Issues surrounding the “T” word have been at the forefront of my work in recent times and seem unlikely to go away anytime soon. Sometimes on such cases you have a degree of understanding of, if never sympathy with, the Commissions point of view. There are still some “failing firms” out there. That said this raises as many questions about the LSC’s compliance activity as it answers.
On most occasions our initial view of an LSC decision can best be summed up with the single word “disproportionate”. One senses that a deliberate policy of inflexibility has been adopted.
Much less commonly one experiences a termination so stupid it almost defies belief – I will have to spare you the details. When this comes with a knock on effect, a secondary, related decision of greater magnitude, so that “termination” will mean what it says, you despair. This is of course exactly what the committed Legal Aid team, consequently staring redundancy in the face, also experience.
When the CRB with its inbuilt 2:1 LSC majority spots this you know it’s a howler. (And our case was a stronger one that the one which sparked their back-down).
Our client’s month of sleepless nights was worth it then.
