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82 Medico-Legal J. 3 (2014)

handle is hein.journals/medlgjr82 and id is 1 raw text is: Medico-Legal Editorial Journal How should we reduce the costs of crime? Medico-Legal Journal 2014, Vol. 82(l) 3-4 @ The Author(s) 2014 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uldjournalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10. 1177/0025817214522737 mlj.sagepub.com OSAGE Diana Brahams Editor The Government wants to achieve swingeing reductions to civil and criminal legal aid bills. Civil legal aid was hit first with reforms and cuts introduced in April 2013; the aim is to lop f320 m (and as a by-product to reduce claims against the embattled NHS). In 2014 criminal legal aid is the target. In her article The future of criminal Legal Aid (vol 81 part four page 152) Linda Lee considers the likely consequences of the planned cuts and the pressures on solicitors and con- cludes that even the largest of firms must be hard put to come up with a business plan that can deliver against government proposals with many smaller ones risking collapse in the face of cuts of 17.5%. But what about the barristers? The prospects look so dire that on the morning of 6th January 2014, barristers practising in criminal law voted with their feet and went on strike for the first time in history. Many courts had to stay closed and cases were delayed or cancelled while they protested. This action demonstrates the depth of anger and frustration as barristers (who are often the most meanly remunerated in the profession) contend that the fees for routine criminal legally aided cases have remained at 1990s levels and the proposed cuts of 17.5% will render the work wretchedly unprofitable and even loss making. The result will be that many barristers will be forced out of criminal practice and defendants (innocent until proved guilty) are likely to suffer. For smaller cases a barrister may end up spend- ing more on travel and subsistence than they can earn from accepting the brief. Apparently, notwith- standing the rise in numbers of people in prison (and those who many feel should be incarcerated) the crime rate for cases appropriate for prosecution through the courts has fallen and there are now too many junior barristers competing for the work that is available to them. Some may switch to work in the surviving solici- tors' firms, become solicitor-advocates or form partner- ships with them (which is permitted by the Legal Services Act 2007). Others may try to shift into areas of law which they perceive as still having some financial fat. Rather than targeting the bar's lowest earners and society's failures and losers to achieve a reduction in the criminal legal aid bill it would be better to make crim- inal trial procedures more efficient and fit for the 21t Century. One option would seem to be to further limit the range of cases that can be heard by a jury along with the really high cost and long-running serious fraud cases where all too often there may be a string of defendants all with their own team of lawyers that are too often paid for by the tax payer. In 1986 Lord Roskill's Fraud Trial Committee concluded that a jury trial for these types of cases was not a satisfactory way to achieve justice. In 1993, Lord Runciman's Royal Commission on Criminal Justice reported and inter alia proposed that the law should be changed to allow research into this problematic area. In 2001 Auld LJ in his Review of the Criminal Courts backed the Roskill Committee's preferred options, namely to have a nominated trial judge with the power to direct a trial by himself and two lay members selected from an approved list or even if the defendant(s) request this, for the judge to sit alone. However, previous serious attempts to achieve this have failed. The Criminal Justice Act 2003 (which among other provisions abolished the double jeopardy rule) section 43 allowed a judge and assessors to sit in place of juries on serious and complex fraud cases but the provision was never activated before it was repealed by the Protection of Freedoms Act! But how likely is it that cases in which alleged finan- cial shenanigans, complex money laundering with mul- tiple shell companies or alleged fraudulent scientific claims will be within the comprehension and experience of a random jury available to sit for many months for a small attendance fee? While relatively recent reforms ensure that many formerly excluded, such as all law- yers, including top judges, doctors, dentists etc must now all sit when called as jurors for a minimum of two weeks there will be few high earners or very busy people with many commitments who will elect to sit on a jury for more than this minimum period (i.e. they will sit on only the shorter cases) and are most unlikely to be available in the pool of jurors for a long and com- plex criminal trial. Ergo, the people who are prepared to make themselves available to spend months sitting in

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