28 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The legal aid system is one of the cornerstones of the post-war Welfare State, and since its creation nearly 60 years ago, it has enabled millions of people to access legal advice, support and representation; many of whom would otherwise have been denied access to justice because they could not have afforded to pay. However, the expectations and pressures faced by the legal aid system today are very different to those when it was created, and this document sets out the Government's proposals to reform the system to ensure its sustainability and effectiveness in contributing to the fight against social exclusion. These proposals follow on from three other documents: i) the Government's long-term strategy for legal aid 'A fairer deal for legal aid' published in July 2005 (Cm 6591, ISBN 0101659121); ii) the recommendations of the independent review of legal aid procurement undertaken by Lord Carter of Coles (details are available at www.legalaidprocurementreview.gov.uk/publications.htm) published in July 2006; and iii) a consultation paper jointly issued by the Department for Constitutional Affairs and the Legal Services Commission (details available at www.dca.gov.uk/consult/legal-aidsf/sustainable-future.htm) published in July 2006.
Download or read book Legal Aid in Crisis written by Sarah Moore and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 95 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first to evaluate the recent reforms of UK legal aid from a social policy perspective and assess their impact on family law courts and advocacy. It argues that the reforms effectively 'delawyerise' disputes, producing a more inquisitorial justice system and impacting the litigants, court system, staff and process.
Download or read book The Reform of Publicly Funded Legal Services in England and Wales written by and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Government s proposed reform of legal aid written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Justice Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-03-30 with total page 86 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this report, the Justice Committee examines the Government's proposed reform of legal aid. The proposals are intended to reduce by £350 million a year the cost of the system (which, with expenditure of more than £2 billion annually, is one of the most expensive in the world) at a time when the Ministry of Justice has to reduce its overall spending by almost a quarter. Certain areas of law will fall outside the scope of legal aid, with some being removed in their entirety, which includes family law, though not domestic violence. The Committee is unconvinced that using domestic violence as a proxy for the most serious cases is advisable and calls on Government to look at other ways legal aid can be focussed on the most serious family law cases. The Committee does welcome the Government's support for mediation services in family cases, but does not see this as a panacea. Further work needs to be done on how difficult and unresolved cases can be dealt with if legal aid is not available. The implementation of the proposals regarding family law should not happen before the Family Justice Review Panel has produced its full report. Cost reduction is achievable through public bodies, such as the Department for Work and Pensions, getting their decisions right first time and avoiding expensive court and tribunal cases. The Committee also thinks that the Government should reconsider whether legal aid should be available for certain types of judicial review. There is a degree of consensus amongst all political parties that the cost of legal aid needs to be reduced, but it is imperative that there is a careful assessment of the impact of the proposed changes on those people most dependent on legal aid. The Government needs to refine its proposals further before introducing a major change in the way the accessibility of the justice system has come to be viewed.
Download or read book PROPOSALS FOR THE REFORM OF LEGAL AID written by and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Transformation of Legal Aid written by Francis Regan and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 1999 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publicly funded legal aid has undergone rapid change in this century. Developing from charity to large scale, publicly funded schemes, legal aid flourished in many western countries in the 1960s and 1970s. But, during the 1980s governments began to lose faith in publicly funded legal aid. In the 1990s major funding and eligibility cuts have occurred in Sweden, England and Wales, the USA, Canada, Australia and the Netherlands. To answer the need for a better understanding of the extraordinary rise and fall of legal aid, this book brings together contributions from the leading international scholars in the field. Researchers from north America, Europe and Australia examine the origins of modern legal aid, analyse its recent rapid decline and consider its likely future. This collection of original studies does not, however, merely describe legal aids changing fortunes. The contributors also apply legal and social science perspectives to analyse and theorise about legalaid. In particular, rather than describe developments in individual societies, the contributors compare legal aid across societies to develop important insights including legal aids relationship with the legal profession, welfare states and legal families. This book will be embraced by all those interested in legal aid.
Download or read book Legal Aid in England and Wales written by Great Britain. Lord Chancellor's Department and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Lawyers for the poor written by Kate Bradley and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-25 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the 1890s onwards, social reformers, volunteer lawyers, and politicians increasingly came to see access to affordable or free legal advice as a critical part of helping working-class people uphold their rights with landlords, employers, and retailers – and, from the 1940s, with the welfare state. Whilst a state scheme was launched in 1949, it was never fully implemented and help from a lawyer remained out of the reach of many people. Lawyers for the poor is the first full-length study of the development of voluntary action and mutual schemes to make the law more accessible, and the pressure put on the legal profession and governments to bring in further reforms. It offers new insights of the role of access to the law in shaping ideas about citizenship and civil rights in the twentieth century.
