would look if the same work could be done for almost the same cost without the appearance of charity*
17For the Law Society to point out this, however, would be even more damning, since it would involve an admission that the legal
system could be exploited to finance *unlucrative' work. 18See Chapter 1, P* 9»
detachment and neutrality from all but honourable, individual clients, (to which successful solicitors could happily subscribe) provided by the practices of these solicitors, which the Law Society, comprised largely of solicitors from the upper end of the profession, felt it necessary to challenge* In many other ways the Law Society, although responsive to the requests of provincial law societies for example, failed to represent the interests of all solicitors, often favouring some at the expense of others, and this must always be remembered when discussing the importance of the legal profession and the Law Society in the creation of legal aid*
The Lav; Society was a veiy important body in the creation of legal aid during this period. In commanding a monopoly over the administration of legal remedies to the populace, the Law Society
obviously came under a duty to maintain the legitimacy of the viability and universality of the legal system* This was implicit in their
repeated requests for volunteer solicitors to ensure the success of the charitable ’Poor Persons’ Procedure' and thus to maintain the privileges and status of the profession; and explicit, for example, in suggestions that all lawyers should pay a contribution towards the expenses for the few solicitors who conducted poor persons' cases, thus ensuring that the burden fell equally on a profession which benefitted equally from the carrying of the burden. Also any scheme to provide free or subsidised legal remedies for the lower classes was forced to enlist the co-operation of the legal profession because of its powerful control over the administration of the legal system and its virtual monopoly in representing qualified lawyers.
In this situation a voluntary scheme was the most obvious solution since it did not involve the intervention of the state in the running
of the legal system and did not disturb current professional practice„ Furthermore control of the scheme by the Law Society was recognised to be necessary, since effectively they already controlled legal administration and would only co-operate in a legal aid scheme in which they also exercised a fair measure of control. The need to maintain the support and goodwill of the Law Society for the scheme to continue was often admitted: in drafting the final report of his committee Finlay himself admitted that it was pointless making
recommendations which did not have the support of the Law Society; and a year or t?/o later the Secretary of the Law Society stated that it was only goodwill within the profession which had kept the scheme going up to date.
Many members of the profession knev/ that the running of the scheme could be made easier if certain changes were made, and the Law Society was forced to accept the need for at least some of these changes. Thus they pressed for an extension of divorce jurisdiction to the County Courts or the Assizes, against the wishes of the Courts and the Lord Chancellor's Office. Schuster had always made it clear that County Court divorce was impossible, but throughout the inter war period jurisdiction in divorce cases was extended to more and more Assize towns. At the beginning of the second war, vrtien lawyers
were no longer taking poor persons' divorce cases, the Law Society decided to support a scheme whereby one or two solicitors were paid small sums out of the deposits to conduct divorce cases as the only solution to the problem of collapse of the 'Poor Persons' Procedure', a scheme which they, along with most other interested parties, had
19 previously opposed, but which now went through almost immediately •
Thus the Law Society could ensure that the interests of the profession were incorporated into the legal aid schemes, although in doing this they were often politically and economically opposed to other groups. Over the extension of divorce jurisdiction they were opposed by the courts, the barristers, the Lord Chancellor's Office and even some of the solicitors based in London who gained from agency work; and, over payments for running the scheme, they were opposed by the Treasury, the barristers and the Lord Chancellor's Office•
Also, in order to maintain credibility in the scheme to their members and other important groups, they were forced into official attempts to minimise the problems and contradictions in the scheme; for example, in 1923 they confidently predicted that the backlog of cases reported by Hassard Short would be solved by the decrease in the number of applications for divorce which had supposedly been
20
taking place since the war • This meant that those directly exper iencing the short-comings and contradictions of the scheme were a source of embarrassment and conflict to the La?/ Society: so later in 1923* when Hassard Short confirmed the backlog of cases, they openly stated that they refused to believe him; and, in the late 1930's when provincial law societies in South Wales became so swamped 19It was at this time that the Lav; Society admitted that they knew that poor persons' lawyers had always taken small sums from the deposits in order to make the scheme economically possible for them.