We are very pleased to announce that the Criminal Team at Fieldings Porter Solicitors have been graded as category 1 by the Peer Review Team of the Legal Services Commission in October 2012. 16 files were assessed as part of this mandatory exercise that takes place approximately every 5 years. We were classed as excellent, the highest of 5 categories available and are part of the top 3% of firms in the country who have achieved this scoring. Craig Morris, head of the team reflects on this: 

“Many firms including some local practitioners have in recent years shied away from legal aid work – in some cases dropping it all together. At Fieldings Porter we have served the people of Bolton for over 140 years and our ethos is simply that there is no point being in business unless we continue to represent as broad a client base as possible. To this end we took a positive decision over 10 years ago now, despite falling rates of remuneration in publicly funded work, to expand our representation of legal aid clients, particularly in the areas of Housing, Family and Crime. 

Through internal organic growth combined with external recruitment we feel that we have over that time developed into a firm that deserves to be classified as one of the highest quality of legal aid practices in the North West of England. We are delighted that that external assessor appears to share our view that we offer an excellent service to our criminal clients."

This assessment process involved a forensic review of 16 individual cases selected randomly by the Assessor whose comments included the following : 

“ this magistrates court file was detailed and well prepared in every respect - it simply could not be faulted” 

“ the file was uniformly excellent and the level of compassion and client care could not be bettered” 

“the file was excellently handled both throughout the Magistrates and Crown court . . . it was hard to see what other work could have been done” 

“A basis of plea was agreed at trial for this very difficult client by the advocate, who kept her nerve, even while the client appeared to be re-offending during the pre trial discussion and was thus being threatened with new charges” 

Craig adds, "The challenge for us now as a firm is to uphold these standards in the future with further attacks being made upon publicly funded work. We are confident that we are as well placed as a firm could be to meet that challenge, given the qualities possessed by the lawyers working in the practice that have been highlighted by this external review.”

If you require any legal advice, please contact the Crime Department on: 01204 540900 or 07786655345