The Ministry of Justice published its quarterly legal aid statistics. It is a picture of the first full three years after the civil legal aid cuts of 2013. What do they tell us about the state of access to justice in England and Wales? A version of this article appeared on the Law Centres Network website
The CPS response to the 2011 riots was its finest hour, but successive cuts mean today’s service would be unable to cope with a similar level of disorder, says a former senior Crown prosecutor who has asked to remain anonymous. When I was asked to write an article to mark the fifth anniversary of the
What next? Human rights lawyers – and everyone else – are trying to make sense of this morning’s bombshell. ‘As a human rights lawyer, I have been asked to write a short blog on the impact to human rights in the UK following Brexit,’ began Matt Evans for the Justice Gap. ‘The current high regard for
How a fight at school led to a 13 year old being denied British Citizenship. Solange Valdez and Steve Symonds explain why they are seeking to challenge the way ‘bad character’ provisons are being applied to children as young as 10. In 1981, parliament passed the British Nationality Act. Previously, anyone born in the UK
Anti-social media Law firms looking for a cautionary tale to illustrate the business risks of engaging in social media (especially if you can’t trust yourself not to do something gratuitously offensive), should familiarise themselves with the sorry tale of Baker Smalls. Local authority clients have been bailing on the firm at some speed over the last
The legal battle to reopen the Birmingham pub bombing inquests highlights the challenges lawyers on both sides of the Irish Sea face when holding state bodies to account, says Belfast litigation consultant Christopher Stanley. Picture of Maxine Hambleton who was just 18 years of age when she died in 1974. The recent decision by Louise Hunt, senior coroner for
Magistrates are trained not to intervene in cases, but with growing numbers of unrepresented defendants, is it time for an urgent rethink of the training given to the lay bench? I was appointed to my local bench over 25 years ago. My selection process took four years which gave those deciding my destiny ample time
Jonathan Black of criminal defence solicitors BSB Solicitors asks how defence solicitors can have confidence in Michael Gove’s new advisory council, when it is being chaired by his QC ‘mate’, who thinks firms employing higher rights advocates are ‘venal’? In January 2016, Justice Secretary Michael Gove announced that he would be abandoning his ministry’s pursuit of
I’m a fan of social media. It wasn’t always that way and if you catch me on a bad day, my opinion might be different. What I can say is that over the past decade it has helped me develop my practice, build my client base and extend my profile in a market that is
