Review: Legal Aid Lawyers and the Quest for Justice
| Author | Luke Marsh |
| DOI | 10.1350/ijep.2014.18.3.459 |
| Published date | 01 July 2014 |
| Date | 01 July 2014 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
REVIEWS
REVIEWS
Daniel Newman
LEGAL AID LAWYERS AND THE QUEST FOR JUSTICE
Hart Publishing (Oxford, 2013); ISBN-10: 1849464332, hbk, 198 pp,
£45
While a background concern for several years now, the impact of public funding
cuts in England and Wales upon access to the criminal courts and to legal repre-
sentation has come to the forefront in recent times. The backlash to this has
surfaced in striking ways—quite literally with legal aid lawyers staging mass
‘non-attendance’ days in court centres. Conversely, the public reception to the
plight of criminal lawyers has appeared largely unsympathetic or marked by disin-
terest.
No doubt set in motion by the growing discontent amongst criminal practitioners
with the changes to legal aid structures awkwardly strung to public misconcep-
tions held against this section of the legal community, Daniel Newman has
undertaken an important and timely study of the legal aid landscape through the
lens of those front-line lawyers who rely on state funding to provide represen-
tation to criminal defendants. Over a 12-month period, Newman undertook an
ethnographical study of three law firms in an unnamed city within the United
Kingdom in order to provide the reader with a current snapshot of the ‘health’ of
the criminal defence profession.
This unnerving diagnosis is divided into six chapters, first underlining the impor-
tance of legal aid lawyers as a ‘measure of the strength of our democracy’ (p. 1).
Newman provides a clear discussion of the various models of criminal justice
through which this issue can be gleaned, before outlining his reasons for adopting
a ‘defence-minded perspective’ (p. 8). Indeed, in justifying more fully his method-
ological stance in Chapter 2, Newman’s findings are shown to be of significance
because of their empirical foundation:
This research purposively targeted firms that it was supposed would show
lawyers in a good light, and this inevitably affected my pre-suppositions.
Initially if anything I was inclined to put a positive spin on all I
saw and heard as that was what I had wanted to believe. Over time,
doi:10.1350/ijep.2014.18.3.459
282 (2014) 18 E&P 282–285 THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EVIDENCE & PROOF
To continue reading
Request your trial