FLAC says proposed legal services reforms do not reduce legal costs

Independent human rights organisation Free Legal Advice Centres (FLAC) has issued its submission in response to the Legal Services Regulation Bill 2011, which contains government proposals to reform legal services delivery, including how costs are calculated, how the profession is controlled and how people can become lawyers. FLAC says the proposed changes do not prioritise access to the legal system and thus will not improve the situation for many people.

"FLAC does not see the Bill increasing access to legal services for non-commercial bodies. It does not reduce legal costs and in fact leaves untouched areas which are hugely problematic and which cost people untold time and money, such as the overloaded courts and the underfunded civil legal aid system," said FLAC Director General Noeline Blackwell.

FLAC's submission contains 17 recommendations on the Bill. Its proposals include:

• improving transparency around the adjudication of costs;
• expressly including the right of people to access justice;
• promoting a better understanding of law and the legal system generally as a first step to better explaining the system of legal services and costs;
• setting up a pre-complaint process for the public that would clarify how costs and services are decided, possibly to include mediation;
• investigating thoroughly why legal costs are so high and proposing measures to reduce them;
• including all relevant stakeholders in how both the Legal Services Regulatory Authority and the Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal are governed.

Click here to see FLAC's submission.

Yesterday evening, Trinity College Dublin's FLAC Society hosted a discussion on the Bill which included as speakers David Barniville SC, Tom Cooney and TCD's Professor Gerry Whyte. FLAC Director-General Noeline Blackwell and PILA Manager Larry Donnelly attended the seminar.

Prof. Whyte highlighted his concern that a specific provision of the Bill could pose a threat to academic freedom and argued that, in certain respects, the Bill misses opportunities to foster the use of law in the public interest. For example, he noted that it does not provide for protective costs orders in public interest litigation.

David Barniville SC, while emphasising that the Bar Council is open to reform and welcomes greater transparency, summarised the various ways in which the Bar Council believes the Bill could impinge upon the independence of the bar, increase costs and limit access to justice.

Tom Cooney stated that the Bill was driven equally by the demands of the troika and by government policy and was crafted in a short space of time. He made the case that reform of the legal professions is long overdue, but noted that the Minister was open to accepting submissions on and to listening to the concerns of stakeholders about the Bill. At the close of the seminar, students from the TCD FLAC Society asked a number of thoughtful and provocative questions of each of the speakers.