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Injustice coming to a court near you in October 2012
CrimeLine - pretty much the foremost provider of legal news and training to criminal lawyers - reported this morning that changes to Defendant's Costs Orders are expected to come into force this October.
A Defence Costs Order is something you get if you have been falsely accused of a crime, you pay for your own defence and you win your case. It's simply a branch of the concept that the loser pays, in other words, if you are in the wrong then you get to pay the costs. So, a convicted defendant can expect to pay towards the prosecution costs just as the prosecution get to pay toward the costs of an acquitted defendant. Sound fair? I think it is.
As of October, this is set to change. Companies falsely accused of crime will have to pay for their own defence full stop. Defendants in the Crown Court must either accept legal aid (with contributions of up to £900 per month) or pay privately in the knowledge that following an acquittal they will not receive back a penny of the money that have spent on their case. Defendants in the magistrates court will only be able to recover costs at the same rate as legal aid payments, which means defendants who are not eligible for legal aid will have to pay a substantial amount of money to defend themselves - to give you an indication, you can expect a magistrates court trial in London to cost you around £1,500, whereas legal aid will pay the solicitor £378.46 in most cases. It's a bit more complicated that that because firms tend to charge clients fixed fees rather than hourly rates but when you seek a Defendant's Cost Order you have to claim at an hourly rate, for comparison, a fairly typical hourly rate in London will be between £120 - £180 depending on the level of experience you want from your solicitor. Legal aid will pay £49 per hour in London.
So an innocent defendant who is facing an allegation in the magistrates court can expect to pay a substantial amount to exercise their "right" to have equality of arms with the prosecution, who will be represented at trial by a proper solicitor or barrister.
Just so you know, the Legal Services Commission (LSC) guarantee you funding if your income is less than £12,475 p.a. or if you are on certain benefits. If your income is between £12,476 and £22,325 then you may or may not get funding depending on a number of factors and in the Crown Court you are likely to have to pay a contribution toward your defence, if your income is over £22,325 then you get nothing in the magistrates court and will have to pay a contribution of up to £900 p/m toward your defence in the Crown Court.
Now, you might assume that the answer is simple, fat cat lawyers could simply reduce their outrageously high prices. But, when you actually think about what you are buying you start to realise that being a proper solicitor is not cheap: the overheads are very high, the training is very lengthy and the risks to the solicitor are great. This is why firms charge what seem like very high hourly rates. Imagine you are having surgery, do you want a surgeon with little experience? With sparse training? Of course you don't. Let's say you are having an extension built on your house, do you want the bloke who shows up with only a vague idea of how he'll do the work or the fella who comes along, looks at the plans and can show you examples of his work that are still standing? I'm going to guess you want the second one.
When I first began working we were a bit lax about charging private rates because legal aid paid a reasonable amount of money for a case - although the overall legal aid budget was a fraction of what it now is - and we knew that we could do a decent job for our clients on the fees being paid. That hasn't been true for a while now and I can no longer put my hand on my heart and say that you will get as good a service if your solicitor is being paid by legal aid as you would if you pay him privately. It's worth noting that that the Government has made substantial cuts to funding and just recently made a further cut of 25% to most fees and 100% for cases heard in the magistrates court that go to the Crown Court for trial. At the start of this year, we had a case that required five magistrate court hearing and for those hearings we got a fee of £0 (yes, zero pounds sterling).
Incidentally, the fact that we can no longer provide a good enough service on legal aid is one of the reasons I spoke to my contract manager at the LSC the other day and announced that we would be withdrawing from the contract and no longer providing services to legal aid clients!
Back to Defence Costs Orders. Is it fair that a completely innocent person is accused of a crime they didn't commit, refused legal aid and then prevented from recovering the fees they had to pay to prove themselves innocent? Is it fair that a small business accused of, say not paying their rates (as I bizarrely was on a building I do not own or rent a couple of months back) or an environmental offence, etc. should have to fork out to defend themselves? Incidentally, the cost of defending myself against the false claim I owed rates cost my firm a little over £1,500+VAT, or would have if I hadn't represented the firm myself.
The argument for bringing about this change in the Crown Court seems to be that legal aid is available (albeit with contributions) therefore all defendants should utilise it. That argument clearly doesn't hold up in the magistrates court where legal aid is not universally available. I cannot fathom the reasons for only allowing the innocent to recoup a fraction of the costs they spent defending themselves, other than it being a cynical and underhand ploy to make more people plead guilty on the basis that the fine is less than the cost of defending themselves
RF: Please click the link for more....
