Solicitors have rejected an accusation submitted by the criminal bar to the Leveson criminal courts review that solicitors encourage late guilty pleas to earn more.
Sir Brian Leveson’s call for evidence to inform recommendations to the lord chancellor on how to cut the Crown court backlog closes today.
The Criminal Bar Association’s submission, published this week, says there is anecdotal evidence of increasing examples of ‘unscrupulous legal professionals’ encouraging defendants to delay entering guilty pleas until after the trial has commenced.
‘Advocates are then inviting significant credit given the delay in a case coming to trial and the lack of need to call many witnesses. Solicitors involved in this practice will benefit from high fees under LGFS [litigators’ graduated fee scheme] because the trial has been deemed “effective”,’ the CBA's submission says.
To ‘destroy this perverse incentive’, the CBA suggests raising the cracked trial fee and lowering the trial fee.
Criminal Law Solicitors' Association vice-chair Katy Hanson said that while there may be an argument to equalise fees for trials and cracked trials, ‘we do not accept that solicitors are misrepresenting clients by advising them to plead in a manner contrary to their best interests’.
A client’s plea may change in a Crown court trial for various reasons, Hanson said: ‘These may be due to late service of evidence, change in stance of co-defendants and the pressure of the doors of the court. It is, sadly, often the case that briefs in cases due to start trial get returned by counsel at a very late stage, and new counsel may advise a client to take a different course.’
A spokesperson for the London Criminal Courts Solicitors’ Association said firms are conscientious in advising their clients on the appropriate course of action based upon the strength of the served evidence and the client’s instructions, and financial considerations have no part to play in that advice. ‘We take our obligations to the public purse and our clients extremely seriously given that we are officers of the court. We are disappointed that the CBA has chosen this platform to raise this issue and not directly with us as a fellow practitioner group,’ the LCCSA added.
Explaining its submission, the CBA told the Gazette that the reference to ‘legal professionals’ may include 'a few' solicitors but also a wide variety of participants including paralegals.
The CBA said that the submission ‘refers to a concern that a very small proportion of practitioners may manipulate the system for financial gain. The vast majority of practitioners disapprove of that behaviour. To suggest that there is not room for improvement would be a failure on our part to act without fear or favour in helping with the recovery of a broken criminal justice system’.
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