Over 12 months between ending late 2019 I travelled the country interviewing people about their experiences of the justice system in a project undertaken together with Dr Dan Newman.
Dan, a senior law lecturer at Cardiff University, mapped the local legal advice sector and I did the ‘on location’ interviews. The book (Justice in a time of austerity: Stories from a system in crisis) is published this week.
Our journey began on a Monday morning at Stratford Hearing Centre in east London where we shadowed housing duty adviser, Simon Mullings—as I reported in NLJ (‘Justice in a time of austerity’). There were 12 rent possession cases on a housing list but, on a busy day, it stretched to 20 people—typically, each person has less than five minutes before the court.
Tenants didn’t know what to expect and they certainly didn’t expect to see a lawyer offering them help. ‘Half of them
