Firms are unwilling to take civil legal aid work for the rates offered, Steve Hynes, director of the Legal Action Group (LAG) has warned.
Writing in this week’s NLJ, Hynes notes that the Legal Aid Agency (LAA) did not find enough takers for new contracts in education or discrimination law. It has since extended the existing contracts for education but not for discrimination.
Hynes speculates that the reason may be that the discrimination contract holders asked for more money, partly due to a shortage of discrimination lawyers in the market.
‘Understandably, no-one will go on the record from the existing suppliers, but it appears that the education law contracts holders were prepared to continue to fulfil the contracts for the same price, while one or more of the discrimination law contract holders bid for an increase,’ says Hynes.
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