Solicitor who lost firm works as carer for former clients

Yvonne Hossack, the campaigning solicitor who was forced to close her firm in September after losing a judicial review against the Legal Services Commission, has started a new career as a carer of her former disabled clients.

Hossack, well known for her court challenges to the closure of care homes, obtained a legal aid contract for social welfare law in the autumn of 2010, but it was not for Northamptonshire, where Hossacks was based, and it was later terminated.

The sole practitioner launched a judicial review against the Legal Services Commission, which ended in a Court of Appeal ruling in September last year, upholding the LSC’s decision to reject her applications.

Hossack told Solicitors Journal this afternoon that her home was at risk after she was ordered last November to pay the LSC £70,000 in costs. She said she had already cashed in her pension to make an interim payment of £10,000 to the LSC.

However, she said that her new life as a carer had given her the chance to be friends with her former clients, which was a “great joy” to her.

“I believe that whatever position you find yourself in, you should be able to find joy in the situation,” Hossack said.

“When I told some of my clients that I was closing my firm and I couldn’t be their solicitor any more, it made some of them cry and I felt desperately sad for them.

“My main fears were that I would be lonely and of no use to anyone. I feel that I am of use to other human beings now, in a different way, but in an equally important way.

“I wasn’t really able to be friends with my clients before the firm closed, but now it has closed, the door is open to do that, which is a great joy.”

Hossack said she was working as a paid carer for the disabled victim of a medical accident, who she had represented in an employment case, and a young disabled man, who she had acted for when his local authority decided to cut care services.

She has also taken in her former paralegal and boyfriend as lodgers to supplement her income.

Hossack added that she was still talking to the LSC about whether the outstanding costs could be paid in instalments. She said that her original plan of working from home and taking in foster children had proved impossible because of her financial situation.