Mahmood must act quickly to avoid legal aid mutiny

Lord chancellor Shabana Mahmood will no doubt be relieved to have settled a High Court dispute with law firm Duncan Lewis over legal aid fees for immigration and asylum work. However, is that a new court battle we see on the horizon?

The Legal Aid Agency last week began tendering for new 10-year crime contracts. Firms have to submit their bids by 22 October if they want to join duty schemes next year. Miss the deadline and they’ll have to wait until January 2026 at the earliest.

The 10-year contracts, announced by the previous government, were designed to help firms make long-term decisions.

Except, the Law Society and London Criminal Courts Solicitors Association argue, firms are being rushed into bidding for 10-year contracts without all the information they need in front of them to make a sound business decision. The government has yet to publish its consultation response on police station and youth court fees and it has yet to announce its revised decision on criminal legal aid fees more widely following a High Court challenge brought by Chancery Lane.

In an open letter to the Legal Aid Agency, the LCCSA said it was ‘unfair and, indeed irrational’ to expect firms to bid for contracts that don’t offer the certainty of increased remuneration. The Law Society said that if the Ministry of Justice ‘doesn’t demonstrate very swiftly that it is serious about making criminal legal aid work sustainable, we will advise our members that there is no future in this work’.

A spokesperson for the Society told me that the representative body is ‘considering further action’ if it doesn't hear better news from the government.

‘Irrational’, ‘further action’ – those scream ‘JR!’ to me. But even if I'm wrong, the lord chancellor should brace for mutiny if she doesn't deliver good news soon.