Criminal defence lawyers are the engine oil of the justice machine

Engine oil is relatively cheap compared to the cost of a new engine and it works without you even thinking about it. The same principle applies to legal aid.

High-profile cases have concentrated on the benefit to the defendant at the cost to the taxpayer but, when considering the overall cost of the administration of justice, the legal aid budget of £1.1bn represents good value. Every quarter, 240 magistrates courts deal with approximately 250,000 non-motoring cases and 77 crown courts hear approximately 37,000 cases. It costs around £1,700 a day to run a trial in '¨a crown court. When a trial is labelled ineffective it is rescheduled for a future date - '¨a process which has cost implications. If each of the administratively ineffective trials registered in 2012 failed on its first day, more than £2m would have been wasted. If any of these trials went on for more than a day before being scrapped, this cost would be greater.

The effect of budget cuts on the smooth running of courts extends to the magistrates courts too. There, administration problems accounted for 23 per cent of ineffective trials in 2009 and 29 in 2012. On average it costs £800 to run a trial in a magistrates court. With 8,434 trials failing due to administrative errors last year, that could be a cost of up to £6.7m to the taxpayer.

The public's perception of defence lawyers is that they protect the guilty and cause confusion and delay. The reality is quite to the contrary.

Legislation now allows for pre-trial applications such as hearsay, bad character and special measures for witnesses. The filing of a defence statement is a requirement in the crown court. These applications are explained and resolved by defence lawyers liaising with the prosecution and court, allowing the court to deal with a volume of cases it simply could not achieve if it had to explain '¨the minefield of rules to defendants in person.

Defence lawyers are able '¨to give sensible, reasoned advice regarding the evidence in a non-confrontational manner which results in a huge number of guilty pleas. Without guilty pleas, the courts would drown under the volume of trials that would then be necessary.

If convicted either by plea or verdict, there are then another '¨raft of ancillary orders which again are negotiated and explained, saving even more time.

Although there are occasions where defence lawyers may be perceived as adding to the cost of a case, the overwhelming majority of the time they are the oil that prevents the justice system seizing. SJ