To wonder if I am getting a worse service because I'm legal aid ?

[SkelleyBones]

I keep emailing my solicitor asking her advice and opinion and basically she ignores me, only getting in touch when the other side send through some correspondence.
Is it wrong to be asking for her guidance as to what to do, what is the best action for my case ? I understand the meter is ticking but surely if she is not doing what I want her to do then more money will be wasted by her barking up the wrong tree ?

In my jurisdiction we don't get paid for legal aid - as a professional obligation we're supposed to do all legal aid matters issued to the firm on a pro bono basis. Despite that, I'm not aware of any cases where I would say that a legal aid matter was dealt with any less diligently than a paying one would have been.

Just to add that ultimately, whether a client is on legal aid or is paying, if they don't like the service they can move firms or even do it themselves (which I suspect is the way a lot of UK legal matters will go given the proposed cuts in the legal aid budget).

Tchootnika - I would argue that it is the solicitors job to keep her client informed and not to ignore them and i would question their ability if that was the case.

Tanif..stop trying to confuse the issues!. "No win, no fee" clients get a worse service from High Street solicitors than everyone else, in the experience of me, my family, and others I know. The merit of those claims is of no concern once the solicitor has taken the case on !

I do legal aid and private work and I treat all my clients in exactly the same way. I do try and return all calls and deal with all emails but do you know sometimes I have piles and piles of urgent files on my desk that have stuff on that have to be done - drafting statements, drafting applications, letters of instructions - they take time and I cant break away to answer emails about everything.

Legal aid clients do tend to get in touch more, probably because they are not paying. A private client will not email or ring constantly because they know they will get charged £18.00 a go. A legal aid client doesnt pay and therefore doesnt care about the cost.

Agree entirely with Cant

Very true Cant. And if a solicitor's work is mostly or exclusively legal help, then the sheer volume of calls/emails/voicemails can make it impossible to reply to every single one.

MrSpoc - see Cant and Tanif (above)... and OP
It doesn't seem that the solicitor is failing to inform her client when approriate, just that she's not responding to all emails, calls, etc.
As has been pointed out, for paying clients, this would be chargeable, so there'd generally be less demand for updates, responses, etc. from the client.

If you were a non-legally aided client, you would be billed for every email in response to you. I'd actually be looking for a solicitor who only responded to the essentials and did not charge me for social niceities to keep my bill to a minimum.

The same with legally aided cases - you cannot expect a service over and above that provided to a privately funded client - the Legal Services Commission crack down heavily on firms who milk the system, and responding to every email a client says simply to acknowledge it starts to fall within that realm.

You need to draw a distinction between being comforted and providing legal services. Your solicitor is more interested in getting a good result for you than exchanging pleasantries with you and charging for them.

Cant and Tanif give very good advice, listen to them.

Most family LA cases are now subject to fixed fees. Meaning that the Legal Services Commission will decide how much to pay the firm depending on type of case, and they pay an amount which will cover the bare minimum of work to get to the completion of the case.

Therefore if you are mithering your lawyer she cannot respond to it, as she will not get paid for the extra work and her bosses and the LSC will have serious concerns if they audit her file and find she has undertaken lots of unnecessary work.

If she needs you to get in touch with Experts/witness then she will let you know, otherwise leave her to it, and she will organise it for you.

Mr Spoc "Tchootnika - I would argue that it is the solicitors job to keep her client informed and not to ignore them and i would question their ability if that was the case."

It is the solicitor's duty as a fiduciary to act in the best interests of the client.

Clearly that does not involve charging the client or the legal aid budget for multiple acknowledging emails.

moonferret the merit of no win no fee cases is crucial throughout the life of the case. If a client paying by the hour tells me to bring a case even if I have told them it is unlikely to be successful, I can still bring it. If a nwnf case is unlikely to be successful, the insurers will not take it on, so I can't bring it as a nwnf case. If some evidence comes to light through the life of the case that changes its prospects for the worse, these need to be brought to the attention of the insurers. Because of the duties solicitors have to insurers, the merits of a nwnf case are continually under review.

Oh, and if you do a by the hour case badly and don't win as much as you should have, you still get paid. If you do the same on a nwnf case you won't get the uplift in your fees you would otherwise have got so you lose out.

I don't know to be honest, every person I know in the legal profession says that those who take on legal aid work are the ones who can't get fee-paying clients. That said lawyers seem to be the most obnoxious and arrogant profession of all

I'm sure the general public would be thrilled to learn that solicitors are sending pointless email paid for by the tax payer

OMG Pilol - that is so insulting - i do legal aid work because i strongly believe that everybody has the same right to justice as those that have money. This is part of the reason i went into the law and continue to do legal aid work even though I could stop and do private work and earn a hell of a lot more money.

