Legal Aid Immigration – Advice Desert – London
Here is an example of just how bad the shortage of good immigration lawyers available to provide free advice and assistance to peole on a low income in London has become.
Last Thursday (17 September 2009) a client who I have been helping with homelessness application told me that she urgently needed help from an immigration lawyer. Her violent ex partner had told her that he had reported to the authorities that she is an illegal overstayer and had informed them where to find her. I am based in South West London. I did not know of any good immigration lawyers who would be likely to be able to see her. I therefore sent an email to a contact who works for an organastion with a Community Legal Advice contract for providing telephone advice and who have an immigration department. They are based well outside London but deal with many callers from here. I asked if she could identify a lawyer anywhere in London who could assist. She not only sent me a list of lawyers but offered to call them as well. When she had finished she sent me an email which included the following:-
“just called the numbers on the email below – fisher meredith weren’t taking legal aid and couldn’t reach wilson and co
The refugee and migrant justice said they have a drop in at their office monday, wednesday and friday. Doors open at very early – 7am – for a 9.30 start and they only take 15 people a drop in session. So this may get her advice sooner if she can find someone to look after the kids while she goes to queue.
Immigration Advice Service – 0844 974 4000 – advised that they could offer an appointment at the end of October I didn’t book this as wasn’t sure if client would want this. However, they also advised that if client got a decision from the home office they would be able to assist her considerably faster than this. They also have a telephone advice service where client will be able to get more advice to start with. So this may be the best option for her.” *
From this you can see that she was only able to identify four possible organisations in the whole of London. The first of those wasn’t taking on legal aid cases, the second couldn’t be reached at all and a third could not offer an appointment for another six weeks. The client was therefore left with the prospect of queuiing outside the offices of Refugee and Migrant Justice at 7:00am in the hope that she might be one of the 15 people lucky enough to be seen.
This experience has confirmed what I have long suspected; that legal aid immigration law does not really exist any more as a proper service. It would make me very happy if people were able to respond to this post and prove me wrong by giving me the details of lots of quality firms or Law Centres where people could get help with immigration problems.
*I have changed the first name of the client to the word “client” here but otherwise the text is identical to the email.
Since writing this post I have been contacted by South West London Law Centre who understandably took offence at my description of the area in which they provide advice as an advice desert. Good point and apologies for any offence caused.
The problem with Law Centres is that people are usually not able to make referrals to them because they are invariably full and unable to deal with urgent clients like the one I was writing about. As in other areas of law South West London Law Centre has a number of Immigration caseworkers. Their work is, by reputation, of a very high standard, but there is so much demand for their services that many people don’t even try to refer to them because they’re always full weeks in advance, whether in Immigration, Housing, or whatever.
I should also apologise for any offence caused to Fisher Meredith and the other suppliers mentioned in my post. I should point out that they were on the list of people who we tried to contact because of their reputation for hight quality work. The problem is that like the Law Centre they are inundated with work and have to say no at some point.
The reductions in the numbers of quality Legal Aid providers means that ther are now only a very small number of reputable providers left, and any given client’s chance of access when urgent advice is needed is very small. We are seeing advice deserts open up right in the heart of London rather than out in rural areas where it might be expected.
I would like to see more quality providers taking up the large demand for their services. That does not look like it is going to happen at the moment. In the meantime it would be good if the few suppliers left could all talk to each other as much as possible so that lines of communication are open and people needing urgent help might be able to make contact.
The operative word in the original post is “good”. There is, of course, at least one notorious big “factory” firm which receives a high volume of immigration casework and provides an extremely poor service to clients, sometimes disastrously so. They feature a constant turnover of inexperienced and poorly motivated staff, without notice to the client when the person dealing with their case changes, virtual inaccessibility by phone to the client once a case has been taken on and non-reply to emails. Elementary failures include not taking accurate instructions so that important facts are omitted and not informing the client of an adverse decision until the deadline for appeal has passed or is less than 24 hours away.
This is “no frills” Ryanair-style law at its worst. A number of complaints are pending, I believe, thanks to London Coalition Against Poverty. Occasionally, a conscientious young lawyer is encountered at this firm, but understandably such people are anxious to leave even sooner than the others.
