We live in difficult and interesting times. Jack Straw, the Secretary of State for Justice, stated at a speech given recently at the London School of Economics that:
- “In England and Wales we have the best funded legal aid system in the world”
- “There is certainly nothing ordained by the Almighty which says that of those paid for by the public purse, lawyers should be any higher than other professions.”
- “Running successful legal businesses is not the purpose of the law.”
- “The publicly-funded legal profession needs to take an ever closer look at itself, consider the service it is providing and think about how it is viewed in the eyes of the public.”
With these statements in mind, I talked this week to two lawyers who represent the interests of the profession and the public: Steve Hynes, director of The Legal Action Group and Paul Marsh, president of The Law Society of England & Wales. Hynes focused on legal aid, or rather the lack of it, in civil and criminal cases.
