Michael Mansfield QC awarded outstanding achievement prize
The Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year awards honour Michael Mansfield QC and other lawyers who show a commitment to publicly-funded work.
“Awards ceremonies can be tedious, but last week’s Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year awards proved to be inspiring and surprising, with the winners all demonstrating great commitment to their clients and an instant government response to a legal question.” Thus, started a report in The Guardian today on the award given to Michael Mansfield QC
The profession should pay for legal education and use of laws? Discuss
I put forward the idea yesterday in my weekend musing that if we are to maintain the very high quality of education at the top of the university league table, we may have to cut costs at the bottom end. This is, in all likelihood, something being considered by Vince Cable and his team across the university sector in all subjects.
I also out forward the idea that as law firms – especially the larger law firms – do well out of running their law businesses using publicly funded laws they should, perhaps, pay a levy on top of taxation for use of intellectual property in those laws and cases. That law firms already pay lexis-Nexis / Westlaw et all does not address the benefit to the public, save in taxation.
Out of this came an idea that the legal profession could contribute more than it does already. Students invest heavily in paying for their university degrees in law. Law firms tend not, in the main, to sponsor students at degree level. Many law firms do at LPC post degree level. If they are lucky, students may well be able to get generous allowances and their fees for the LPC and Bar course paid by the firm. I suspect that few, if any Chambers pay for students to do the BVC directly.
The more I think about this idea – the more compelling it becomes. Significant profits are earned by law firms (I appreciate that the idea can apply to all sectors) and law firms are the recipients of the high quality of education provided by our leading universities. Would it not be an idea to ‘think the unthinkable’ and get law firms to contribute to the cost of student education when they recruit law students? It would be a relatively simple matter for them to take over the student debt as Carl Gardner argued in the comments section to my previous post and repay it to the government a responsibility linked to the length of time the law firm employs the student for, rather than the student having to out of earned income?
Only an idea – it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on the fairness, practicalities etc. Over to you?
Age of criminal responsibility should be raised, says leading barrister
The Telegraph: The age of criminal responsibility should be raised to 14 to better protect the “truly young”, one of the country’s leading barristers has said.
I’m not sure about raising the age of criminal responsibility. Regardless of how “truly young” you may be at 10 years old, you’re going to know that murder is wrong.
Perhaps it should be raised generally, but kept low in respect of the most heinous crimes?
On law firms paying for IP in laws: shouldn’t the levy be on court (or arbitration/mediation) fees? Kind of like a perfomance royalty!
A proper free market in laws would be fun – choose your provider of legal systems, with price being a factor! – although you can see the Scottish Parliament going bust rather rapidly as everyone decided to register land and domicile contracts south of the border. I’m sure the Scottish courts would diversify – it seems to have worked okay in London…
On a more serious note, I’m sure that firm (not just law firms) assuming liability for student loans will come up at some point. At the moment they are in effect doing so anyway, and acting as remunerated collection agents into the bargain. Repaying loans as part of a package might well be more tax efficient than the current approach.