Legal aid cuts are costing, not saving money, say judges

The legal aid cuts are a false economy, an appeal court judge has said in the wake of trials being help up by litigants in person who, understandably, are struggling to represent themselves adequately without the help of trained lawyers.

Lady Justice Black made the statement after refusing a husband’s attempt to produce evidence that he mistakenly believed would aid his case in divorce proceedings. As the Law Society Gazette reports, Black noted how tasks meant to be performed by solicitors were now having to be performed by judges mid court hearing, meaning that hearings are taking significantly longer to resolve and that money saved through the legal aid cuts is just being lost elsewhere in the clogging up of the courts.

Black said: "This is not a satisfactory state of affairs as the time taken to attend to this is considerable and cannot be spared in what is already a very busy court."

Meanwhile, her colleague Lord Justice Aikens, agreed with that the cuts have proven a false economy and warned that the current system has increased the risk of miscarriages of justice. Aikens said: "Money may have been saved from the legal aid funds, but an equal amount of expense, if not more, has been incurred in terms of the costs of judges’ and court time. The result is that there is, in fact, no economy at all. Worse, this way of dealing with cases runs the risk that a correct result will not be reached because the court does not have the legal assistance of counsel that it should have and the court has no other legal assistance available."