About 75% of my time is taken up by either doing VAT returns, tax returns, or correcting the view held by the general public that we are all fat-cat lawyers (something which especially the print media and wider media in general seem to persist in believing too).
Frankly I'd have been better off going in for the whole corporate gig, if the experience of my friends with 9-5 office jobs, company Audi A6's and a pension is anything to go by.
Fees for criminal defence barristers are now paid directly by the Legal Services Commission. In anticipation of the change they closed many of the regional offices and opened one central office in London. With 4 members of staff.
Undeterred, they gamely batted away complaints of payments taking over a year with their spokesperson claiming that 95% of claims were paid within the target time of 3 months.
As your man on the ground I can confirm that this is complete and utter bilge.
The terms of credit for most businesses are 28 days. One might have thought that the government would be keen to assist what are essentially 8500 small businesses by trying to adhere to that timescale, but as I'm currently owed about £20000 in fees, many of which date back to last year, we can safely assume that this is not a priority.
Pulling out my handy yardstick, my fees clerk was on the phone to the LSC the other day chasing another late payment (I should say at this stage that criminal cases are divided into 3 thirds, and you are paid according to when the case is finalised). It seems there was a dispute about which "third" my case fell into. The exchange went something along these lines:
Clerk: But this is a final third case.
LSC: What's a third?
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