Roger Smith measures the impact of legal aid cuts on both sides of the Atlantic
No doubt about the legal issue of the year. Professional leaders, practitioners and legal aid administrators are grappling with unprecedented cuts. The sun may be shining in the physical world but the clouds are gathering over publicly funded legal services—all over the world.
We loved Lucy
The Law Society was lucky, or unusually foresightful, to have chosen mental health practitioner Lucy Scott-Moncrieff as its most recent president. She stepped down in mid-July just in time for her successor, Nick Fluck, to give the Society’s valedictory speech in honour of Lord Judge’s tenure as Lord Chief Justice. She could have come from central casting: a woman, respected expert in her own field, long-time legal aid practitioner, mental health tribunal judge, and alternative business structure pioneer heading up one of the earliest virtual law practices in the UK. Her greatest attributes in legal aid’s annus horribilis can be stated negatively: she didn’t have a plummy accent; she didn’t go to Oxbridge; she didn’t seem to come from another planet.
In her own
