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'The Chester Public Defender Service has two solicitors, an accredited representative and two admin staff. In its first seven weeks, it cost the Legal Services Commission £212,733. It was averaging two cases a week.'
- Monitor
(Issue 15)
'Steve Orchard's much-delayed retirement - he was originally due to leave three months' ago - has prompted inevitable jokes about his having more farewells than Frank Sinatra. As he finally bows out after 14 years at the helm of the Legal Services Commission/Legal Aid Board, are his regrets (Like Old Blue Eyes') too few to mention?'
- Interview
(Issue 11)
'Historically, it has been rare for law centres to offer training contracts, so the advent of the LSC grant scheme represents a major development forthis sector. Steve Hynes of the Law Centres Federation, says: "This scheme is so important to us. If you look around law centres, there is a generation of lawyers missing."'
- Monitor
(Issue 13)
'Legal aid's role in tackling social exclusion is "a card which has been underplayed" by both the LSC and the profession, says the commission's new chief executive, Clare Dodgson. "No one ever talks to me about the clients!" Dodgson looks genuinely disappointed and dismayed as she says this - as if it confirms all her worst fears about lawyers. "The commission is about the clients!"'
- Interview
(Issue 11)
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'The LSC auditors spent more time checking the files than we spent doing the work in the first place.'
- Special report
(Issue 14)
'So Farewell then, Winstanley Burgess. Despite the well-rehearsed predictions of dire consequences if pay rates aren't increased, it's still a shock when a firm which is a long-established part of the legal aid landscape closes. Static fees have undoubtedly played a part in the firm's demise. But, as always, out here in the real world, it's more complicated than that.'
- Opinion
(Issue 10)
'It was, says Stephen Solley QC, an extrordinary moment. Here was a man who had protested his innocence for 19 years - but got nowhere. He'd never been able to speak to anyone at the Home Office about his confession being false. "He came to my chambers. I phoned the Criminal Cases Review Commission, and put it on the speaker phone. Suddenly, there was a human being on the line who was energetic about his appeal".'
- Special Report
(Issue 9)
'The best lawyers are often awkward customers, obsessed beyond belief by the interests of their clients. They are not robotic clones obsessed with audit trails and written standards. We want wartime warriors not peacetime pen-pushers. The LSC needs to identify a cadre of the best; get rid of the rest; and then work in real partnership.'
- If I Ran Legal Aid...
Roger Smith (Issue 8)
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