Senior staff working through the weekend. Employees working well beyond their contracted hours. Weeks spent preparing for audits. LAPG research suggests practitioners are spending around a quarter of their time on unpaid work propping up the legal aid system.
Legal Aid Practitioners Group (LAPG) has today published the findings of a study on ‘non-chargeable work’ – all the unpaid admin, management, compliance and casework tasks that are generated by having a legal aid contract.
The study involved 84 employees working for 10 legal aid organisations. Dr Jo Wilding, Associate Professor in Law at the University of Sussex, analysed the data and produced a report which found that:
- legal aid organisations undertake a significant amount of unpaid work – the average amount of time spent on non-chargeable tasks was just over one hour and 43 minutes per day, which is around one quarter of a standard 7 hour working day for each employee
- These tasks are not optional – they must be undertaken to maintain legal aid contracts and to support clients – but practitioners cannot bill for them
- Some tasks generate a significant proportion of this ‘hidden time’, such as means testing, new client enquiries, billing processes, dealing with formal contact with the LAA and auditing requirements
- The combined burden of the various unpaid tasks means that legal aid practitioners are effectively subsidising the state-funded legal aid scheme. The scheme relies on cross-subsidisation, unpaid labour and overtime, raising significant concerns about financial sustainability and the wellbeing of the legal aid workforce
Jenny Beck KC (Hon), co-chair of LAPG and Director of specialist legal aid firm Beck Fitzgerald, noted on reading the report:
“The findings do not surprise me at all. If anything, I believe they underestimate the non-chargeable time spent on administrative tasks, even before the recent data breach.
My own analysis of legal aid divorce work reveals as much time spent on non-chargeable time (including gathering gateway evidence) as on time we can charge for.
That the highest category of non-chargeable tasks relates to billing is also no surprise. Legacy LAA systems and regulations have not adapted and build in unnecessary and time-consuming steps. We need the LAA to have more trust in providers and develop more efficient processes.
The appallingly inadequate fees for the work we are paid, which were set in the mid-90s, for leave no scope for unpaid work. This study reveals the need for a root and branch review of process, coupled with a fee increase, if the sector is to become financially viable.”
Beck told a recent meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Access to Justice, attended by legal aid minister Sarah Sackman KC MP, that the measures introduced by the LAA following April’s data breach have added an average of two hours of unpaid work to each case. When coupled with the data obtained about non-chargeable tasks, gathered before the data breach, it is clear that practitioners face an intolerable burden of unpaid work.
LAPG has provided the Ministry of Justice and the Legal Aid Agency with a copy of the report and invited both bodies to explore three potential solutions to this completely unsustainable situation:
- increasing fees so that chargeable time is better able to subsidise the non-chargeable time;
- amending guidance so that practitioners can claim for the work actually carried out to deliver legal aid services;
- reviewing, amending or even removing processes to reduce the administrative burden on providers.
In recent years the Ministry of Justice has carried out extensive reviews of both criminal and civil legal aid, and the legal aid means test. Along with a significant body of data and evidence produced by external bodies such as LAPG and The Law Society, the government is now in an ideal position to implement reforms to improve the legal aid scheme.
We have been encouraged by the Minister’s recently stated ambition to ‘rebuild a more stable and sustainable legal aid sector’. We therefore call on the government to work with us to create a system that reduces the burden on practitioners and enables them to spend more of their time supporting clients.
Download a full copy of the report here
Download a two-page summary of the findings here
For further information contact:
Chris Minnoch, CEO
(chris.minnoch@lapg.co.uk); or
Kate Pasfield, Director of Legal Aid Policy and research project lead
(kate.pasfield@lapg.co.uk).
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