Solicitors refuse to carry out criminal work in protest over legal aid fee changes

SOLICITORS downed tools in the criminal courts last week, refusing to handle legal aid work in protest over plans to introduce...

SOLICITORS downed tools in the criminal courts last week, refusing to handle legal aid work in protest over plans to introduce a flat fee for individual cases covered under the system, regardless of the complexity or duration.

Currently, defending solicitors are paid each time they appear for a client in a district court at a rate of €239.38, and then €59.86 for each subsequent hearing.

From July 1, the Department of Justice is replacing this system with a flat-fee model, in which €455 will be payable regardless of how many court appearances are needed.

The Department of Justice says that this will improve efficiency and speed up case resolution.

Legal practitioners say it will do nothing of the kind, and they have warned that such a system will become an existential threat to the whole structure of the free legal aid model, putting the most vulnerable at huge risk.

Many cases which come before the court are straightforward, involving solicitor and client in one consultation and a court appearance.

But even when a client pleads guilty to an offence, it’s a solicitor’s job to let the judge know if there are circumstances such as addiction or mental health difficulties which might need attention.

In those cases – and there are a huge number – the judge will set a remand date for reports and will bring the parties back to court for a second time.

Cases where there is probation or even just adjournments for an accused to pay compensation to an injured party can involve multiple appearances, multiple consultations, and can go on for months or even years.

Representatives are particularly excercised about what they see as an implication by the Department of Justice that it is solicitors who are slowing the system down.

In reality, they say, doing their best for a client means asking the court to consider every aspect of a case, including any probation or health reports that may affect the sentence.

It’s also widely understood on the ground that if a file has to go to the Directory of Public Prosecutions for a decision in a criminal case, that office if very hard pressed and it’s often necessary to repeatedly put cases back far beyond the two week window to allow a decision to be made.

The cost of having a solicitor appear in court has no effect whatsoever on the burden of work being thrown at the DPP’s office.

What it does affect is whether individual solicitors can stay in the free legal aid system if their payments for representing clients who have nowhere else to go are whittled down to a point where it just doesn’t pay to get up in the morning.