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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Access to justice and advice sector issues  →  Thread

Technology could widen law centre catchment areas, says Justice minister

shawn mach
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Debate in Westminster Hall last week on: Ministry of Justice: Legal Aid Spending

Closing for the government, Justice Minister Alex Chalk said -

‘... law does not stand still, just as the rest of the world does not stand still. There are other mechanisms by which legal advice and assistance can be delivered using technology, and we must be alive to that.

In some of the excellent conversations that I have had with law centres, they have started to recognise that maybe their catchment area of need is not simply the area around, say, North Kensington for North Kensington ​Law Centre or the area around Hammersmith for the Hammersmith and Fulham Law Centre…’

Picked up on by the Law Society Gazette: Technology could widen law centre catchment areas, says MoJ minister

Stainsby
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You can widen the area but you cannot expand your capacity to carry your case load

In other words access to justice still depends on funding posts, and there it no way that technology can mitigate savage cuts to Legal Aid

Elliot Kent
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Stainsby - 27 October 2020 04:00 PM

You can widen the area but you cannot expand your capacity to carry your case load

In other words access to justice still depends on funding posts, and there it no way that technology can mitigate savage cuts to Legal Aid

Quite…

I think as well always worth remembering that a lot of the time it is funders such as the LAA or local authorities imposing the geographical rules.

Stainsby
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I agree, my own organisation depends on LA funding that restricts our catchment to their boundaries