Evidence submitted by Helen Cousins on
behalf of a criminal defence solicitor (LAR 233)
It is with a heavy heart that I write this.
My partnership met a week ago and made the decision
that we would withdraw from all legal aid (with the exception
of a small amount of MIIRT). The effect of this is that we will
be giving notice in relation to our crime and family categories
and that we will cease taking on new legal aid work in those categories
from 1 April.
What finally did it for me, as I flared in to
the black hole of the combined effect of Carter and means testing,
was the seeming impossibility of maintaining the reputation that
I, my team and the many others who had gone before us had built
up with the court and other CA players in this brave new world
which expected so much for so little reward.
I fervently hope that all the activity of the
profession over the next weeks and months will achieve some real
benefits to enable the scheme to work more in the interests of
the profession but my doubts are made clear by the action we have
decided to take.
I have no doubt that some will view with disdain
the fact that we are turning our back at a time when the profession
most needs help. For that I am profoundly sorry. This was the
most difficult decision I have ever had to make and I have agonised
over it for some months.
Two weeks ago, I received an email from a lady
who had emigrated to New Zealand and had seen my name recently
and just had to write and thank me for saving her life 15 years
ago when she was 17. She sent me pictures of her family and her
home and wanted me to know that she was now a successful executive
with her own business. She phoned me as well the next day to continue
her thanks. She could not have been more different from the 17
year old junkie who ,if she was not on the streets at that moment
in her life, was only one fix away from it. I represented her
on legal aid. As you can imagine, that did not make our decision
any easier to make.
My firm will continue to represent those investigated
and charged with offences and will do so in the forthright and
independent but courteous manner which has been our trade mark
these many years past (but which was in real danger of being subsumed
by the general air of demoralisation that pervades the courts
at the moment). We will charge for our services and bill at the
going rate. We know we are taking a risk (and it may be a big
one) but we have decided that now is the time to act before Legal
Aid finally withers and while our reputation is still intact (or
just about!). I have also decided to try and keep my tern together
which we acknowledge, represents another significant risk.
Through thick and thin (and the going has not
always boon straight forward) my partners have kept the faith
while all similar practices In our town abandoned legal aid some
years ago. Now we collectively take the view that we have no option
but to move away and to break a hitherto central tenet of our
firm's ethos (that we would represent all people who requested
our services—whoever they Wife and what ova' sort of problems
they may have had).
Please do not think too ill of me. I have given
my all over the last 19 years to the service of two who cannot
speak (and generally cannot think) for themselves and, to be honest,
I have just had enough of me and mine being treated with contempt
by those who should know better.
February 2007
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