A new report into family legal aid has laid bare the detrimental impact the work is having on barristers as well as how underfunding affects the justice outcomes for their clients.

The Bar Council’s report - ‘System overload: a report into family legal aid’ - has examined the changing conditions of publicly funded work for family legal aid barristers, painting a ‘stark and vivid picture’ of the impact the erosion of fees has had over the last 30 years. 

Family legal aid fees are now worth approximately half of what they were in 1996.

Researchers interviewed 100 family barristers who shared their personal experiences. Barristers told how they had been left unable to pay their bills, meaning they are forced to take on more work and more hours than is sustainable to support their livelihoods.

One barrister who is more than a decade into her career told how she took home just £7 an hour for a piece of work that took her 15 hours. Pay is so low some barristers said they are effectively working for free.

The report found barristers are overworked - a 70-hour week is now ‘the norm’ – meaning they risk compromising their ability to support extremely vulnerable clients at some of the most stressful moments in their lives.

“The only way we can keep the show on the road, in other words to safeguard the children who are at the heart of everything we do, is to work more hours for less money,” one barrister said.

Barristers shared how they have been driven away from legal aid practice altogether meaning people are not getting the representation they desperately need. One family barrister said: “I’ve had cases where I’m making the equivalent of someone who works at a supermarket… Previously, I couldn’t afford to pay my bills. I couldn’t. I had to borrow to pay my taxes, to borrow to pay bills. It’s not enough money to live on. So that’s why I use the private law work to supplement it.”

Another added: “Many people would leave in a heartbeat if they could.”

Barristers explained that the impact of low pay and the difficult nature of the work is compounded by the “terrible” condition of the court estate. Some courts lack basic facilities like drinking water, somewhere to wash your hands, wheelchair access or heating, which one barrister said, “feels quite reflective of how people are feeling”.

Many said the working conditions and nature of the work was having a detrimental impact on their health and wellbeing with one barrister describing having a “serious medical event at court” which they had “no doubt whatsoever that part of the reason for that was work related”.

Bar Council Chair Barbara Mills KC said: “The people working within the system are collapsing and this cannot be ignored or tolerated. The very real impact the financial and systemic pressure legal aid work is having on barristers’ health and wellbeing, made plain in this report, is extremely alarming.

“It is unacceptable that some family barristers are unable to support themselves and are being driven away from the profession at a time when legal aid representation is in desperate need.

“We need the government to invest in the court estate and improve the conditions in which family barristers are expected to work. We need to see an increase in legal aid rates, and a commitment to updating and maintaining the fee schemes including an independent fee review body. Improvements can be made now to bring the system back from the brink, before access to justice is further compromised.”

James Roberts KC, Chair of the Family Law Bar Association, said: “The FLBA is grateful to the Bar Council and to Dr. Rose Holmes for producing this important research. It will make depressing reading for barristers working under the legal aid schemes but perhaps more importantly for their clients who are among the most vulnerable in our society. The failure of successive governments to take any steps to improve the situation is disgraceful. Barristers in this field are effectively being paid half as much as they were in 1996 for twice the work. This is unsustainable. Without urgent investment the experience required to conduct these sensitive family law cases will be lost to the publicly funded arena for ever.”

The Bar’s representative body is now calling for an immediate increase in fees paid across the board, a wholesale review of family fee schemes to make them fit for purpose and a commitment to the establishment of an independent pay review body to ensure the regular review of the fee schemes. 

The Bar Council also recommends that public funding for legal representation is made available for all parties in all family proceedings in which domestic abuse is a factor.

The report concludes that if the situation continues to deteriorate, it is only a matter of time before cases are compromised either through a shortage of barristers, or because ‘building pressures mean the system is too inadequately resourced to function’.

Report 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