The practices of modern criminal defence lawyers: Alienation and its implications for access to justice

Abstract

Article (Accepted Version) http://sro.sussex.ac.uk Newman, Daniel and Welsh, Lucy (2019) The practices of modern criminal defence lawyers: alienation and its implications for access to justice. Common Law World Review, 48 (1-2). pp. 64-89.

A Kantian Moral Cosmopolitan Approach to Teaching Professional Legal Ethics

“…In relation to law firms, as profit-making entities, there is a risk that some organizational practices may lead to clients being used as mere means, such as where lawyers receive cases they know little or nothing about. 183 Newman and Walsh warn that: Such practices undermine the ability of clients to act as autonomous decision makers in relation to their case; they are simply being processed without necessarily being able to truly express their wishes about how a case proceeds. As a result, many clients failed to develop rapport with their representative, engendering anxieties that their lawyer did not know them or their case.…”

Demise of Legal Aid? Access to Justice and Social Welfare Law after Austerity

“…There has been a paradigm shift away from what we used to know as access to justice, and the phrase has increasingly less substantive value in changed circumstances in which individual autonomy is privileged to such a great degree over state intervention. Newman and Welsh (2019) have shown neoliberalism has undermined legal practice through the marketization and degradation of state-funded legal aid. Practitioners are unable to provide the service they want or their clients need; access to justice is undermined by a political ideology that sees legal aid support as a drain on the state.…”

The Working Culture of Legal Aid Lawyers: Developing a ‘Shared Orientation Model’

“…Negotiating the radical impact of cuts to funding, and the associated erosion of legal aid has not only produced structural reform, but rising state intervention has fundamentally altered the very meaning of legal aid provision. The profession is becoming increasingly detached from its original altruistic remit as it denies the rights of workers within it to serve justice and help people most in need (Newman and Welsh, 2019). Typically, the occupation upholds specific professional values which correlate with the privilege and status of being a legal aid lawyer.…”

“…Much of the existing research more specifically on legal aid lawyering, or ‘poverty lawyering’ is based on US lawyers or focuses on the pre-2010s climate. Recent studies, have tended to address specific elements of the lawyering role, including: the lawyer-client relationship, legal aid reforms (see Hynes and Robins, 2009; Sommerlad, 2004), newly qualified lawyers (see Boon, 2005), entry into the profession (see Duff et al, 2000), lawyer mobility (see Francis, 2005), lawyer ethics (see Boon, 2002; Webb, 2003), or specific fields of law, that is criminal defence (see Kemp, 2010; Newman, 2013; Newman and Welsh, 2019; Stephen et al, 2008; Stephen and Tata, 2006; Thornton, 2019; Welsh, 2017; Welsh and Howard, 2019), or family law (Mant and Wallbank, 2017). Abel et al (2020) discuss broader global trends following the acceleration and intensification of global socio-economic developments since the 1980s, challenging the professional form of the legal profession.…”

“…Funding cuts congruent with demands for efficiency has led to legal aid lawyers becoming increasingly alienated (Newman and Welsh, 2019) 2 . Increased levels of regulation have disrupted working practices and have interfered with existing work-based identities which traditionally, were client-focused.…”