Family legal aid project

Our family legal aid project looked at the changing conditions of work for family legal aid barristers. We produced a report, system overload - a report on family legal aid, was published in December 2025.

Our key findings:

• Remuneration is now insufficient to support family barristers in maintaining a sustainable legal aid practice
• Working conditions and ways of working in the system are intolerable, and the fee schemes do not reflect the changing nature of work
• The financial and systemic pressures on family barristers are having a detrimental effect on their wellbeing

• Read the report
• Read our press release

Background

We know that structures of work and remuneration around publicly funded legal work have changed considerably. Real spending per person on legal aid has reduced by almost 40% between 2009/10 and 2022/23. Many areas of advice have been taken out of scope, and changes to the means testing for areas still in scope mean that most people can no longer access legal aid funding for their legal issues. Coupled with real term cuts in remuneration, these changes have had a profound impact on the civil and family legal services sector, including the Bar. 

The National Audit Office’s report Government’s management of legal aid (09 February 2024) stated that:

“MoJ has not increased fees for civil cases since 1996, and it reduced fees by 10% between October 2011 and February 2012. In real terms, fees are now approximately half what they were 28 years ago.”

Since 2012, we have consistently called for a targeted re-introduction of legal aid. Most of our research and representation has been on criminal legal aid fees mainly due to it being the largest area of legal aid provision, but also because it is an area of work where people’s liberty can be at stake.

In recent months and years, we have increasingly spoken about civil and family publicly funded work. We produced an interview-based report on civil legal aid work in early 2021 and have contributed significantly to the review of civil legal aid (RoCLA) primarily through data analysis.

Our 2024 submission to RoCLA identified the following broad problems with the current regime for family legal aid:

• Scope and grant of legal aid
• Low fees
• Growing level of unpaid work
• System of payment
• Impact on the Bar
• Impact on justice
• Downstream problems