Anyone who has ever worked in legal aid – or been through the legal aid system – or even read the news as of late – will be able to tell you of the legal aid system’s shortcomings. It is chronically underfunded and under-resourced, and everyone knows it.
But when we think legal aid, many will remember the crowded town halls or legal aid clinics where they’ve helped with pro bono cases. Or imagine a scenario where queues of inner-city social housing residents seek support when facing homelessness. Very few will think of the people living outside the confines of our big cities – those of us who live in Legal Aid deserts.
A new found millions of people in England and Wales live in areas with a high demand for legal aid and little to no access to local providers for key areas of the law, including housing, family and criminal law.
To find out more about some of the issues facing legal aid, and where pro bono work fits into the bigger picture, I reached out to Rebecca Wilkinson, the CEO of the pro bono charity, LawWorks.
I put the above question to Wilkinson within the first five minutes of meeting her – and her answer was somehow both surprising and unsurprising.
“To be crass, money,” she says with a shrug. “If you want a robust system that works for everyone, regardless of their geography, postcode or type of legal need – these things cost money.”
In her view, legal aid should be given the same or a similar level of investment as our healthcare system. “We've funded an expensive health care system because we think it's important to our society.”
She puts it to me in a way I can better understand. “If someone told you their arm was about to fall off, you wouldn’t tell them to just figure it for themselves. You’d tell them to see a doctor,” she joked. “I think our legal aid system should follow in a similar vein.”
And in the same way a doctor would explain a diagnosis to a patient, legal aid is more than simply having someone to represent you in court, says Wilkinson. “Having a lawyer who can talk things through with clients and explain how the process works is of huge value.”
Legal aid is the baseline that underpins the rule of law, says Wilkinson. “You can’t have the rule of law if people can't defend themselves against the state. And people can only enforce their rights if they have access to the legal system.”
One powerful example of access is geography – the UUֱ’ legal aid deserts report identified areas with a high number of legal “incidents” (homelessness, domestic abuse, crimes committed) and no access to local providers. It also took into account providers from neighbouring local authorities who were a reasonable distance of travel away. As you’ll see in the legal aid maps, the number of legal aid deserts are still aplenty.
Wilkinson added: “If we're saying people have these rights, but actually they can't access them, and if you can't access them, then they don’t exist.”
The rule of law was precisely the reason why we decided to undertake this research – the team at UUֱ are big believers in the rule of law (it’s basically why we exist as a business).
“If you remove legal aid,” says Wilkinson, “you remove a portion of society's ability to have rights and, as a consequence, you completely undermine any notion of the rule of law being meaningful within our democracy.”
Funding is by far the biggest hurdle facing legal aid, as Wilkinson pointed out earlier, but the legal aid system is also held back by a heavy administrative burden.
"It's not simply the costs of legal aid representatives, it's the significant amount of admin work that goes into it. Obviously, we want government money to be spent efficiently and appropriately and for there to be a good audit, but equally, we are talking about the most vulnerable people in our communities."
One of the initiatives LawWorks have enacted in recent years is investigating how they can support legal aid lawyers from an administrative point of view, she points out.
The key aim of pro bono work, in Wilkinson’s view, is to support the existing legal aid system - not to replace it. "Pro bono is an addendum to legal aid," she says. "It is not time to replace legal aid. The amount of pro bono work versus the amount of legal aid needed are incomparable."
However, pro bono work can make a huge difference to people's live - especially those living in legal aid deserts, she points out. "Just half an hour of a solicitor's time can make a huge difference to people's lives."
Wilkinson says she's seen a growing awareness in the legal community of the impact pro bono work can have.
"Most of the lawyers we work with are commercial lawyers. They have the skillset because of their training and their knowledge of the legal system to really help people who can't access legal support."
"If you've got these skills, let's find a way to hone it and utilise it," she says, pointing out that the purpose of organisations such as LawWorks is to help facilitate.
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