I agree some lawyers are obnoxious and arrogant but to generalise is way out of order. I have met mostly kind, caring and passionate lawyers, a few arrogant and a few obnoxious but they are in the minority.

piloi - if that's what your lawyer friends say then certainly it sounds as if they are arrogant and obnoxious.
Silly to badmouth an entire profession because of your dubious taste in friends, though.

I worked with the legal profession for over 20 years. Legal aid lawyers are among the most committed, compassionate and hard working people I have ever met.

I'm going to leave my remarks there as otherwise I just might explode.

moonferret you obviously have an axe to grind. No win no fee cases mean exactly that; if the lawyer doesn't win they won't get paid. On that basis why would they not pursue the case vigorously?

I obviously don't have an "axe to grind". The fact of the matter is that High Street legal firms appear to take on "no win, no fee" cases simply to stockpile work to see themselves through "lean" periods of work. While they have fee-paying clients to attend to, your case will remain untouched.
So talk rubbish somewhere else, ohnoherewego

I don't know anything about NWNF, and don't think it's relevant to OP's question anyway, but echo things that other legal aid lawyers have said. The way things are going now, your legal aid lawyer is likely to be snowed under. Because you now get the same fee regardless of how much work you do, unless the case goes 2 or 3 times over the fixed fee depending on what level of funding you're on, the only way to break even is to take on as many cases as possible. We can all dress it up all we like, and I've yet to meet a legal aid lawyer who likes it, but that's how it is. And it will get worse.

In an ideal world, we could give good client care and respond to every email and phone message asking if there's any news, however silly it is. But in practice, your lawyer is likely to have so much work to do that it's simply not possible. It's all very well talking about what you'd prefer, I can understand that. But anyone who wants their legal aid lawyer to have time to respond to every little email of theirs (or anyone else's) would be best advised to channel their energy into campaigning to bring back hourly rates. Or at the very least, to raise/not cut the fixed fees.

MrSpoc -I am sorry if you got confused by my post. That was not my point at all.

My point was that I, as a city solicitor charging high fees can, if that is what the client wants and they are happy to pay for it, spend additional time acting as 'friend and family' support or 'untrained counsellor'. That has nothing to do with the standard of legal advice or legal service I provide. I have often said to clients that you can use me that way, but a real counsellor is probably cheaper and better, and buying a friend a pint is cheaper still. I don't think that providing that is actually a better legal service. It's a total waste of money for the client and, quite frankly, I'm not very good at 'tea and sympathy' anyway.

Added to which, in my job you work all the hours under the sun (and moon) if you need to. Legal aid solicitors are not nearly so well remunerated and, I imagine, therefore try to avoid answering emails at 2am. [Not knocking how hard they work. I know they flog their guts out and I couldn't do it]. Also, as the work doesn't pay as well, they have to take on a certain workload (fee paying or legal aid) to make it viable. As such, I doubt that they have time to be untrained counsellors at all, whether you are fee paying directly or legal aid.

Hope that was a bit clearer.

I don't want or need a friend or counsellor and nor is it no win no fee, it's a complex case that could be of great interest to many in the legal profession if we win it, could open the flood gates.
I don't want her sending through thanks for that type emails .... however it would be helpful to know if my expert witness is not going to be paid for by legal aid and she'll need a couple of grand before September from me and also if the settlement figure on offer from the other side is realistically all the court will award so lets accept it and stop wasting time and LA's money.
That's all.

You get more or less the same service. Private clients get the same quality of representation, in that the are not any more likely to succeed or 'get off' than legally clients. A common misconception that if you pay for 'the best brief' you'll get the best outcome. Not so.

Agree with Ribena Berry. Though private clients no less likely to succeed, we would be encouraged to deal with more of their irrelevant crap. You sound like you email a lot and thus a bit of a solicitor's nightmare tbh. Write questions down, save them up, book appointment, send in advance, don't keep adding to list after sent, get answers at appointment.

Often clients kep asking questions bec they can't get an answer to the unanswerable: "is it all going to go my way?" which all goes to the stress management point made above.

Legal aid client query:: "but in their statement it says the offender was wearing a navy jumper, I was wearing INDIGO". I ignored this query.

Private Client query: "Can I have a bail variation to go on a spa break?". The client was packed off to Champneys within 24 hours.

The difference money makes is how much you are humoured and indulged.

How does it sound like I email alot, really where does it say that ? She emails me, asks for information is provided with it and then ignores me until the other side sends her through more questions.
No guidance as to whether my answers are useful and as i said she is potentially taking me down a path I don't want which is a waste of everyone's time and resources. The other sides legal bill is as important to me as my own or the LA due to the fact that wasting their money means there is potentially less for my daughter even if we win.

The point of my thread was to help me decide if I still want this solicitor when I'm not entitled to LA, when I am paying the bill.
Still none the wiser.