Survey to inform the Ministry of Justice’s Consultation

Our recent survey on fees was designed to gather data that partitions fee rates between public and private case funding and across the civil, criminal and family arenas. It was designed to help inform our response to the Ministry of Justice, which acknowledges that its proposals are based on very little hard data. But, we now have a few additional questions for you to consider which gave arisen from our analysis of the results received so far.

In these difficult financial times, it is quite clear that the Government is going to cut (or cap) the Legal Aid budget regardless of the strength of argument against such a move. So, the following handful of questions is designed to seek out alternative ideas for how the Ministry of Justice could save money without jeopardising the very access to justice the legal aid fund is supposed to support.

The other ways in which you can respond to the Consultation Paper are to:

• send us your written response
• send your written response direct to the Ministry of Justice.

	We will treat all information you provide on this questionnaire in the strictest confidence and nothing we publish will allow your individual responses to be identified. You may submit this information anonymously if you wish, but if you are willing to identify yourself please enter your name or JSP reference if you have one.
	Name: JSP reference: JSP/U
	What percentage of your workload is expert witness work? %
	What's your split between the 3 types of court (these should total 100%)?
	Civil %      Criminal %      Family %
	What's your split between these types of funding (these should total 100%)?
	Publicly funded cases %      Non-Publicly funded cases %
	Willingness to undertake publicly funded cases
	Have you stopped undertaking publicly funded work? Yes No n/a
	If so, why?
	If the Ministry of Justice implements their fee caps for experts undertaking publicly funded cases, would you stop taking on publicly funded work?
	Yes No n/a
	If so, based on your recent case load, how many cases a year would you turn away?
	Factors influencing your decision to take on expert witness work
	What factors affect your decision making on whether to undertake expert witness work that falls within your expertise?
	how the fee rate for expert work compares with other work I do
	how busy I am with other work
	likelihood of a court appearance
	danger of exposure to my professional regulator's competence procedures initiated by an aggrieved litigant
	other, please specify
	How else could the Ministry of Justice save money?
	In your experience as an expert witness, are there ways the Ministry of Justice could save money without resorting to their current plan of imposing arbitrary caps on expert witness fees? For example, we have anecdotal evidence of plenty of criminal prosecutions that have been taken forward by the Crown Prosecution Service on the basis of very weak expert evidence, only to be dropped once the defence expert witness report is received. Can you provide any examples where money is wasted in the current system?

	Send your response
	Click this button to send your response to us.
	If you wish to expand on any of your answers, please do so in a separate email to moj09@jspubs.com