Legal Aid Lawyers and the Quest for Justice

This book examines the state of access to criminal justice by considering the health of the lawyer—client relationship under legal aid. In the largest study of its kind for some two decades, ethnographic fieldwork is used to gain a fresh perspective upon the interaction that lies at the heart of the criminal justice system's equality of arms. The research produces two contradictory messages; in interview, lawyers claim a positive relationship with their clients while, under participant obse...