Gosschalks Solicitors

In a bid to save £290 million from the UK’s annual legal aid budget, the Government has announced that a series of cut backs are set to be introduced. Legal aid is the funding that the Government supplies to help people protect their basic rights and access the court process to resolve disputes. It helps approximately 2 million people each year and the changes will result in less people being eligible to claim it.

So what are the changes? The main change is that the capital qualification (where legal aid is still available) will be reduced from £8,000 to £1,000. Legal aid will also no longer be available to applicants involved with disputes concerning children or in relation to financial issues that surround divorce.

The Government proposals also include removing legal aid for clinical negligence claims and to those seeking advice about employment, education, immigration, debt, housing and benefit issues. This will obviously have a large impact on the public so they need to be aware of the changes. With regards to clinical negligence claims, people will still be able to receive advice from ‘no win, no fee’ firms, however, their fees will be greater. Their fees will also be deducted in part from any damages claimed.

Legal aid will continue to be available to those involved with care proceedings and the industry largely expects that it will remain for family mediation. Cases that involve domestic violence will still allow someone to receive legal aid, but the test to determine whether it should be granted will be much stricter. It is recognised that some solicitors are, as the rules presently allow, granting their own legal aid certificates under what is called ‘devolved powers’ in circumstances where the chances of their client successfully being able to eventually obtain an injunction are much less than 50/50.

The cutbacks are all designed to save money from the annual legal aid budget, which is largely estimated to be a whopping £2 billion. Aside from less people having access to legal aid, the legal profession will also have to react – especially Solicitors that only carry out legal aid family work. As with any of the current proposed Government cut backs, you are sure to hear more about this in the press over the ensuing months.

Gosschalks Solicitors are a full service law firm based in Hull, East Yorkshire.  If you have any questions about this article please contact Gosschalks solicitors on 01482 324252.

On the 6^th April 2011, new family law rules were introduced by the Courts. These new rules (which extend to 268 pages and fill a lever arch folder) introduce the concept of an ‘overriding objective’, which orders Judges to ensure cases are dealt with in an efficient and fair manner. The rules also require for cases to be balanced, so that parties are on an ‘equal footing’ and for Judges to allot a suitable amount of time to the case according to its nature.

In addition to the introduction of ‘overriding objective’, the new rules also bring into play the ability of Judges to ask parties to attend mediation or some other kind of dispute resolution before being allowed to continue with financial claims or children applications. In reality, the adoption of these new rules has been very slow in Courts throughout theUK. However, it is highly likely that the way in which the Courts approach family law will change with the passage of time; it may just take a little longer than initially expected.

The proposed changes to legal aid will result in thousands of people no longer qualifying for legal representation and they will not be able to afford private legal costs. The consequence of this change will see the Courts having to deal with more litigants in person, which will slow down the process and create an increased workload for Judges. As this happens, it’s likely that Judges will start to take up the new family law changes with more gusto, making applicants to the Court first of all try mediation before progressing with their case.

Many Solicitors across the country will also start to employ family law mediators. In fact, within the next month, Gosschalks inHullwill have appointed three mediators to its family law practice namelyIan Lanch, Ashlie Prescott andRichard Perry. There will also be a sea of change in approach to family law disputes. More and more Solicitors are finding ways of attempting to settle matrimonial disputes without resorting to the Courts.

In addition to mediation, use of the collaborative law approach is also increasing. This is where both parties each have a Solicitor, but everyone agrees not to issue financial proceedings and to settle through negotiation. As less people have access to legal aid, these methods will undoubtedly become more popular as time progresses and we will eventually see a change in the day to day practice of family law.

Ian Lanchand Ashlie Prescott of Gosschalks Solicitors are experts in family law and will be able to provide advice to anybody who needs further clarification on the new rules. Gosschalks Solicitors is based inHull,East Yorkshire.

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Gosschalks is an advanced, full service law firm situated within Kingston-upon-Hull. Our customers are not only regional, but they the span the length and breadth of the United Kingdom and are made up of a diverse range of business types from sole traders to national PLCs.

We are constantly aiming to improve our reputation as a respected consultancy firm, providing realistic advice and always making sure we provide fantastic value for our customers and at the same time, exciting opportunities for all of our people.

At present, with 34 partners, 4 associates, 7 paralegals as well as 9 assistant solicitors, our practice is constantly developing and with having invested heavily in technology, we are able to provide an extremely dynamic service to clients. Gosschalks benefits from a great working atmosphere that was created from a passion to remain at the front of a rapidly changing legal world and to continue to provide our clients with the very best service.

We are a “one office” firm and 14 years ago, we relocated to our own purpose-built, city centre office complex. This has additionally enhanced the ability of our people to deliver a first class service to our customers with each department being available to assist the others. We have a high ratio of partners to assistant solicitors and so this means that all of your work will be supervised by, or done by a partner with significant experience in the relevant area.  Your work won’t be transferred through multiple layers of hierarchy to inexperienced individuals.

We put in large amounts of time and effort to make sure that our people are kept up-to-date with every area regarding development including technological advances.  Gosschalks has created carefully planned and documented systems to deal with the increasing demand for leading edge services throughout the United Kingdom legal market.  Our methodical approach has seen the practice has been able to expand quickly and understand technology better which means that value has been added to the service we provide for our clients.

Regardless of the substantial and required development of technology, we aim to make sure that matters are as straightforward and as simple as possible. We think it’s important to maintain a personal touch which often the larger legal practices fail to achieve.  We feel that our people must provide a welcoming, educated as well as reliable point of contact for customers.

We take the view that developing a partnership with clients aids clearer communication which in turn allows us to create a better understanding of their objectives so that we successfully become an extension to the clients’ in-house resources.

We aim to motivate our customers to look at the way we communicate with them so that we can make sure we continue to maintain a competitive edge and provide them all with the very best possible levels of service.

We’ll be posting more about the launch event shortly, but the event went off smoothly, was well attended and Nicky only swore once or twice!

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