Book Launch: 'The Legal Aid Market - Challenges for publicly funded asylum and immigration representation'

The book
Based on empirical research, The Legal Aid Market by Jo Wilding offers fresh thinking on what has gone wrong in the legal aid market in England and Wales. It presents a rare picture of the barristers, solicitors and caseworkers practising immigration law in charities and private firms. In doing so, this book examines supply and demand and illuminates what constitutes high-quality legal aid work/provision, subsequent conflicts with financial rationality and how practitioners resolve these issues.

Challenging existing legal aid policy, this book presents innovative insights to ensure public service markets around the globe function well for all those involved.

The event
The launch event brings together academics and practitioners from different areas of social welfare legal aid to discuss how the systems in which legal aid operates are driving up need to levels which lawyers cannot meet and, at the same time, obstructing provision of good quality legal representation.

Poor quality decision making, complex law, and austerity create demand. Legal aid and local authority cuts make practice financially precarious. This creates irreconcilable conflicts between financial viability, quality, and client access. As a result, even where there appear to be providers, it may be impossible for people to find a legal aid lawyer with capacity to help them.

There will be a short presentation about The Legal Aid Market and then there will be contributions from the panel, followed by a panel discussion and Q&A.

The speakers
Jo Wilding, author of The Legal Aid Market and Barrister at Garden Court Chambers
Tessa Buchanan, Barrister, Garden Court Chambers
Dr Daniel Newman, University of Cardiff, co-author of Justice in a Time of Austerity
Siobhan Taylor Ward, Housing and Social Welfare Solicitor, Vauxhall Law Centre

Discount codes will be available on the evening for both The Legal Aid Market and Justice in a Time of Austerity by Jon Robins and Daniel Newman, both published by Bristol Policy Press.

The recording