LAW (Mini-articles) Index

Pretty well the whole of our legal system is archaic, costly, often unjust and a travesty of what it should be. This applies to both the criminal law and civil law.

A senior judge attacked the "bedraggled state" of English criminal law recently, citing delays in implementing uncontroversial but much-needed reforms that were costing taxpayers millions of pounds a year. Mr Justice Brooke, the chairman of the Law Commissioners, said greater awareness was needed among Whitehall's civil servants and Westminster politicians that "bad law wastes money". He said time and money was being wasted in the courts because police, lawyers, judges and juries were having to wrestle with the obscure language of the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act and the law of self-defence. They were having to "cope with old-fashioned nonsense" and the 1861 Act was long overdue for repeal. Judges were getting the law wrong in their summings-up to juries because it "was hidden in the law books" and not set out in a simple statute.

Civil justice is now too expensive for all but the poorest and the richest. In 1950, 80 per cent of all the population were eligible for legal aid. Now only 47 per cent are eligible, though far fewer have access to the courts. Only those with very low incomes have their civil legal bills fully paid by the government. The rest of the 47 per cent must contribute to their lawyers' fees. Yet many people who say they are poor but are still able to live in wealthy and prestigious homes seem to get legal aid quite easily.

Newsletter, Job Society, February 1995

If you ask British lawyers about fees, they soon start bitching. Provincial firms hate London ones. Small firms accuse big firms of "milking clients to pay for marble atriums". Big firms moan about barristers "who charge whopping prices without having any overheads to pay for". And barristers complain of solicitors in big firms who land themselves "big pay packets for 25 years" while the unfortunates at the Bar must live by their wits and reputations and are only ever as good as their last case.

Lawyers would have you believe that theirs is an aggressive business world in which services may not come cheap but where prices are none the less subject to fierce competition. But that competition works two ways. Yes, the law firms and barristers compete, but at the top of the system an upward pressure on prices is maintained by the adversarial nature of the legal system. In a case that could go either way, your choice of lawyer might make the difference between victory and defeat. Pay for the best, whatever they ask, and you are more likely to win (and if you win you are likely not to have to pay the bill anyway).

The danger for British lawyers is that they might end up as unpopular as their counterparts in the United States. American scientists, runs one joke, are starting to use lawyers in their experiments instead of white rats. They give three reasons: first there are more lawyers than white rats; second, you can't become emotionally attached to a lawyer; and third, there are some things a white rat just won't do.

From an article in Indpendent on Sunday 5 Mar 95