Geoffrey Bindman warns against a professional civil war
Simultaneous social and political pressures—the economic downturn, legal aid cutbacks, the removal of restrictions on the participation of non-lawyers in the provision of legal services (alternative business structures)—confront the legal profession with challenges to its very existence. A possible response to government imposed changes might be graceful submission, recognising our subservience to the public interest and the democratic process. Reality teaches us, however, that those whose self-interest is threatened will fight to defend it.
Civil war
It would seem sensible nevertheless for the separate branches of the profession to meet the challenge to its survival with a united, or at least co-ordinated, response. A unilateral grab by one branch for the bigger slice of a dwindling cake seems an obvious recipe for disaster. That way looms civil war.
Yet this is exactly what the Bar has embarked upon. The government’s stated intention of paying a single fee per legal aid case stimulated unilateral trench warfare. The single fee leaves it to the contracting party—normally the solicitor—to determine how much to pay any barrister instructed in
