Reluctantly dragooned into keeping Legal Aid running, the Government has determined to impose control. No longer will there be haphazard granting of funding to solicitors generally on criteria which were often obscure and which varied from Board to Board country-wide. The Government has reined in this wilful extravagant socialistic anachronism by introducing Draconian new measures designed to restrict funding to substantial, strong, financially viable claims and further to ensure that these claims will be handled exclusively in the future by a small number of competent specialist practitioners. To this end new strict guidance for the supply and continuation of Legal Aid has been published. Solicitors must weigh up the merits, quantum and the likely costs of proceeding.
Proportionality is the new watch word.
But those generous days are now over. And the difficulty with C N claims is that while many are obvious no-hopers, others appear strong at first sight and weaken and shrivel only with further investigation after considerable sums of money have been spent on obtaining expert advice. And where the case is particularly complex, it may continue to evolve for several years. From February 1999, the supply of Legal Aid for all new C N claims will made available on the certification of a specialist franchised solicitors, that claim at each of three stages meets the strict merits, quantum and proportionality tests described in the detailed decision-making guidance. Unfortunately, while tis is likely to create a desirable greater uniformity around the country, there are serious defects in some of the risk benefit analysis which must be applied.