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The legal sector post April 2013

If you picked up a newspaper in the last few months you’ll be aware that the legal sector has been set to disappear come April, leaving all lawyers without jobs and homeless, or at least that’s what the doom-mongers would have you believe.

Yes, April has brought about many changes and has seen Legal Aid being cut in the areas of divorce, clinical negligence, immigration, housing, debt and other areas. It also sees the idea of a ‘no win no fee’ agreement become somewhat of a misnomer with success fees now being capped and recovered from a client’s damages rather than from the defendant. Further cuts see a more favourable position for defendant lawyers with the outlawing of recoverable ATE insurance premiums and reduced fixed fees for the RTA portal and employer’s liability and public liability cases.

It is also no secret that many firms have folded in the run up to April but does this mean it is doom and gloom for all firms after April? The answer, quite simply, is no. The legal sector has seen significant changes and cuts before and it has adapted and changed to sync and work with changing markets and alternative litigation cultures.

If the emphasis is moving away from drawn out expensive litigation then alternatives should be explored and developed within firms. Fee earners should be trained in mediation techniques and alternative dispute resolution to utilise and make the most of the new face of the legal services market. Yes the Civil Procedure Rules have pushed this since their implementation in the late 1990s, but the benefit of the alternatives to litigation are going to be far more prevalent in the post-April regime. Fixed fees will be a far more common sight on solicitors’ websites, offering a range of work without the uncertainty of the legal bill at the end.

The Guardian has described the April cuts as likely to create an “advice desert” but with the utmost respect, where certain firms will retract their services in light of the changes, others will pick up the ball and adapt to the changing market and requirements of the new regime. April is not the end of the legal services market as we know it, rather the shift of an already established market that utilises the underused methods of the pre-April system to the advantage of themselves and clients. Mediation, alternative dispute resolution and fixed fees are not new to the post-April system but will undoubtedly play a far more important role in steering the legal system away from the litigation culture that has developed over the last few years that the government wished to cull.

Let’s prove the doom-mongers wrong and focus on what the future holds, not what could have been!

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