2.5 The funding of the justice system
It has been argued that with LASPO 2012, the funding of the justice system became broken. Commentators suggest that the government appears to have made a political decision that either there is no funding or it should be the funder of last resort. It is not clear whether the government believed the not-for-profit sector would be able to fill the gap. A Ministry of Justice report [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] (Ames et al., 2015) found that in 2005 there were 3266 advice centres; in 2014/15 that had fallen to 1462. There is a crisis in funding and increasingly it would appear the pro bono sector is being expected to provide ‘access to justice’. Is there now a stronger argument to make pro bono mandatory?
Activity 5 Should pro bono be mandatory?
You have now learned about the changes to the availability of legal aid and the impact it is having on access to justice.
Read this short article and watch these two videos before answering the questions set out below: The second video is a debate. The panellists are Jo Hickman, Head of Casework at the Public Law Project; Yasmin Waljee, International Pro Bono Director at Hogan Lovells; Sir Robin Knowles, High Court Judge and Chairman of the Bar Pro Bono Unit; and Julie Bishop, Director of the Law Centres Federation, which is the representative body of the national network of community law centres.
- ‘Legal aid cuts threaten our very democracy’ (Justice Alliance, 2016)
- ‘Are You for Justice?’ (2014)
- ‘Debate: Access to Justice, Legal Aid and Pro Bono in the UK’ (2014)
Transcript: ‘Debate: Access to Justice, Legal Aid and Pro Bono in the UK’ (2014)
- a.Consider the relationship between legal aid and pro bono.
- b.Given the reduction in legal aid, should pro bono be mandatory?
- c.Write a blog post of 250–500 words arguing either in favour of or against compulsory pro bono. If you are interested in having your blog post published you can email it to the Open University’s Open Justice team at open-justice@open.ac.uk and they will consider it for inclusion in the Open Justice blog.
Comment
Each blog posting will be different depending on your view on whether pro bono should be compulsory.