To say "We told you so" about legal aid so-called reform?

[nennypops]

Depressing article in The Spectator - blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2014/02/how-legal-aid-reforms-are-clogging-up-the-courts/

As everyone predicted, the loss of legal aid is leading to a massive increase of litigants in person in the courts, and their cases are being seriously harmed because they don't know what they are doing. This government really has no interest in people being able to access justice properly.

Quote: "As Lord Justice Ward said, "It may be saving the Legal Services Commission which no longer offers legal aid for this kind of litigation but saving expenditure in one public department in this instance simply increases it in the courts"."

There is nothing worse than an ill informed person defending themselves

takes forever and its cringey to boot - humiliating for them.
All too often they add " so help me God" to the end of the oath too

LA only available for VICTIMS of DV in family cases? Really? Yet I am unrepresented because I work and Ex-P has legal aid because he misrepresents his income and because he hit me. Fair.

Self repped as a result. Lost every single, tiny, point. Judge didn't want to know.

At the other end of the scale-I also lost my job due to criminal cut backs AND have had to retrain in a different area at a loss.

It is the single biggest government initiative that has screwed over both my personal and professional life. It is unforgivable.

Yes, it's a massive false economy.

YANBU. We tried to tell 'em.

Very telling point in the article about a court where 16 cases were listed to be heard in one morning; when the lawyers in case nos.2-16 realised that case no. 1 involved litigants in person they all got up and left, confidently predicting that that case would last the entire morning. The reporter stayed to check, and they were proved absolutely right. So to save a few hundred pounds on giving those people representation, the court system incurred all the costs involved in running the court for a whole morning for a case that shouldn't have lasted longer than 20 minutes, plus the further costs of rearranging and hearing all the other cases on another day. But Grayling doesn't care, because it keeps Mail readers happy - until they realise just how their taxes are being thrown away.