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A new Bar Council report has warned that family legal aid is becoming unsustainable, with many barristers saying they would leave publicly funded work “in a heartbeat” if they were able to do so.
The report, System overload: a report into family legal aid, examines the impact of three decades of fee erosion on family barristers and the knock-on consequences for vulnerable clients and the family justice system. It concludes that without urgent intervention, access to justice in legally aided family cases is at serious risk.
Family legal aid fees are now worth around half of what they were in 1996. Based on interviews with 100 family barristers, the research paints what the Bar Council describes as a “stark and vivid picture” of a profession under extreme financial and emotional pressure.
Barristers reported working unsustainable hours simply to remain afloat, with 70-hour weeks described as routine. Several said that once preparation time was factored in, they were earning the equivalent of less than the minimum wage. One barrister with over a decade of experience reported taking home around £7 per hour for a 15-hour case, while others said they were effectively working for free.
The report highlights how low pay forces barristers to take on excessive caseloads, increasing the risk of burnout and undermining their ability to properly support clients at critical moments, particularly in cases involving children and domestic abuse.
One barrister told researchers: “The only way we can keep the show on the road, in other words to safeguard the children who are at the heart of everything we do, is to work more hours for less money.”
Others described using private law work to subsidise their legal aid practice, while many said they were actively planning to leave legal aid altogether. As one interviewee put it: “Many people would leave in a heartbeat if they could.”
The report also draws attention to poor court conditions, with barristers describing dilapidated buildings lacking basic facilities such as drinking water, heating, wheelchair access or adequate private spaces. Several respondents linked these conditions, combined with workload pressures, to serious impacts on their physical and mental health.
Bar Council Chair Barbara Mills KC said the findings showed a system “on the brink”, warning that barristers are being driven out of publicly funded family work at a time when demand for representation is acute.
“The people working within the system are collapsing,” she said. “It is unacceptable that family barristers are unable to support themselves and are being driven away from the profession.”
James Roberts KC, Chair of the Family Law Bar Association, said the report would make “depressing reading” not only for practitioners but also for their clients, many of whom are among the most vulnerable in society. He warned that without urgent investment, the experience needed to conduct sensitive family law cases would be lost from the legal aid system altogether.
The Bar Council is calling for:
• an immediate uplift in family legal aid fees
• a comprehensive review of family fee schemes to reflect the modern nature of the work
• the establishment of an independent pay review body
• public funding for legal representation in all family proceedings where domestic abuse is a factor
The report concludes that unless conditions improve, family cases will increasingly be compromised either by a shortage of available barristers or by a justice system too under-resourced to function effectively.
Read the full press release here.
