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The Advantages and Disadvantages of Conditional Fee Arrangements for Legal Aid

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The Advantages and Disadvantages of Conditional Fee Arrangements for Legal Aid
The conditional fee arrangement was introduced by the Access to Justice Act (AJA) 1999, as an attempt to transfer legal funding from the treasury to the private sector. This occurred as a result of an increasing and ridiculous growth in the cost of legal aid, namely from a few hundred million to well over 2.1 billion pounds from the 1980s to 2000. Moreover, it was not because demand was growing. Rather, number of cases relying on legal aid had decreased. Due to the need to control budget, Conditional fee arrangements are used to fund many civil cases which legal aid now excludes, and the issues brought about by conditional fee arrangements have been debated over the last decade. The conditional fee arrangements are sometime known as ‘no win, no fee’ agreements, which are not used for family or criminal matters, but can be used in many types of civil action. The no win no fee concept was first introduced in the UK under the Solicitors Conditional Fee Agreements act in 1995. The primary reason for the no win no fee system was to make sure that individuals who did not qualify for legal aid could still make personal injury claims, regardless of their personal situation. Section 58 of the Courts and legal Services Act (CLSA) 1990 permitted the Lord Chancellor to introduce conditional fee arrangements. By 2000 legal aid was actually abolished for personal injury claims, resulting in the no win no fee personal injury claim system being the normal system that most claims work under. The beauty of the policy is that if you do not win your case, you are not required to pay any sort of fees to your no win no fee solicitor. Instead, the insurance will cover any costs and expenses of all parties involved, including your no win no fee lawyer. This allows you the safety and security of knowing that even if you are someone who is financially struggling, you still have the right to make a claim, and you will not have to pay if you for some reason lose your case. If you happen to


Bibliography: 1. Holland, J.A. and J.S. Webb Learning Legal Rules. (sixth edition) 2. Gearey, A., R. Jago and W.J. Morrison The Politics of the Common Law. 3. Westlaw 4. Justice 5. LexisNexis 6. www.scholar.google.com 7. www.bailii.org 8. www.lawcom.gov.uk 9. Study Pack- Common Law Reasoning and Institute
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