Distribution of new legal aid funding fails to address the junior barrister recruitment crisis, warns Law Society

The government’s promise of £15 million of new funding for the criminal justice system will boost the fees of high-earning QCs but fail to address the problems faced by struggling junior barristers, the Law Society has warned.

Junior barristers’ trial fees are set to increase in some categories, but the Law Society said in response to the plans that “a disproportionate amount of the additional expenditure will go to QCs, rather than targeting the crisis among junior advocates. We believe that this is the wrong priority to achieve the policy aim of mitigating the current recruitment crisis among both barristers and solicitors.”

Due to the erosion of barristers’ fees over decades, juniors in the early stages of their careers often earn less in a year than the £11,850 threshold at which a worker starts to pay tax. This opens the Bar to criticisms that it is a closed profession where those from affluent middle-class backgrounds are the only ones who can afford to become barristers and make it through the early years.

Meanwhile, junior barristers who are unable to draw on other sources of income struggle to make ends meet, with many dropping out the profession.

Analysis by the Law Society – reported in the Law Gazette – has also revealed that the final amount of new funding may total far less than the £15 million promised by the government. The pledge includes tax and is based on assumptions about “case mix”, which varies from year to year. When applied to 2017-18, the new funding would amount to £8.6 million – much less than the original headline figure.

The Ministry of Justice has extended consultations on the proposals to 12 October, as well as released further analysis and data on the new funding plans.