£160 duty solicitor fee 'unlikely to be viable'

The government's proposed national flat fee of £160.45 plus VAT for duty solicitor work is "unlikely to be viable" and "just can't be done", a leading solicitor advocate has said.

Peter Bartlett, who has been a solicitor advocate for 43 years and a duty solicitor since the scheme began in 1984, said the fee could be all a lawyer earned for 10 hours at a police station on an attempted murder charge.

Bartlett, is based at Trinity Advocates in Exeter, the same firm as criminal justice campaigner Rachel Bentley.

Speaking at SJ Live yesterday, he called on criminal lawyers, even though they were "battle weary" to make sure they replied to the MoJ's second consultation by 1 November.

Bartlett said tendering for the new criminal legal aid contracts would begin in spring 2014. Firms which secured only an own client contract, and not a duty solicitor contract, would find their client base became a "wasting asset".

He said that although the new duty solicitor areas might work in London, the one proposed for the whole of Devon and Cornwall would not work.

"There is no way I could get from Barnstaple to Plymouth in their time limit of one and a half hours," Bartlett said. "It's a joke."

He said that other problems with duty solicitor contracts included the lack of any guarantee on cases or income, and the fact the contract term was only four years.

"Four years is a short time to recoup the outlay and get the support of the banks. We're always at the mercy of the people who hold the purse strings."

Bartlett said the proposed ratio of one full-time supervisor to four caseworkers might make it difficult for the likes of Eddie Stobart to operate.

However, the need for a high volume of work would also make it difficult for small firms.

"The Law Society is talking to lawyers and accountants to try and work out suitable models for joint ventures," Bartlett said.

He said the society was also working on a system of regional fees for duty solicitor work.

Bartlett encouraged solicitors to write to the Law Society and send them ideas rather than "waiting until we're all working in cafes and moaning about it."

He added that there had been only 40 responses to the Otterburn survey of the financial impact of the new contracts on firms.

"The risk is that if they base their report on this response, the Ministry of Justice will say it is not enough for the report to be accurate or effective and ignore it. Then they will have a free hand to do what they want."

A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice said: "We are consulting on national fixed fees for police station and magistrates' court work as set out in the legal aid consultation document."