Anyone who has visited this blog previously will know of my feelings towards legal aid. The latest in a long list of reasons why solicitors should not do legal aid work has been reported in the Times Online, and elsewhere. It seems that the Legal Services Commission (the body that runs legal aid) in it's infinite wisdom has decided it would be a good idea to try to recoup legal aid payments made to law firms up to thirty years (or more) ago because those payments should have been repaid from money recovered by the clients. Apparently, the Legal Services Commission has said that "solicitors are responsible for providing evidence that they have completed the work we have paid them for". The fact that many of the solicitors' files will have long since been destroyed seems to be irrelevant.
So, it seems that solicitors can still be liable to have to repay the Legal Services Commission for many years after the work is completed, despite the failure of the Legal Services Commission (or whatever the body running legal aid then happened to be called) to pursue the matter at that time. Well, that's going to get firms flooding back to legal aid work.
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
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I agree 100% with everything you have said here. I stopped doing legal aid work some six years ago and personally I would rather live in a paper bag in 't street than have anything further to do with the Legal Services Commission (or whatever other name it may have in the future). However if they start clawing back all my old fees, maybe that is where I will end up!
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