One of the many areas of social support affected by the recent austerity measures in Britain is legal aid, which has suffered under cuts so substantial that, this book argues, the result is the most radical set of changes in the sixty-year history of legal aid in the nation, a transformation of its very meaning and purpose. From an original position as a form of social welfare to which nearly anyone could get access, it is now seen as a benefit, outside the legal system, and almost wholly cast in economic terms. This book looks at this shift and its far-reaching consequences not just for individuals but for the whole of the court system.

This book considers how access to justice is affected by restrictions to legal aid budgets and increasingly prescriptive service guidelines. As common law jurisdictions, England and Wales and Australia, share similar ideals, policies and practices, but they differ in aspects of their legal and political culture, in the nature of the communities they serve and in their approaches to providing access to justice. These jurisdictions thus provide us with different perspectives on what constitutes justice and how we might seek to overcome the burgeoning crisis in unmet legal need. The book fills an important gap in existing scholarship as the first to bring together new empirical and theoretical knowledge examining different responses to legal aid crises both in the domestic and comparative contexts, across criminal, civil and family law. It achieves this by examining the broader social, political, legal, health and welfare impacts of legal aid cuts and prescriptive service guidelines. Across both jurisdictions, this work suggests that it is the most vulnerable groups who lose out in the way the law now operates in the twenty-first century. This book is essential reading for academics, students, practitioners and policymakers interested in criminal and civil justice, access to justice, the provision of legal assistance and legal aid.

Around the world, access to justice enjoys an energetic and passionate resurgence as an object both of scholarly inquiry and political contest, as both a social movement and a value commitment motivating study and action. This work evidences a deeper engagement with social theory than past generations of scholarship.

Harvard Law School's stated mission is "to educate leaders who contribute to the advancement of justice and the well-being of society." With only one fifth of graduates pursuing public interest work after law school, Harvard Law is falling short of its mission. In this comprehensive call to action, Pete Davis examines the source of this civic deficit and proposes what, in Harvard Law¿s third century, the school community should do to rectify it.

Even though legal aid is available for people seeking asylum, there is uneven access to advice across Britain. Based on empirical research, this book offers fresh thinking on what has gone wrong in the legal aid market. It presents a rare picture of the barristers, solicitors and caseworkers practising immigration law in charities and private firms. In doing so, this book examines supply and demand and illuminates what constitutes high-quality legal aid work/provision, subsequent conflicts with financial rationality and how practitioners resolve these issues. Challenging existing legal aid policy, this book presents innovative insights to ensure public service markets around the globe function well for all those involved.

This book focuses on the history of the provision of legal aid and legal assistance to the poor in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in eight different countries. It is the first such book to bring together historical work on legal aid in a comparative perspective, and allows readers to analogise and contrast historical narratives about free legal aid across countries. Legal aid developed as a result of industrialisation, urbanization, immigration, the rise of philanthropy, and what were viewed as new legal problems. Closely related, was the growing professionalisation of lawyers and the question of what duties lawyers owed society to perform free work. Yet, legal aid providers in many countries included lay women and men, leading at times to tensions with the bar. Furthermore, legal aid often became deeply politicized, creating dramatic conflicts concerning the rights of the poor to have equal access to justice.

Unfulfilled legal needs are at a tipping point in much of the Canadian justice system. The Justice Crisis assesses what is and isn’t working in efforts to strengthen a fundamental right of democratic citizenship: access to civil and family justice. Contributors to this wide-ranging overview of recent empirical research address key issues: the extent and cost of unmet legal needs; the role of public funding; connections between legal and social exclusion among vulnerable populations; the value of new legal pathways; the provision of justice services beyond the courts and lawyers; and the need for a culture change within the justice system.

A noble profession is facing its defining moment. From law schools to the prestigious firms that represent the pinnacle of a legal career, a crisis is unfolding. News headlines tell part of the story—the growing oversupply of new lawyers, widespread career dissatisfaction, and spectacular implosions of pre-eminent law firms. Yet eager hordes of bright young people continue to step over each other as they seek jobs with high rates of depression, life-consuming hours, and little assurance of financial stability. The Great Recession has only worsened these trends, but correction is possible and, now, imperative. In The Lawyer Bubble, Steven J. Harper reveals how a culture of short-term thinking has blinded some of the nation’s finest minds to the long-run implications of their actions. Law school deans have ceded independent judgment to flawed U.S. News & World Report rankings criteria in the quest to maximize immediate results. Senior partners in the nation’s large law firms have focused on current profits to enhance American Lawyer rankings and individual wealth at great cost to their institutions. Yet, wiser decisions—being honest about the legal job market, revisiting the financial incentives currently driving bad behavior, eliminating the billable hour model, and more—can take the profession to a better place. A devastating indictment of the greed, shortsightedness, and dishonesty that now permeate the legal profession, this insider account is essential reading for anyone who wants to know how things went so wrong and how the profession can right itself once again.

Crisis Counsel: Navigating Legal and Communication Conflict, by Tony Jaques, Ph.D. is a new book by Rothstein Publishing. This book is designed to provide hands-on, practical guidance for senior executives, lawyers and public relations professionals to navigate crises and to balance conflicting advice from lawyers and communication professionals while promoting open communication and protecting legal liability. The book will help you to: * Balance reputation protection and legal obligation during a crisis. * Know why and how to apologize without increasing liability. * Weigh legal and communications advice when a crisis strikes. * Learn from original research which lets lawyers and communicators speak in their own words. * Draw practical everyday lessons from real-world examples of conflict between lawyers and communicators. * Navigate the legal and communication challenges of dealing with the media in a crisis. * Motivate lawyers and communicators to work better together. * Identify and avoid crucial areas of potential conflict from selected crisis case studies. * Understand the essential difference between corporate responsibility and legal liability. * Make decisions and do the right thing to protect your organization. The book includes a wide variety of global case studies and examples while analyzing how legal and communications advice was managed and the impact on reputation. Crisis Counsel also includes interviews with four of the leading global experts on crisis management and the conclusions of a focused, unique global survey of senior lawyers.

A broad, comprehensive foray into the debate about the legal crisis, written by one of the most respected and authoritative scholars of the legal profession.