THE GOVERNMENT’S controversial changes to how criminal solicitors are paid for legal aid defence work were declared unlawful by the High Court today.

The Law Society took the Lord Chancellor David Gauke to court over the decision to reduce fees payable under the Litigators’ Graduated Fees Scheme (LGFS), which pays legal aid solicitors a fixed sum depending on the complexity of the case.

New regulations introduced last year have reduced the number of pages of prosecution evidence counting towards solicitors’ fees from 10,000 to 6,000, which the Law Society said  had left defence lawyers earning “up to 37 per cent less for some large cases” for the same amount of work.