Download or read book Government s proposed reform of legal aid written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Justice Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-03-30 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Additional written evidence is contained in Volume III, available on the Committee's website at www.parliament.uk/justicecttee
Download or read book HC 311 Impact of Changes to Civil Legal Aid Under Part 1 of the Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Acvt 2012 written by Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Justice Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2015 with total page 87 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the reforms came into effect, there has been a significant underspend in the civil legal aid budget because the MoJ failed to ensure that those who are eligible for legal aid are able to access it. This has been partly been due to a lack of public information, including information about the Civil Legal Advice telephone gateway for debt advice, and the Committee recommends that the MoJ take prompt steps to redress this. The Committee also concludes that the exceptional cases funding scheme has not worked as Parliament intended. It was supposed to act as a safety net, protecting access to justice for the most vulnerable. The Committee expects the MoJ to react rapidly to ensure that the scheme fulfils Parliament's intention that the most vulnerable people are able to access legal assistance. The Government's reforms have led to an increase in the number and a change in the profile of litigants in person: increasingly these are people who have no choice but to represent themselves, and who may thus have difficulty in doing so effectively: although many tribunals are accustomed to dealing with unrepresented litigants the courts have to expend more resources in order to assist them. The MoJ has not been able to demonstrate that it has achieved value for money for the taxpayer. Although significant savings have been achieved, efforts to target legal aid at those who most need it have focused on intervention aimed at the point after a crisis has already developed, rather than on prevention.
Download or read book Family legal aid reform written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Justice Committee and published by Stationery Office. This book was released on 2009-07-20 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Legal Services Commission published a consultation document, Family Legal Aid funding from 2010: a consultation in December 2008. Those proposals were part of a borader strategy for lgal aid reform outlined in July 2006 in Lord Carter's report, Legal aid - a market based approach to reform. Lord Carter's strategy was a staged move from mixed economy of fixed and graduated fees, uplifts and other add-ons and hourly rates to a market based system of competitive tendering. The interim step envisaged to be fixed fees for different types of cases. The former Constitutional Affairs Committee supported the objectives but concluded that the plans were introduced too quickly and rigidly. The Justice Committee continues to support the fundamental aims of legal aid reform but feel evidence has not been provided that the approach being taken will achieve the desired outcomes.
Download or read book House of Lords House of Commons Joint Committee on Human Rights The Implications for Access to Justice of the Government s Proposals to Reform Legal Aid HL 100 HC 766 written by Great Britain: Parliament: Joint Committee on Human Rights and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-12-13 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The report The Implications For Access To Justice Of The Government's Proposals To Reform Legal Aid (HL100, HC 766) concludes that the government should reconsider its proposals for the reform of legal aid. The government has so far made welcome exemptions to its proposed residence test in the light of responses to its consultation, but the Committee is still not satisfied that the proposed test will not affect vulnerable groups. While accepting that it is legitimate for the government to introduce a residence test for civil legal aid and to restrict the scope of prison law funding, the Committee calls for more and broader exemptions from these proposals to avoid breaches of the fundamental right of effective access to justice in individual cases. The exceptional funding framework may not be working as intended and could therefore leave certain groups unable to access legal aid when human rights law requires it. The proposal to remove cases with
Download or read book Delivering Family Justice in Late Modern Society in the wake of Legal Aid Reform written by Mavis Maclean and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-04-19 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Legal aid for family cases in private law, mainly divorce and separation, where the state is not directly involved as it is in public law cases where there are issues of domestic violence or neglect or abuse of children, came to an abrupt end together with help for welfare and immigration cases on April 1 2013 when the Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act (LASPO) came into effect. This book presents an account of the wide ranging problems which the researchers and practitioners expected to ensue. Sadly, their fears have been realised in many areas of legal help and advice. The National Audit Office was to take the view in 2014 that although the Ministry of Justice had succeeded in making considerable savings in the cause of austerity that they had failed to investigate or understand the impact of these cuts on the individuals concerned and society as a whole. This book was previously published as a special issue of the Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law.
Download or read book Access to Justice and Legal Aid written by Asher Flynn and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-01-26 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book considers how access to justice is affected by restrictions to legal aid budgets and increasingly prescriptive service guidelines. As common law jurisdictions, England and Wales and Australia, share similar ideals, policies and practices, but they differ in aspects of their legal and political culture, in the nature of the communities they serve and in their approaches to providing access to justice. These jurisdictions thus provide us with different perspectives on what constitutes justice and how we might seek to overcome the burgeoning crisis in unmet legal need. The book fills an important gap in existing scholarship as the first to bring together new empirical and theoretical knowledge examining different responses to legal aid crises both in the domestic and comparative contexts, across criminal, civil and family law. It achieves this by examining the broader social, political, legal, health and welfare impacts of legal aid cuts and prescriptive service guidelines. Across both jurisdictions, this work suggests that it is the most vulnerable groups who lose out in the way the law now operates in the twenty-first century. This book is essential reading for academics, students, practitioners and policymakers interested in criminal and civil justice, access to justice, the provision of legal assistance and legal aid.
