Robert Egerton - Legal Aid

The International Library of Sociology

LEGAL AID

Founded by KARL MANNHEIM

The International Library of Sociology

THE SOCIOLOGY OF LAW AND CRIMINOLOGY
In 15 Volumes

by
Robert Egerton

With a Preface by
A. L. GOODHART

First published in 1945

by Routledge

Reprinted in 1998, 2000, 2002
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Transferred to Digital Printing 2007

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

1945 Robert Egerton

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library

Legal Aid

ISBN 0-415-17743-X

The Sociology of Law and Criminology: 15 Volumes

ISBN 0-415-17832-0

The International Library of Sociology: 274 Volumes

ISBN 0-415-17838-X

Publisher's Note

The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent

The Lord Chancellor has recently appointed a committee under the chairmanship of Lord Rushcliffe "to inquire into the present facilities for giving legal advice and assistance to poor persons", and to make recommendations for "securing that poor persons in need of legal advice may have such facilities' at their disposal". It is unlikely that this committee will have issued its report before this book has been published, but even if it has done so, Mr. Egerton's work will not have lost anything in value for he has included in it much useful information, based on his own experience, which obviously cannot find a place in an official report. He has traced in detail the long and chequered history of legal aid in England, he has described the various systems now in force in other countries, and he has. analysed the system, or to be more accurate, the lack of system followed in this country. No one is better qualified than Mr. Egerton to paint an accurate picture of present-day conditions, in view of his experience as Registrar of the Cambridge House (Trinity Hall) Free Legal Advice Centre, which dealt with 4,367 new cases in 1943. Although the large proportion of these were concerned with matrimonial and landlord and tenant disputes in which money claims are rarely at issue, the Centre was able to recover more than,5,000 for applicants. This sum may not seem strikingly large, but when we translate it into human terms and realize that more than 4,000 poor people were given a fair chance to state their cases, we can understand how important this work has been.