Tom Fitzpatrick and the Sussex Law Society are right about recent changes to Legal Aid being a disaster in the process of happening (Argus, June 23).
The changes restrict the number of firms undertaking legal aid work and therefore the availability of legal help. He is also right about rates of pay, which have been frozen since 1996, without even taking inflation into account.
This means a trainee solicitor in a legal aid firm earns a few thousand pounds less per year than a trainee teacher or doctor and receives no financial support for their postgraduate training.
A defence solicitor who represents a client in the police station in the middle of the night takes home less, after overheads, than someone who comes to mend your washing machine or fix the plumbing.
However, any protest against the changes must have an impact on the Lord Chancellor and Treasurer.
Simply keeping legal aid clients in the dark about the progress of their cases is not going to have that effect.
While some firms may be able to subsidise their boycott of Legal Aid work thanks to their private clients, those firms that specialise in it cannot, morally or financially.
The fight needs to be taken to the courts and the Lord Chancellor, not to vulnerable clients such as my constituents.
-Councillor Catherine Shelley, Marine Ward
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