You have heard it all before: the law is broken, legal aid is suffering a “death by a thousand cuts”, legal aid firms around the country are dropping like flies and those still working in the system can often expect to be paid as little as £5.80 an hour. We do not intend to rehash the evidence. We don’t think it will surprise anyone who has had the misfortune of experiencing our criminal justice system to say that the state of it, and in particular the funding of criminal legal aid, is reckless and unconscionable.
Our legal advice division, Just Lawyers, is a trading name of Tuckers Solicitors, the largest criminal legal aid defence firm in the country. Our lawyers have an unwavering commitment to the importance of legal aid and its centrality in the administration of justice. We are well accustomed to the fact that we are rarely actually paid for all of the work that goes into preparing a case. An £800 fee for a simple criminal damage trial in the magistrates might just about cover the average bit of graffiti, or a broken park bench; however it will not begin to cover the work required - as we were recently instructed to by four activists arrested at an action at Dolce & Gabbanna’s London store - to mount a defence which calls into question the legality of an international fur supply chain and operations of a major fashion brand, whilst also seeking and reaching out to potential whistle-blowers.
We believe that the cuts to legal aid must be halted and the damage to the criminal justice system reversed, but the calls of defence lawyers have time and again landed on deaf ears. Until such a time as those who hold the purse strings are moved to action, we must continue to work with very real people, whose very real cases require a competent standard of work and service.
In most cases, this will continue to be provided on a shoestring and we will continue to work overtime to seek justice. However, we have a duty to act in the best interests of each of each client, and where legal aid is failing to provide the justice that a client counts on it to provide, we must inevitably consider what other sources of funding are available.
Enter CrowdJustice, famously responsible for raising hundreds of thousands of pounds towards both the successful Article 50 challenge and prorogation challenge, both cases which grabbed the country’s attention on their ultimately successful quests through the courts. In the three years following its launch, CrowdJustice raised £8m in funding for around 400 cases. It is undeniably clear that crowdfunding has been a powerful tool for many clients, allowing cases to get off the ground in areas where cuts to state aid might previously have previously have put justice out of reach.
Crowdfunding can be a powerful tool for clients, and in appropriate cases we will not shy away from advising that a particular case or cause would be better championed by a larger legal team, or would benefit from more experienced counsel than legal aid might provide, or requires services (such as communications or PR support and content creation and promotion) that would have been well outside the scope of legal aid even at the best of times. We are excited to have the opportunity to explore this powerful tool with select cases, and we are confident that in those cases it can be a tool for good.
Nevertheless, we remain concerned that criminal legal aid has reached the point where we feel compelled to turn to alternate sources of revenue. Criminal defence is fundamental to a just society, but most cases, despite a person’s liberty being at stake, will fail to attract the kind of public sympathy or support required to raise funds from the public.
Powerful though it may be in select cases, and grateful though we are to organisations like CrowdJustice for the assistance they afford our clients, crowdfunding should never be the norm, or a replacement for legal aid. The cuts must stop.