This post is the first in a short series, which was prompted by an email I received from Ken, a landlord. Ken told me
I am utterly dumbfounded by the costs relating to litigation/justice. The court fees are eye watering. Barrister fees are even more eye watering – why is it not free?
We all pay our taxes, we all pay our council tax but justice it would appear is for the rich only – if I have a legitimate grievance but no cash I am stuffed. The other side with oodles of dosh wins – not in keeping with the Magna Carta I would have thought?
This is of course something many, many people have said to me over the years. We all have to abide by the law, we are all supposed to know it (ignorance of the law is no defence usually) so why is it not free?
I’m not going to go down the Magna Carta route (but please feel free to post comments on this) other than to say that it does not really say that law must be free. More that everyone (be they King, Baron or Peasant) has to obey it. There is an explanation and a great video from Terry Jones on the British Library website.
But the law IS free now!
Technically, with the internet, we all have access to the law, for free.
- Here are all the statues
- Here are most of the important legal cases
- Here are the procedural rules used when bringing claims at court.
Enjoy!
In the past, these could only be accessed in expensive legal text books but now they are available to everyone with a computer and internet access.
Paying for the law
But I don’t think that is what Ken meant. It’s very hard, unless you have had legal training, to make sense of those resources. What he was really asking was “why can’t we use the courts and bring claims without having to pay huge sums of money?”
There are two elements here
- The court fees and
- The cost of legal help
The legal help topic is a wide one and covers the cost of solicitors and barristers, the legal aid scheme and ‘one to many’ help services. Plus the underlying problem of the increasing complexity of our legal system which makes it difficult for people to use the system without professional help.
The start of a series
There’s a lot to say about all of these and I think it is too much to put in just one post. So I am turning it into a series – this is the introduction.
Note by the way that in this series I will chiefly be discussing the civil law only – the system which deals with disputes between individuals and organisations. Rather than the criminal law which is largely about the state punishing people for wrong doing. There is an explanation of the difference between the two here.
Next time I will be looking at Court Fees.
Guest101 says
August 30, 2017 at 10:43 AMI would say that court costs are a business cost for many landlords. It’s no different to the IT company asking why electricity isn’t free.
Certainly it’s frustrating, but the court costs are recoverable and there is no NEED to pay for a solicitor or a barrister in most tenancy related problems. So the law can be free if you do the work yourself, but if you want someone to do it for you, you pay.
Tessa Shepperson says
August 30, 2017 at 10:46 AMAbsolutely! I could not agree more.
Nevertheless, there are a lot of interesting issues surrounding the whole topic of legal costs that I will be exploring over the next seven weeks or so.
John-Paul Keates says
August 30, 2017 at 12:44 PMCosts are usually recoverable if you win – so the law ends up being free for people with a decent case.
If there were no costs, everyone would sue everyone for everything, it would be complete chaos.
And there’s no “the” before Magna Carta (unless you need it to prefix a specific version).
Tessa Shepperson says
August 30, 2017 at 1:17 PMWell yes, but the costs figure the court awards is never the same as the costs you actually pay your solicitor – particularly if they are ‘fixed costs’. Not for eviction claims anyway.
Then there is the question of enforcement – whether you actually get them.
For example in eviction cases where you are evicting someone for non-payment of rent – the solicitor will always ask for costs but the chances of actually getting them paid to you are, in the vast majority of cases, remote. If someone is being evicted for non-payment of rent they will have no money! You cannot get blood out of a stone.
Peter Jackson says
August 30, 2017 at 1:19 PMIdeally justice should be free for those who have a legitimate grievance, but not for thise who make spurious complaints. Awarding costs to the winner goes someway towards achieving that. It is not perfect though as the merits of the case are not the only thing that determines the outcome. Unfortunately for non-lawyers knowledge of the law and how the case is presented matters Those with the knowledge and skills expect to be paid for using them, which is fair.
The costs in time/hassle can not always be compensated for by money, but doing the work youself is not truely free,
It isn’t always the rich that are favoured by the current system. If you are poor and have a genuine grievance against someone who has money there are no-win no-fee lawyers. But if you have a case against someone who is poor they won’t be paying your costs even if you win. That will often be the case for a landlord.
Ben Reeve-Lewis says
August 30, 2017 at 5:10 PMWhen I first started prosecuting landlords for harassment and illegal eviction back in 1990 I naively thought that the process was a simple one. person behaves badly, they get prosecuted but I soon leanrt that this isnt the case at all.
An individual might have a brilliant case but if they cant withstand a rigorous cross examination in the witness stand, money aside, they dont have a prayer.
I have spent many a happy hour in the witness stand of magistrates and Crown Courts being called stupid and a liar by defence barristers. Water off a duck’s back when its your day job but I have also had to drop cases where the evidence was good because the chief witness, usually the tenant, is too timid to stand up to the battering.
A friend of mine was a witness in the Damilola Taylor murder trial and he told me how the defence barristers deliberately and cynically set about discrediting one witness, a 14 year old girl by winding her up so she would react badly.
Money is one issue when it comes to justice, so is evidence but also, what is not often mentioned is the ability of the witnesses to withstand cross examination.
You can have a really good case but if your witness is timid, a bit vague, easily distracted, doesnt have English as a first language or has a history of some sort, then justice doesnt get served.
tony benjamin says
August 31, 2017 at 12:04 PMUnfortunately, only some of our law is freely available to everyone with a computer and internet access. Those who want to be sure that they are seeing is the current version of any Act will have continue to buy expensive legal text books or subscribe to expensive online legal services.
Lord Neuberger, President of the Supreme Court, said recently that
“… the updating service to deal with amendments and repeals is little short of lamentable, with amendments and repeals sometimes not being recorded more than six years after the event. It should not cost much for the UK government to ensure that its legislation website is kept up-to-date, so that current legislation is freely available to everyone.”
Peter Jackson says
September 1, 2017 at 12:57 PMIt is quite normal for people to think “it should not cost much” to keep web-sites up to date and then to spend very little on doing so. Often the cost to do it properly is significant.