Evidence submitted by the Association
of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL)
The Association of Personal Injury Lawyers has
been advised to submit evidence to the committee's inquiry into
legal aid by Ross Cranston QC MP.
APIL has over 5,000 members, across the United
Kingdom and abroad. We see personal injury from the victim's point
of view and lobby for changes to the law which put victims first
and increase access to justice. Anyone can be injured through
no fault of their own, and when they are they should receive fair,
just and prompt compensation. If the concept of accident prevention
is promoted with sufficient vigour, many people need never be
injured in the first place.
The organisation is governed by an executive
committee made up of 18 APIL members, each elected by the rest
of the membership.
At the outset APIL opposed the abolition of
legal aid on the grounds that a funding system which relied entirely
on conditional fee agreements would not provide the financial
certainty for solicitors to take on risky, but worthy, cases.
In the view of our members it is too early to judge whether or
not this has been the case.
Once it became apparent that abolition of legal
aid was inevitable APIL committed itself to making CFAs work and
has therefore been involved in discussions with senior officials
at the DCA as well as other legal bodies to try to find a way
simplify the CFA process.
There have been enormous problems with CFAs
since their inception which has resulted in log jams in the courts.
APIL's concern is that these problems have a direct impact on
the injured person which is why we have devoted so much time to
helping to resolve the issues.
I enclose for the committee's information a
paper submitted to the Department of Constitutional Affairs in
September 2003 entitled "Simplifying Conditional Fee Agreements"
(not printed). I also enclose a summary of the main points
in the document (Annex A).
Simon Rich
Parliamentary Officer
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