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The shortage of legal aid solicitors able to take on casework is only marginally better, if at all, in the housing and homelessness field. There may be more available on paper but whether the need is any better served in proportion to its volume is doubtful. It is not unusual for 20 or more phone calls, ranging all across London once those close to the client have been exhausted, to still produce nobody able to take it on.
In the past it was the usual form for advice workers to have a brief discussion about a case with a prospective solicitor. Not only was the solicitor able to assess the merits and prospects of success, but if the firm was not one with which the advice organisation had a regular relationship the adviser was also assessing the solicitor. If not impressed, it might be a case of “OK, I’ll speak to the client” and moving on to the next on the list. Nowadays, you rarely get further than a polite but blanket “no” from the switchboard as the firm is not in a position to take on any more housing casework, and it’ll almost certainly be the same from the next on the list.
Looking back in your blog I see I shouldn’t have been so mealy-mouthed. The “factory” firm I had in mind is, of course, Duncan Lewis & Co.
More than 4 here
http://www.communitylegaladvice.org.uk/en/directory/directorysearch.jsp?doSearch=yes&searchBy=area&searchText=SW18+4LT&lawCatCB=15IM&startRow=1
Can’t comment on quality of advice, or how easy it would be for the client to get to them, but apparently plenty within a 5 mile radius
Jus to let you know there is an excellent immigration lawyer based in New Cross. I know a number of cases they have worked on from simple immigration to overstayers and they give great advice and always have a solution. I don’t know if they take Legal Aid but I do know that they gave a friend of mine plenty of advice over several phone calls before any funds exchanged hands.
Lawmans Solicitors
311 New Cross Road
London
SE14 6AS
Thank you all for your comments. I am sorry it took a while for me to publish them. I have just installed a new add in to cut down on spam comments which took some time to get used to.
Jim: I hear what you say. I have posted about the quality of service provided by Duncan Lewis before. Apart from a spirited defence of his employers by their practice manager I received no feedback to suggest that what I had heard about them was wrong but plenty to suggest that it was accurate. You are also right that it is extremely difficult to get help from a legal housing lawyer. This is almost at the point of breakdown in service provision too. I think that immigration law has however crossed that line for most people.
Indiasign: Thank you for the link. I could comment on the quality of a number of the service providers on your list but I won’t as it would get me into trouble. The problem is that the list you have found was produced by the Community Legal Service. It was the Community Legal Service themselves who were trying to help me find an immigration solicitor. They produce the list but they also know who is any good on it. You can tell how much use the list is to the public if it was of so little use to the CLS themselves.
Ms Briscoe: Thank you for the tip about Lawmans solicitors. I had not heard of them but will contact them to find out more. Unfortunately it looks as if they don’t carry out Legal Aid work as they are not on the list of firms which do.
Anyone else….if you know any good immigration solicitors who do Legal Aid work and are able to take on new clients without making them wait for more than a few days please post a comment with their details on or email them to me. If you work for a firm that provides this service then please get in touch. Like I said before, I am not posting this to in any way criticise immigration solicitors I am just trying to establish how much availability there is.
I’m unsure why the writer of this blog found the need to apologise to South West London Law Centre for him describing the practical reality of the situation in SW London. Although I suppose it is polite to apologise to anyone who is offended, whether intentional or not.
It didn’t come across like a slur against the reputation of the law centre to me – they weren’t even mentioned and I didn’t even think of them – and, surely, the law centre itself has been a long time advocate of the erosion of legal services within its’ region? Wasn’t the blog writer just telling it the way it is? Or, is it not a desert?
I doubt Fisher Meredith would complain about the post, I would have thought them more pragmatic.
Maybe the Centre should have accepted the comments for what they were or posted a comment itself, pointing out that it is an oasis in the middle of this desert? I think this approach would have been more enlightened than what seems to have happened: taking unnecessary umbrage at absolutely anything that might, in some misinterpreted way, possibly if you look in a mirror backwards when the moon is in conjunction with Carolyn Regan, cause offence.
Oh, OK – your original post referred to “a contact who works for an organastion with a Community Legal Advice contract for providing telephone advice and who have an immigration department.” rather than CLS/CLA itself (or am I still misunderstanding the situation?)
Anyway, I agree with you as to quality – there are some on that list that should be covered in barge-pole shaped bruises
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