Legal aid barristers

About legal aid barristers

Civil legal aid
Criminal legal aid
Family legal aid

About legal aid barristers

Barristers are specialists in advocacy and represent individuals or organisations in court, under instruction from a solicitor or another designated professional.

A legal aid barrister will be a specialist in either criminal, civil or family law. The type of case a criminal legal aid barrister could be advocating in court could involve domestic violence, general crime and traffic offences.

The legal aid work undertaken by barristers working in civil law varies considerably and includes, accident and injury, business, consumer, debt, education, employment, housing, health, actions against the Government and human rights issues.

Family law barristers may represent a client seeking contact with their child or divorce cases in court but could also spend time with client in mediation hearings away from a court room.

Barristers work on a self-employed basis, from Chambers. Work carried out from Chambers includes:

Researching relevant points of law and interpreting the law
Preparing cases for court
Advising on matters of law and evidence
Drafting legal documents
Negotiating settlements
Writing opinions and advising solicitors and other professionals

Case studies:

Criminal legal aid

After the brutal murder of Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common, there was an overwhelming public clamor for a conviction. After his initial release without charge, Stagg was subjected to an undercover police operation designed to obtain a confession.

The police worked with a 'psychological profiler' who sought to give expert evidence about the type of person who would have killed Rachel Nickell. The profiler compared letters between Stagg and an undercover officer as to the type of fantasies held by the killer, and concluded that they shared the same deviant fantasies. The profiling evidence was therefore relied on, in support of a disputed identification of Stagg on the Common around the time of the murder.

Stagg never confessed, despite the investigation being the largest ever then undertaken by the Metropolitan Police. The public antipathy to Stagg cannot be exaggerated.

His barristers faced the task of defending a vulnerable man facing evidence from various experts, mistaken 'identification' witnesses and a hostile media. Stagg's local legal aid solicitor in Putney instructed two experienced barristers with defence experts to deal with every strand of the prosecution case. The trial Judge stopped the case following legal submissions.

In December 2008 another man pleaded guilty to the murder and Stagg has now been absolved of any blame. A man who has subsequently been proven to be innocent faced a case that the general public believed was overwhelming.

Without proper legal aid the chances are he would still be in custody today.

Family legal aid

A further real difficulty in legal aid cases is that the litigants tend to face a number of different legal problems that are interrelated to each other, such as immigration, housing and child welfare issues.

One example was a case involving care proceedings that ended in January 2009. In this case, a father, a former illegal immigrant, obtained a residence order in respect of his young daughter. The Home Office had indicated that if the Judge were minded to make a residence order, it would grant the father indefinite leave to remain, taking account of the child’s welfare. Proceedings had been instituted at the time of the child's birth. There had been numerous contested hearings, involving questions such as assessment of the father, his right to accommodation and the extent of the local authority's powers. All were technical and complex.

His barrister reported that the local authority position at all stages had been that the child should be placed for adoption, the consequence of which would have been that the father would have been deported.

The nature of the proceedings involved issues of family law, immigration law, administrative law and human rights; the local authority instructed a specialist administrative law barrister. The expertise of the legal aid barrister was critical.

Civil legal aid

Legal aid is worth standing up for. It is a powerful weapon in favour of the weak, the victim and hardworking families who deserve a fairer deal from the law. The following case illustrates this well. 'A few weeks after his father died, my client's sister claimed to have found his will under which he gave her his entire estate, and gave my client a derisory £100 each year on his birthday.'

Both the client and his sister were impoverished. Half of their father's very substantial estate would have made them each comfortable for life. However, it transpired that the will had been the result of a careful fraud, with two apparently plausible witnesses involved. A person claiming to be a professional was appointed executor, and apparently entrusted with the will in the deceased's lifetime. Numerous witnesses were produced to support the will.

'With huge effort, care, some luck and the support of the Legal Services Commission (which paid for the forensic document examiner as well as the legal team, including specialist counsel – myself) the fraud was challenged in court and exposed.' 'The police had refused to prosecute. My client could never have funded the case himself. An evil, mean and insulting fraud would have gone scot-free. My client would have remained penniless,and apparently rejected by his father.'

As the barrister pointed out, forged will cases are very, very rarely successful. But this was; and the papers were sent by the Judge to the CPS. Nor will the legal aid fund be out of pocket. A costs order was secured against the other side, and in any event, there would be a charge on the estate.

Last updated: 27 October 2009