WIREDGOV

The reforms are part of the second phase of the response to the independent review into criminal legal aid.

With an extra £85 million for solicitors on top of the £43 million investment for barristers in legal aid payments, there will also be an additional £11 million for expert fees to eventually be paid each year and ensure long-term sustainability for the sector.

Changes includes £16 million to raise the lowest fees payable to solicitors representing clients in police stations – the first step towards simplifying and improving fee schemes over the next three years.

Currently, fixed fees do not differ between case complexity, so a lawyer spending 20 minutes on a shoplifting case and four hours on a murder trial would likely receive the same fixed fee for both jobs.

The restructure will standardise payments to distinguish between these cases, paying a different lower or higher standard fee to reflect the hours of work done. By increasing the lowest fees in the system, the government will boost solicitor pay packets and overall funding for police station work will rise by 30 per cent.

In 2024, the government will also bring forward proposals for reform on a new Litigators’ Graduated Fee Scheme (LGFS) – how legal aid funding is paid to law firms - to ensure solicitors are properly paid for work carried out in a range of more complex cases in the crown court.

Proposals will include a new way to calculate payments reflecting the type of offence, trial outcome and length, and the amount of evidence in each case – rather than the current system which is mainly based on the number of papers served to the prosecution, regardless of if these are ever read and how much time was involved in preparing them.

Deputy Prime Minister, Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary Dominic Raab said:

We are reforming criminal legal aid so our lawyers are fairly paid for the vital work they do delivering high-quality legal support for those who need it.

We have taken on board the recommendations of the independent review and are modernising the system to deliver justice for victims now and in the future.

Additionally, £5 million per year will be invested in the youth court to ensure solicitors representing children involved in the most serious cases receive higher fees to better reflect the complexity of this work. This will secure quality representation for young people and will benefit solicitors as well as junior barristers.

With this additional £21 million of investment a year, solicitor firms will see a total fee increase of around 11 percent for all criminal legal work.

This is part of £138 million to be invested into the legal aid sector per year alongside our full response to the Criminal Legal Aid Review. It will ensure high-quality legal support is available for those who need it, and that lawyers are better and more fairly paid in line with the work they carry out.

The latest measures also come following the package confirmed by the Ministry of Justice last month that saw criminal barristers vote to return to work.

This included a 15 percent fee rise for barristers working on existing as well as new criminal cases. Over the next 2 years, there will also be £3 million for case preparation, like written work and special preparation, and a further £4 million for lawyers involved in pre-recorded cross-examinations, used to reduce the trauma of a trial for vulnerable victims and witnesses.