Chair's Column

QASA is dead, long live excellence. Time to fill the gap and control our own standards, writes Andrew Walker QC  

Down with overnight emails and judicial micromanagement, let’s give our brilliant young advocates a chance, writes Andrew Langdon QC in his final column for Counsel  

So, three things: emails and work/life balance; death by case management; and the future of the profession. 

Upper or lower case, if we want our legal services to be truly great we must invest in serving our citizens in their greatest need, argues Andrew Langdon QC  

Between 2006 and 2016, the amount spent by our government on legal aid fell from £2.4bn to £1.6bn.  

We have much to lose, both as a profession and society, if face-to-face court contact is lost and replaced by a second-best form of remote justice, warns Andrew Langdon QC  

Officious and objectionable Ministry speak betrays an unacceptable misunderstanding of the purpose of administration of justice and should be resisted, argues Andrew Langdon QC  

At some point in recent history, I’m not sure when, the language used to describe people who go to court changed.  

‘No Deal’ is looking ‘No Good’ for lawyers and their clients. Rival jurisdictions are jostling for position. It’s high time the government heeded repeated legal advice, argues Bar Chair  

The Bar Council adopted a neutral position during last year’s EU referendum campaign, although in the public interest and in order to try to inform debate we published succinct and accessible papers on the legal consequences of exiting the EU. 

The alarming practice of ‘deport first, appeal later’ has been arrested by the Supreme Court, but the Bar must keep ‘yard rat’ rule-of-law breaches under its eagle-eyed watch  

With the election upon us and populist threats to the rule of law, it’s time to speak plainly: UK justice needs a staunch defender and a place at the high table, writes Andrew Langdon QC  

This month’s column starts in Poland.  

Due to the decline in court reporters, justice operates essentially unseen and unheard by the public, writes Andrew Langdon QC. The recent attacks on judges illustrates the need to inform the public of how law works in practice  

A recent survey by The Justice Gap  has confirmed what many of us suspected. Court reporters, and especially court reporters from local newspapers, have been declining in number for years and may soon be largely a thing of the past.  

Four years on from LASPO, the wheels of justice are in urgent need of repair, writes Andrew Langdon QC. No hyperbole: policy-makers are fixated on the technological revolution and the Reform Programme and do not want to talk about fixing legal aid  

April is the fourth anniversary of the coming into force of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO), a measure which removed legal aid from many sections of our community.