Too much too young

I was amused to see that an American firm based in London was making the proud boast that their newly-qualified or just-qualified solicitors were now going to earn somewhere in the region of £100,000 per annum. Such riches! It is easy to pass such stories by and pay no real attention to them but it is difficult to lose sight of the fact that £100,000 per annum, while not quite in the Wayne Rooney or David Beckham league, is still a very substantial sum of money. It is around four times the national average wage and certainly not a sum that I have ever managed to earn in nearly 30 years of practice.

What qualities does a person have, having just passed their professional examinations and completed their training contract, that makes them worth £100,000? Is it because the work they are doing is so painfully complex '“ or perhaps painfully boring '“ that no one would be able to do it unless remunerated in this way? Whatever the reason, an extremely large gulf has opened up between West End and City practices and legal aid practices. It is a gulf that will almost certainly never be bridged and a time may come when legal aid lawyers are referred to as something quite different and will be managed and regulated by other organisations. But I am still uncomfortable by the gap between these young things and the average legal aid housing lawyer who will be doing an immensely important task at a fraction of that salary; toiling for many hours, trying to understand highly complex law and keeping pace with rapidly changing court decisions.

Legal aid life

Here are a couple of examples of the sort of work that housing lawyers do. I am currently acting for a food hoarder. He suffers from a mental condition which makes him hoard large quantities of rotting food in his house. He is suffering from a variety of medical conditions and finds it difficult to see or hear properly. He is uncertain on his feet and finds it difficult to come in to the office. His landlords are taking him to court for possession of his premises and there is a very real risk that if an order for possession is to be made he will be homeless and in the most unfortunate of circumstances. We are liaising with his social workers, occup-ational therapists and doctors and dealing with complex possession proceedings involving aspects of community care law, mental health law and disability discrim-ination law.

It goes without saying that his premises are not the most pleasant to visit. The stakes are very high as if we lose the case we know that the local authority will not be in a hurry to re-house him. Failure would be a tragedy for this man and a constructive solution will hopefully be found.

Another case that came my way only a couple of weeks ago involved an extremely mentally-ill Rastafarian man who was being evicted by bailiffs at 8.30 in the morning. I was telephoned at 2.30pm the previous day by his landlords asking whether we could represent him. I had to drop everything, see the man at short notice, make the application to the court, draft a statement, fill in all the legal aid forms, brief counsel and arrange for the application to be issued at the court to be heard the next morning and at the same time liaise with the bailiffs to ensure the eviction did not go ahead.

The problem here was that the man was so deluded and irrational it involved a great deal of skill to win his trust and obtain the information that was necessary for a statement. Of course, the situation was quite sensitive as I seemed to him to be just another authority figure and he really didn't trust authority figures at all. In the end, I am pleased to report, we did stop the eviction.

Both cases represent the sort of work that housing solicitors deal with on a day-to-day basis.

They involve sensitivity, detailed knowledge of the law and the ability to work at speed. The cases are tough. The outcomes are potentially life-changing. The responsibility on the lawyer involved is huge.

I imagine those bright young things at the American law firm probably have to do something similar. The fact that they are paid much more than us is something of a mystery. Are their services so much better? Are they able to work at even greater speed? Or is there simply a degree of contempt for the legal aid lawyer who is viewed as somebody living their dream of helping the underprivileged. Should we be paid so little for following a vocation? I wonder whether the large West End firms have a dog in their office. Certainly having a dog in mine softens the blow when I see my pay cheque.

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