A new public service

‘Nothing less than the introduction of a new public service,’ wrote Michael Zander QC, emeritus professor of law at the LSE, of the nascent law centre movement in 1978. I wrote last year in my Guardian blog that the legal not-for-profit sector would bear the brunt of the legal aid cuts that threaten to slash £350 million from the £2.2 billion total budget. I also reflected last week in the same blog, that it was time for the law centres movement to adapt or die as a result of the Legal Aid, Punishment and Sentencing of Offenders Bill.

The Legal Action Group, in its London Advice Watch report, recently predicted that some 80 legal NfP agencies could lose £9.3 million as a result of the legal aid Bill and that would force many agencies to ‘close their doors for good or to cut back drastically’.

The Law Centres Federation last year revealed that that 18 of the 56 law centres were under threat of closure. ‘Already law centres have lost or about to lose in this financial year 53% of their local authority funding,’ LCF director Julie Bishop told me. It was a mixed picture: one centre received a 12% increase and others, such as Hammersmith and Fulham, faced 100% cuts.

According to the LCF, about 46% of its members’ funding came from legal aid and roughly 40% from local authorities with the remainder comes from a variety of sources such as charitable trusts. That funding pattern varies dramatically from centre to centre and so, for example, Islington Law Centre has 16 separate streams of funding whereas other law centres only have one or two. The 18 centres that the LCF identified for possible closure are those most heavily dependent on public funding– in other words, where 60% plus of funding was from legal aid.

The vision of the law centre movement was set out in 1968 pamphlet called Justice for all by the Society of Labour Lawyers which reflected ‘widespread concern’ about ‘serious defects in the provision of legal services to the community’. It made the case for a ‘new institution’ in the law which would ‘function as a public service, staffed by salaried lawyers’ and which would ‘coexist with and be supplemental to private practice’. Michael Zander was on its committee. 
Interestingly, the Conservative party at around the same time argued (in a paper called Rough Justice) that the legal system had to reach out to the poor in order to remedy ‘the failure of many people who need legal advice to ever get to a solicitor's office’. However the mainstream profession fiercely resisted such ideas. ‘They contemplate a radical departure from the concept of legal aid as so far developed… and by introducing a separate and distinct legal service, it would exercise a divisive social influence,’ noted the Law Society in its objections to the Justice for all proposals.

The LASPO Bill will ‘decimate income’ for law centres, comments David Gilmore, a consultant who specialises in advises legal aid firms and the NfP sector. ‘Law centres don't want to charge clients but for some, it could be a matter of survival.’

So both Rochdale and Islington law centres are moving into private fee-paying work. But these new arrangements aren’t simply about financially propping up what remains of the legal aid scheme. As David Gilmore puts it: ‘I don't think it's about competing with solicitors or making money. A key objective of introduce charging services where categories go out of the scope of legal aid – for example, employment and immigration - is to retain the skills of specialised lawyers working within the NfP sector. Once those skills have gone, it would be difficult to get them back.’

As he explains, those agencies that do, reluctantly, decide to introduce charging services ‘will ensure that any surpluses are either re-invested in the service or given to the law centre’. The idea at Rochdale and Islington is to separate the fee-paying business into a standalone community interest company (or CIC), a relatively new corporate structure designed for social enterprises that want to use profits for the public good.

While a law centre, as an entity, is not allowed to charge for services, a linked organisation may, Gilmore explains. ‘For example, a law centre may, through an ABS application own a separate charging company. Alternatively, key personnel from the law centre could establish a community interest company or a co-operative through which to charge for services.’ A CIC is new corporate structure introduced by New Labour and designed for social enterprises that want to use profits for the public good

‘We have spent a lot of time looking at whether the primary aim should be to support the law centre financially or whether it should be to meet the needs of clients who would otherwise go without access to justice,’ Ruth Hayes, manager of Islington law centre told me. ‘Our primary purpose is to meet a social need,’ said Hayes. ‘We know that there will be people with no access to any funds and those who will go without services next year.’

Their solution is to means test clients and offer cheaper rates accordingly - cheapest rates for those on very low incomes (‘i.e. those who would be eligible for help under legal aid at the moment’) and a premium or supporters’ rate for, as Hayes puts it: ‘the kind of people who would buy fair trade coffee or their Christmas cards from Oxfam – i.e., who were going to do this anyway but who would like to know that the profit element will support our work for people who would otherwise not be able to afford help’.

A few miles to the East, Hackney Community Law Centre has also decided to ‘fight back’ but in a different way and by going back to the movement’s roots. The law centre is launching a major profile-raising initiative to, in the words of manager Sean Canning ‘popularise the concept of the law centre’. True to the law centre ethos, it will be rolling out its ‘Community Law Shops’ initiative taking its services directly to the community through a presence in local libraries and FE colleges.

Serving a deprived but vibrant community in East London for almost 40 years, the law centre is (in its own words) ‘part of Hackney’s furniture’. The centre reports that it has taken on 52% more cases this year in housing, welfare benefits and debt compared to the previous 12 months. Its ways of working may have to change but – Hackney insists - its raison d’etre remains the same. Just as the first law centres created waves in the legal establishment when they first opened, so Hackney Law Centre now hopes to do the same all over again.