Legal Aid In Britain To Be Cut
Budget cuts which are being thrust upon legal aid and The Citizens Advice Bureaux have led to people seeking legal advice turning to a personal injury solicitor. The reason behind legal aid cuts was that the service drove the compensation culture where people would sue health services and local councils for injuries that they wanted to gain cash from, no win no fee solicitors were also in the frame as it was felt that they were charging impossibly large fees for work done.
It was found that lawyers and solicitors were profiteering from their fees, in some cases the award to the litigant would be a few hundred pounds but the fees the solicitors charged for the work they did numbered several thousands of pounds.
The proposed changes are currently under review by the ministry of justice, they will be looking at funding for criminal and civil cases and has expressed the opinion that funding for cases which don't involve life or liberty could have their funding revoked.
The Law Commission pointed out that only the poorest of the poor would have access to legal aid meaning that people in lower or middle income brackets would find that they were forced out of being able to take legal recourse should they come to need it.
Litigants who presented a justified no win no fee accident claim could find that their proceedings were abandoned, some people who were taking a case to court claiming disability caused by negligence at a hospital were told by their lawyers that the case was being dropped because they weren't certain to win and the injured parties couldn't afford to take the case forward without legal aid.
Prosecuting cases in court only if there is total certainty of a win doesn't serve the law or justice, if a win is certain then the court becomes redundant and merely an outdated nod at due process. Consumer debt and housing have come under the knife as has employment law. Health and safety has a bad reputation among those who look for a lasaise faire government but it means that when work related injury andRSI claim claims come to court it's for a good reason, if people aren't trained properly they should have a right to compensation when they come to harm.
tags:legal aid,no win no fee,solicitor
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