The price of justice

Contrary to the understanding of the unnamed barrister you quote, the going rate for three-year-qualified legal aid solicitors is £30-35,000 (Lawyers threaten strike over low pay, June 6). There has been no increase in pay rates for most of this work since 2001. Lawyers in commercial firms with government contracts charge the taxpayer between five and 10 times the legal aid rate, and have personal incomes to match. There is a serious shortage of family and social welfare lawyers, whose work protects the most vulnerable in society, and of young defence lawyers to replace those who are giving up. I am not aware of any shortage of commercial lawyers. Yet guess which end of the profession is being asked to take further pay cuts to save public money?
Richard Miller
Legal Aid Practitioners Group

The starting point for funding legal aid is the people who need access to justice. The cuts that have taken place, in civil as well as criminal funding, mean that vulnerable people continue to be deprived of this basic right. People seeking asylum, for example, face the triple barriers of incredulous courts, bureaucratic funding decisions and shortages of advisers.

The fact that this also translates into underpaid professionals, pressured into doing too much in too little time for no money, is another good reason for taking action to bring the system to a halt. The courts need committed legal aid lawyers to be there, to give a semblance of fairness.

The government's immigration controls and legal help restrictions, which feed off and escalate racism, must be reversed; until then, people seeking asylum will continue to be deprived of life, liberty and legal representation.
John Nicholson
Bury Law Centre

I fully sympathise with the lawyer who told your reporter that "for a professional of anywhere from five to 20 years' standing, to be earning ... little more than £50,000 is absurd". As a senior lecturer in computing of 20 years' standing, now at the top of my pay scale, I earn about £24,000 per annum net. As soon as all lecturers are sufficiently "lucky to gross £50,000", the lawyers in your article can count on my support on their picket lines.
John English
University of Brighton

As a professional of 30 years' standing (an A-level teacher in charge of a department, who has chosen to stay in the classroom rather than become an administrator), I find "little more than £30,000 net of tax" quite an attractive proposition.
Erika Cox
Whissonsett, Norfolk