UK Legal Aid Developments

Legal aid lawyers facing fight to survive after tendering shake-up

Legal Service Commission's exercise means professionals doing under-funded but essential jobs could end up on the dole



Royal Courts of Justice building Firms who bid for contracts following the tendering exercise reported a reduced number of cases. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian

This week is crunch time for legal aid lawyers. The results of a big Legal Service Commission (LSC) tendering exercise means that firms could face closure and lawyers end up on the dole.

Some lawyers have their results already. Only 252 of 410 firms and agencies applying for immigration work won contracts. That inevitably means redundancies for professionals who have dedicated themselves to an underfunded, but essential job. The results for family and social welfare law are expected to be announced by 19 July, which the Legal Aid Practitioners Group has predicted will be the "blackest day in legal aid history".

What this means for legal aid clients and "access to justice" will become clearer this week, but it is unlikely to be good news. Certainly, if the scale of the upheaval in immigration is reflected in social welfare and family law, this coming week could mark a reshaping of public-funded law. As ministers contemplate scrapping 157 out of 530 courts, one fears for clients increasingly stranded in so-called "legal aid advice deserts".

The bald statistics of what has happened for immigration – less than three-quarters (73%) of firms which bid for contracts won them – obscures the real impact of the tender result. Successful bidders are reporting that the number of cases (or matter starts, as the LSC puts it) under the new contracts is massively down on their previous workload, which threatens their business viability.

So precarious are the finances of practices dependent on public-funded law, that the smallest of shocks to the system can have a terminal effect – as with Refugee and Migrant Justice, which went to the wall over what it calls "a cash flow problem". A recent survey by the National Audit Office found that 16% of legal aid providers made zero profit and another 14% made 5% or less profit.

Consultant David Gilmore advised on some 14 immigration bids in the tender. All his clients were awarded contracts but they only received between a quarter and one third of the volume of cases sought. They are all "extremely upset and will have to make redundancies", Gilmore said. The only client to receive the number of cases it sought was a new entrant. Unsurprisingly, the economic downturn means there are plenty of firms willing to bid for any work, irrespective of a history or commitment to the sector.

While Lord Carter of Coles designed his market-driven economy in legal aid (built on fixed fees and tendering), the LSC scaled back its commitment to quality standards. It's a real dumbing down of the process. Consequently, the new tender process does not differentiate between the new entrant with no track record and the firm taking groundbreaking cases to the Supreme Court. Price, not quality, is the ultimate determinant.

Jon Robins is a freelance journalist and director of the legal research company Jures, which recently published Closing the Justice Gap, a collection of essays of "radical, exciting and innovative ways to reform access to justice".