- solicitors see a further £21 million investment in fees and
long-term reforms
- an extra £138 million to be spent on legal aid every year to
ensure long-term sustainability
- overhaul of how legal aid funding is paid to reflect time
spent on complex cases
The reforms are part of the second phase of the
response to the independent review into criminal legal aid.
With an extra £85 million for solicitors on top of the £43
million investment for barristers in legal aid payments, there
will also be an additional £11 million for expert fees to
eventually be paid each year and ensure long-term sustainability
for the sector.
Changes includes £16 million to raise the lowest fees payable to
solicitors representing clients in police stations – the first
step towards simplifying and improving fee schemes over the next
three years.
Currently, fixed fees do not differ between case complexity, so a
lawyer spending 20 minutes on a shoplifting case and four hours
on a murder trial would likely receive the same fixed fee for
both jobs.
The restructure will standardise payments to distinguish between
these cases, paying a different lower or higher standard fee to
reflect the hours of work done. By increasing the lowest fees in
the system, the government will boost solicitor pay packets and
overall funding for police station work will rise by 30 per cent.
In 2024, the government will also bring forward proposals for
reform on a new Litigators’ Graduated Fee Scheme (LGFS) – how
legal aid funding is paid to law firms - to ensure solicitors are
properly paid for work carried out in a range of more complex
cases in the crown court.
Proposals will include a new way to calculate payments reflecting
the type of offence, trial outcome and length, and the amount of
evidence in each case – rather than the current system which is
mainly based on the number of papers served to the prosecution,
regardless of if these are ever read and how much time was
involved in preparing them.
Deputy Prime Minister, Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary
said:
We are reforming criminal legal aid so our lawyers are fairly
paid for the vital work they do delivering high-quality legal
support for those who need it.
We have taken on board the recommendations of the independent
review and are modernising the system to deliver justice for
victims now and in the future.
Additionally, £5 million per year will be invested in the youth
court to ensure solicitors representing children involved in the
most serious cases receive higher fees to better reflect the
complexity of this work. This will secure quality representation
for young people and will benefit solicitors as well as junior
barristers.
With this additional £21 million of investment a year, solicitor
firms will see a total fee increase of around 11 percent for all
criminal legal work.
This is part of £138 million to be invested into the legal aid
sector per year alongside our full response to the Criminal Legal
Aid Review. It will ensure high-quality legal support is
available for those who need it, and that lawyers are better and
more fairly paid in line with the work they carry out.
The latest measures also come following the package confirmed by
the Ministry of Justice last month that saw criminal barristers
vote to return to work.
This included a 15 percent fee rise for barristers working on
existing as well as new criminal cases. Over the next 2 years,
there will also be £3 million for case preparation, like written
work and special preparation, and a further £4 million for
lawyers involved in pre-recorded cross-examinations, used to
reduce the trauma of a trial for vulnerable victims and
witnesses.
