Divisions between solicitors and barristers have emerged as criminal defence practitioners digest the government’s latest proposals to reform advocacy fees.
The Law Society warned last week that junior barristers and solicitor-advocates will lose out, while QCs enjoy a ‘pay hike’ under Ministry of Justice plans to modernise the advocates’ graduated fee scheme.
Chancery Lane said giving a pay rise to the better-paid seemed to run contrary to the aim of reducing bottlenecks in the courts.
Society president Robert Bourns said: ‘The government should be investing in the early part of the court process as early advice would reduce the number of cases that go to full trial.’
An impact assessment document accompanying the ministry’s consultation paper states that total spending on self-employed QCs would increase by around 10% under the proposed scheme. Lead juniors would see a 3% gain for employed advocates and 1% for self-employed advocates.
The Criminal Law Solicitors’ Association said the ministry’s scheme could not be recommended to the profession, highlighting several issues members may wish to consider ahead of the consultation’s 2 March deadline. It encouraged members to consider the tables in the consultation ‘and run some examples with their own claims to assess the impact upon their firms’.
However, Criminal Bar Association chair Francis FitzGibbon QC said the 10% increase in silks’ fees restores an earlier ‘unjustified’ cut. While he understood the anxiety about the new fees, ‘individual examples, or a small number of them, may not give an accurate picture’, he wrote in his weekly chair’s message.
‘A true comparison would need analysis of a larger number of cases of different kinds over a period of time.’
QC pay hike divides bar and solicitors
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