The Secret Barrister- Legal Aid Myths and The Innocense Tax

Summary

 In Chapter 7 of The Secret Barrister- Stories of the law and how it is broken we look at the history of legal aid, some legal aid myths and the idea of the innocence tax for those who do not quite meet the criteria for legal aid but also cannot afford private legal representation. In Secret Barrister style, we hear a variety of case studies and get to hear the writers knowledgable opinion as a legal criminal Barrister themselves. 

Firstly, the first myth we spoke about is about the United Kingdom having the most generous legal aid system in the world. The Secret Barrister writes that as this once was true the government still believes it is true and use this as a primary reason to cut legal aid costs and not raise the funds again. The reality is that in present-day we no longer do have the most generous legal aid system in the world. In a study of countries in Europe, it showed that once we did have the most generous system but in recent times we have been dead on the mean average of all European countries. It is also important to remember that all legal systems are different and so the writer argues that the comparative report cannot look at the legal aid systems as it did as it is different in every country.

Leading on from that, the next myth was that lawyers got paid loads of money for their job and although some lawyers, more specifically Barristers do get paid a large sum, the Secret Barrister makes it clear that not all Barristers get paid a fair amount. The Barristers who work for private companies often do get paid a large sum as they are often more experienced and they obviously work privately but for those Barristers who work under the Legal Aid, they are underpaid with earning around £5 an hour in some cases. The writer makes it clear further that there are even some days that they do not get paid a penny and sometimes even have to pay to work, for example, train tickets and fuel. From this, we learn that some lawyers do get paid a large amount of working privately but other lawyers get paid poorly if working with legal aid clients like Junior Barristers like the Secret Barrister often do.

Next the Secret Barrister talks about what they call the innocence tax, and the writer makes clear that the people who are faced with the innocence tax are those who do not quite meet the legal aid criteria but also do not have the money for private representation and so either they join a record number of those in the middle classes self-representing themselves which often leads to an unfair verdict or they will fork out their life savings, remortgage their house etc to pay for private representation. Often, when they do pay for private representation and the case is dismissed they are left scrounging for the money and their own expense with hardly anything from the government to help them with their expenses. Previously, the state would cover a large number of the costs for the population but nowadays this is no longer true.

That is all for today, thank you again for reading my short summary. I would like to take this moment to remind you that I have only picked out a short number of points to write about and I do not write about these points in much detail so please do read the book for yourself and preferably read the chapter and then read the corresponding summary on this blog. Again I would suggest you look at The Secret Barristers Blog which provides lots more details about the law and how it is broken with regular updates from the writer himself. Also, please support this blog by either buying me a book or donating via Paypal using one of the buttons at the side of this blog as this will help me complete my mission of getting more teenagers reading and more specifically more teenage boys reading as it is a dying habit and I what to change that.