Justice on the line? A comparison of telephone and face-to-face advice in social welfare legal aid

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact on legal advice of the major shift to telephone-only services in social welfare legal aid, which took place in April 2013. An empirical study comparing telephone and face-to-face advice reveals that face-to-face contact has considerable advantages in the advice interview. Based on interviews and observations with housing law clients, their lawyers and advisers, the findings of this qualitative study demonstrate that clients and lawyers often find it easier to express themselves and understand each other face-to-face. The face-to-face interview benefits from features including the stronger emotional connection between lawyer and client, non-verbal communication, more expansive conversation and the greater ability to consult and confer over documents. Telephone-only advice may be suitable for some more capable clients and uncomplicated matters, but this qualitative research shows that vulnerable clients are more likely to be adversely affected by the potential disadvantages of telephone-only contact. Clients with more complex social needs or with more serious or urgent cases are better served by face-to-face advice. The findings of this research should inform the LASPO review and future priorities for legal aid funding.

Keywords:

• Access to justice
• telephone advice
• legal aid
• lawyer–client relationship
• housing casework

Notes

1. See, for example, the Government Transformation Strategy (Cabinet Office and Government Digital Service, 2017).

2. In 2014, for example, HMRC closed all of its 281 local face-to-face enquiry centres to be replaced by a telephone service (which it was said could arrange home visits in appropriate cases) (HM Revenue and Customs [HMRC], 2013).

3. Under the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO), legal aid funding is only available for debt cases where someone’s home is at risk and for welfare benefits cases involving an appeal on a point of law. In education law, only special educational needs matters are still in scope. A new category of ‘discrimination’ law is the only aspect of employment law that remains funded. In housing law, eviction and possession, homelessness, hazardous disrepair and harassment remain in scope. These changes were predicted to result in a reduction of 59 per cent (£89 million) in social welfare legal aid (Low Commission, 2014).

4. With regard to the terminology used in this paper, ‘lawyer’ refers to staff that had ‘solicitor’ roles and ‘adviser’ refers to other caseworkers. The existing socio-legal literature refers mainly to the ‘lawyer–client relationship’. This and the term ‘lawyer’ have, therefore, been retained when citing the literature. However, 5 lawyers and 18 advisers participated in this research, so in the analysis of the data, the term ‘adviser’ is used generically to describe the legal personnel in this study. However, when quoting an individual, their citation indicates whether they are a lawyer (L) or an adviser (A).

5. Alfieri (1991), p. 2130) proposes ‘client-conducted interviewing, counselling, and investigation, or client-assisted negotiation and trial practice’.

6. In 2016–2017, there were 849 ‘other non-family’ provider offices doing work under legal help/controlled legal representation. This is a significant reduction from 2012–2013, when there were 1456 provider offices in this category (Ministry of Justice and Legal Aid Agency, 2017). Immediately following the LASPO reforms, 9 Law Centres and 10 Shelter offices closed, and Citizens Advice lost 350 specialist advisers (Justice Committee, 2015).

7. Four local offices in total: two in London and two in cities outside London. The CLA office was outside London.

8. Detailed information on the interviews and observations, including lawyer/adviser profiles and timings, is included in my PhD thesis (Burton, 2015).

9. My PhD thesis includes a full discussion of these issues (Burton, 2015).

10. It is difficult to be certain that verbal cues were not used, because, although few are noted down, their absence is not specifically noted either. It was, however, often the impression I was left with.

11. Recent figures released by the Minister of State for Courts and Justice have shown severe year-on-year reductions in the number of Debt advice calls to the CLA Telephone Gateway: In 2013–2014, there were 42,911 calls and 2398 referrals to CLA specialists. In 2016–17, there were 19,699 calls and 646 referrals (HC Deb 17 November 2017 cW). The falling take-up levels for telephone debt advice indicate that claims of greater accessibility are largely theoretical, when no action is taken to encourage public awareness of the service. This is a criticism that has already been made by the Justice Committee (2015).

12. Due to reporting system differences, which mean that the profile of face-to-face clients can include more than one disability, whereas telephone clients are limited to their main disability, it is possible that the proportion of telephone clients with an additional more minor mental health issue is under-represented in these figures. Nevertheless the difference is sufficiently great to suggest that, as also found in Balmer et al. (2012) clients with mental health problems are more likely to use face-to-face services.