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Lawyers must do better
Adam Sampson of the Office of the Legal Ombudsman has written an article on the changes to the legal profession underway, and in particular, the increased commercialisation of legal services to the high street. He starts by referencing his recent appearance at the London Advice Conference, by the way.
A couple of weeks ago, I shared a platform with various legal luminaries to answer questions from an audience of legal advice providers. Understandably, since many of their organisations were funded, directly or indirectly, by legal aid, most of the questions invited us to decry the changes in legal aid as a consequence of the credit-driven crisis created by the banks, and to mutter dire predictions that they will leave poorer people in this country without any effective access to law. And given that many of my questioners knew that my previous job had been running Shelter – the country’s leading provider of housing law and a campaigner against credit culture – it would have been easy for me to play to the gallery.
No one can deny that what is happening to legal aid will affect the ability of some of our poorest citizens to access the service of a lawyer. The audience was vehement on what the changes will mean to their ability to offer basic advice on asylum, housing and crime, and the Guardian has reported that legal aid for cases involving issues such as clinical negligence looks set to be ended. These are real issues.
But what the audience did not necessarily account for, I think, is the possibility that the inevitable growth of unmet legal need provides a business opportunity for the increasing number of commercial operators entering the legal profession.
Not only are some law firms beginning to ape their peers in other sectors by offering low-cost, commoditised legal products, but we are also seeing the intrusion into legal services of banks and other financial institutions looking to find ways of profiting from what is a rapidly changing market.
For the full article, see Lawyers must do better