Public Policy Highlights April 2025 including Net Zero, Legal Aid and Human Rights

Throughout the year, the Law Society Policy team and its network of committee volunteers respond to a variety of consultations and comment on a range of Bills, helping to shape good law for the benefit of its members and in the public interest.

Legal Aid Inquiry Roundtable

Ahead of the deadline for submissions to the Scottish Parliament’s Civil Legal Aid Inquiry, the Law Society invited members of the Scottish Legal Aid community to an online roundtable to gather insight from solicitors at the coal face.

The number of legal professionals who attended at very short notice, was an indication of the depth of feeling about the issue. And the variety of legal backgrounds represented, demonstrated the breadth and scale of the issue with solicitors working in private practice, in-house, law centres and in academia contributing to the discussion.

The delegates discussed how legal aid rates are a very real and significant issue for solicitors dedicated to serving clients in need, but affected by the same market forces as any other Scottish business trying to pay the wages and stay afloat and how solicitors do not get paid for much of the work required of them in legal aid transactions.

From a client perspective, the current rules around eligibility are overly complex and can exclude some types of actions altogether. The eligibility criteria has also not been updated in at least a decade, with the net effect being that people are not qualifying for Legal Aid despite being in extreme financial difficulties.

Solicitors reported processes and platforms which are slow, cumbersome and unfit for purpose, random restrictions on important practices such as client contact and accounting practices which leave Legal Aid practitioners uncertain of when they might expect to be paid and with sometimes crushing cashflow issues.

The member views shared at the roundtable were reflected in the Law Society’s response to the Scottish Parliament’s Civil Legal Aid Inquiry.

Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee and Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee Debate: The Aarhus Convention and Access to Environmental Justice

The Law Society’s Environmental law Committee and Access to Justice committees commented on the Aarhus Justice Convention and Access to Environmental ahead of a joint committee debate in the Scottish Parliament.

The submission notes Aarhus’s requirement that access to justice be fair, equitable, timely, and not prohibitively expensive and calls to broaden the scope of legal aid to include group actions (charities, groups, communities) which are not currently covered.

The Law Society Finding civil legal aid representation is becoming increasingly difficult. If we then consider cases outwith the central belt, and those focusing on specialised areas of law, this becomes even more challenging. An example of this can be seen in environmental cases where, anecdotally, there’s a real struggle to find legal aid solicitors in Scotland who will accept environmental (and related planning law) cases. Effective access to justice requires attention to be paid to the formal procedures for resolving disputes, as well as timely access to expert advice. We consider a well-resourced and funded legal aid system vital to this. 

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