Legal Aid Threshold to Increase
At the joint Scottish Legal Aid Board/Law Society of Scotland annual conference on legal aid Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill announced today the upper disposable income threshold for civil legal aid is to increase from £10,306 to £25,000. According to The Journal Online this should make more than a million additional Scots potentially eligible for financial help towards court costs for civil actions.
This sounds all well and good, but my understanding is many solicitors doing legal aid work have given up because of the poor rates of pay so unless I'm missing something I don't see how these new measures will address the shortage of lawyers prepared to take on legal aided cases.
2 comments:
Hey Fiona
I called a legal aid divorce solicitor yesterday, he told me that they only get legal aid for the fast track divorces, Legal Aid board wont fund my divorce because it has to take an ordinary route, because there are children involved and we havent been separated for a year! I have suffered abuse, his behaviour has been unbelievably prejudicial to our family and yet I cant get legal help because, I dont qualify for the "easy way out". I thought the concept of legal aid was to help people who have complicated problems..
I'm not an expert when it comes to legal aid but that doesn't sound quite right to me. it must be possible to receive funding for more than just the simplified procedure although you still have to be separated for a year and have consent to divorce.
Possibly you qualify financially for advice and assistance but not legal aid for court representation. See;
http://www.slab.org.uk/getting_legal
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