Garden Court Chambers has responded to the Bar Standards Board consultation on amending the Public Access Rules. In the light of Garden Court's extensive experience of representing clients eligible for public funding, and chambers' commitment to continuing publicly funded work, our response to the consultation confines itself to answering the question whether the Rules should be amended to permit a barrister to accept public access work even if a client is eligible for public funding.
Our answer is "no". We state "from April 2013, legal aid in civil cases will only be available to the poorest of those on low incomes and in respect of only a limited number of contentious matters. Anyone who falls within that very limited class should obtain his or her entitlement to the remaining free or low cost help available and not ever need to pay barristers privately for it".
Click here to download our full consultation response.