Injustice coming to a court near you in October 2012
CrimeLine - pretty much the foremost provider of legal news and training to criminal lawyers - reported this morning that changes to Defendant's Costs Orders are expected to come into force this October.
A Defence Costs Order is something you get if you have been falsely accused of a crime, you pay for your own defence and you win your case. It's simply a branch of the concept that the loser pays, in other words, if you are in the wrong then you get to pay the costs. So, a convicted defendant can expect to pay towards the prosecution costs just as the prosecution get to pay toward the costs of an acquitted defendant. Sound fair? I think it is.
As of October, this is set to change. Companies falsely accused of crime will have to pay for their own defence full stop. Defendants in the Crown Court must either accept legal aid (with contributions of up to £900 per month) or pay privately in the knowledge that following an acquittal they will not receive back a penny of the money that have spent on their case. Defendants in the magistrates court will only be able to recover costs at the same rate as legal aid payments, which means defendants who are not eligible for legal aid will have to pay a substantial amount of money to defend themselves - to give you an indication, you can expect a magistrates court trial in London to cost you around £1,500, whereas legal aid will pay the solicitor £378.46 in most cases. It's a bit more complicated that that because firms tend to charge clients fixed fees rather than hourly rates but when you seek a Defendant's Cost Order you have to claim at an hourly rate, for comparison, a fairly typical hourly rate in London will be between £120 - £180 depending on the level of experience you want from your solicitor. Legal aid will pay £49 per hour in London.
So an innocent defendant who is facing an allegation in the magistrates court can expect to pay a substantial amount to exercise their "right" to have equality of arms with the prosecution, who will be represented at trial by a proper solicitor or barrister.
Just so you know, the Legal Services Commission (LSC) guarantee you funding if your income is less than £12,475 p.a. or if you are on certain benefits. If your income is between £12,476 and £22,325 then you may or may not get funding depending on a number of factors and in the Crown Court you are likely to have to pay a contribution toward your defence, if your income is over £22,325 then you get nothing in the magistrates court and will have to pay a contribution of up to £900 p/m toward your defence in the Crown Court.
Now, you might assume that the answer is simple, fat cat lawyers could simply reduce their outrageously high prices. But, when you actually think about what you are buying you start to realise that being a proper solicitor is not cheap: the overheads are very high, the training is very lengthy and the risks to the solicitor are great. This is why firms charge what seem like very high hourly rates. Imagine you are having surgery, do you want a surgeon with little experience? With sparse training? Of course you don't. Let's say you are having an extension built on your house, do you want the bloke who shows up with only a vague idea of how he'll do the work or the fella who comes along, looks at the plans and can show you examples of his work that are still standing? I'm going to guess you want the second one.
When I first began working we were a bit lax about charging private rates because legal aid paid a reasonable amount of money for a case - although the overall legal aid budget was a fraction of what it now is - and we knew that we could do a decent job for our clients on the fees being paid. That hasn't been true for a while now and I can no longer put my hand on my heart and say that you will get as good a service if your solicitor is being paid by legal aid as you would if you pay him privately. It's worth noting that that the Government has made substantial cuts to funding and just recently made a further cut of 25% to most fees and 100% for cases heard in the magistrates court that go to the Crown Court for trial. At the start of this year, we had a case that required five magistrate court hearing and for those hearings we got a fee of £0 (yes, zero pounds sterling).
Incidentally, the fact that we can no longer provide a good enough service on legal aid is one of the reasons I spoke to my contract manager at the LSC the other day and announced that we would be withdrawing from the contract and no longer providing services to legal aid clients!
Back to Defence Costs Orders. Is it fair that a completely innocent person is accused of a crime they didn't commit, refused legal aid and then prevented from recovering the fees they had to pay to prove themselves innocent? Is it fair that a small business accused of, say not paying their rates (as I bizarrely was on a building I do not own or rent a couple of months back) or an environmental offence, etc. should have to fork out to defend themselves? Incidentally, the cost of defending myself against the false claim I owed rates cost my firm a little over £1,500+VAT, or would have if I hadn't represented the firm myself.
The argument for bringing about this change in the Crown Court seems to be that legal aid is available (albeit with contributions) therefore all defendants should utilise it. That argument clearly doesn't hold up in the magistrates court where legal aid is not universally available. I cannot fathom the reasons for only allowing the innocent to recoup a fraction of the costs they spent defending themselves, other than it being a cynical and underhand ploy to make more people plead guilty on the basis that the fine is less than the cost of defending themselves
RF: Please click the link for more....