In An observation of a domestic abuse fact finding hearing – a worrying vignette (over on the Transparency Project website) I wrote about what unfolded during a family court hearing I observed as a ‘legal blogger’.

An observation of a domestic abuse fact finding hearing – a worrying vignette

I think that anyone who is not familiar with the family court will have been shocked by some of what I reported there. But this post script is about another aspect of the family justice system which is also illustrated by that hearing. What I write about in this post script is not out of the ordinary: it is typical. It is not a bug, but a feature. This feature is hidden from view as a result of family court privacy, poorly understood by many, and easily ignored by those with the power to change things. It matters because legal aid lawyers are the oil that keeps the creaking family justice system moving. Without them, everything grinds to a halt. And children and victims of abuse are that little bit less safe. This post will make more sense if you read the main post first. As with the original post, although the trial took place almost 2 years ago, nothing has changed since (except the continued increase in the cost of living).

So, what about the mother’s barrister?

The mother’s barrister, who I’m calling Carrie, played an important part in the three day fact finding hearing I observed – both protecting and representing her own client (the mother), but also assisting the court and ensuring fairness for both parents (through her work both in court and in the waiting area) – to the overall benefit of Rashid, the child at the centre of the case. She was conscientious and hard working. In addition to dealing with a vulnerable client, who could only communicate with her via an interpreter, and cross examining a vulnerable witness on serious allegations of domestic abuse, Carrie also had to deal with the challenges arising from the QLR (the role of the QLR is explained in main post), whose presence made the hearing more difficult rather than more straightforward.

The fees for barristers undertaking this work are fixed fees (under a scheme called the Family Advocacy Scheme or ‘FAS’), and in this case the court order records with some precision how many hours were spent at court. As a result, it is possible to calculate exactly what Carrie was paid for the work she undertook – and to estimate her hourly rate. Before you read further, ask yourself this: what sort of hourly rate do you think a barrister, who has trained for several years to be able to represent vulnerable parents and children, is paid? What do you think they should be paid? Foor reference, the national living wage is £12.71 p/h and it applies to anyone over the age of 21.

Working out an hourly rate

The court order records that Carrie was at court from first thing each morning of the three day trial, that she worked through lunch and stayed after court each day to debrief her client – and that the hearing ran on until after 7.30pm on the final day. In addition to the 25.5 documented hours she spent at court, I know from my own experience that Carrie will have spent at least 8 hours reading the papers and preparing the case, ready to cross examine the father. (I sense checked this with other colleagues who all said ‘oh yes, at least 8 hours!’. In fact, Carrie candidly tells me that, because this was one of her first cases after starting out as a barrister, she in fact spent two full days i.e. 16 hours preparing, which is not surprising for an inexperienced barrister).

The order records that Carrie spent two hours preparing the draft order. Having seen that order, I can confirm it was lengthy and detailed and that two hours to prepare it is entirely reasonable. (This is a job that judges or Magistrates used to do themselves, but which the lawyers in the case are now expected to sort out in their own time – and because the father had no lawyer this will have landed on Carrie’s shoulders). In fact, Carrie told me that ‘I am sure I will have spent more than 2 hours drafting a 12-page order with all the detailed findings schedule but I did not want the correct longer times to be rejected [by the legal aid agency]’. Noting that recent judicial guidance optimistically suggests that orders can usually be drafted in an hour, she also told me that ‘I don’t know of anyone, junior or senior, who drafts a 12-page order plus schedule in 1 hour’. In fact, because this was a fact finding hearing, the recording of 2 hours for drafting will make no difference to the fee payable to Carrie – it would only have any possible impact at an interim hearing where the fee is based on units of 2.5 hours rather than a fee per day. There are all sorts of quirks in the fee scheme like this, which take some time to learn, so I’m not surprised Carrie got this confused. But the fact that she did not want to risk putting in a claim for the full time spent illustrates how self-employed lawyers have to continually balance rates of pay with cashflow risk. A barrister who is entitled to a particular fee may feel forced to bill conservatively in order to ensure speedy payment and sufficient cashflow to meet their business and household expenses, rather than pressing for the full amount owed due to the risk that this will delay payment on that case for months – and sometimes even years.

Finally, Carrie will also have had to report back to her instructing solicitor, which I’d estimate at an hour’s work. In total, by my calculation, she will have spent 36.5 hours working directly on this case, plus a minimum of two hours travel time, given the hearing was in central London – but because her chambers were also based in London, no fee can be claimed for travel). That is 38.5 hours worked (or in fact 46.5 based on her extra hours due to inexperience).

The daily fee for a hearing of this sort is £397.04. I can tell from the order that there is a one-off uplift of £159.30 payable, because the papers were over 350 pages. The total fee payable for a 3 day fact finding hearing will therefore be £1,350.42. This figure is a gross fee before expenses, tax and national insurance.[1]

If one just looks at the hours Carrie spent at court, that fee breaks down at an hourly rate of £52.95 p/h. But, since the fee theoretically covers all work done in connection with this hearing (there is no separate fee for preparation payable), this is not a fair calculation. If we use the figure of 38.5 hours spent on the case this brings the gross hourly rate down to £35.07 p/h (or @£29.04 based on the additional 8 hours prep). But even that is not really representative of actual income, because it’s paid gross and doesn’t account for expenses / the running costs of the business, or tax and NI.[2] As a rule of thumb, it’s reasonable to estimate that for every £1 gross income made by a barrister they only take home about 50p after tax and expenses. So Carrie probably earnt something like £675 net income (half the fee of £1,350.42). And that works out at £19.01 p/h (or an even worse £14.52 p/h including the extra 8 hours prepping).

Due to a quirk of the legal aid system (again: a feature not a bug), if Carrie’s papers had been 5 pages fewer than they were, the bundle uplift would not have been payable and her hourly rate would be more like £15.88 p/h(£12.81 p/h including the 8 extra hours).

What does this add up to?

The National Living Wage is £12.71 p/h. £19 p/h is a far cry from the stereotyped image of fat cat lawyers, but it is pretty representative of the reality for the majority of junior family legal aid barristers. There are swings and roundabouts of course – some cases will take less time to prepare and others will take longer. Public law (child protection) cases are slightly better paid on the face of it, but there the burden of unpaid work before and between hearings has expanded beyond all recognition to a far greater extent than in private law cases like this one (the issues relating to public law cases are a whole separate story, and I can’t tackle it here).[3]

You can find all the rates I’ve used to calculate the figures for Carrie here. If you are eagle eyed you will notice that the link is to a statutory instrument made in 2013, but in fact it is still current. That is because the rates of pay for family legal aid lawyers representing victims of domestic abuse have not changed since 2013, yet over the same period the cost of living has gone up by 49% and the value of the fee has reduced by the same percentage. There has been no adjustment for inflation at all.

In fact, it’s worse than that: whilst housing, immigration and criminal lawyers have all had increases in their fees in recent years, and whilst QLRs had a 10% uplift in May 2024, as at 2026 the rates for family legal aid work have not been increased for inflation for 30 years (not a typo). Nor has the payment structure been adjusted to reflect all the additional jobs that lawyers are now expected to do before or after the court day, which they are just expected to absorb – essentially further eroding their hourly rate and the value of their fee. In plain English, that’s more work for less money, year on year. Family legal aid barristers like Carrie are running longer and harder just to stand still.

The other important point is that, because Carrie is self-employed, she will only be paid this notional £19 p/h for the days she is actually working or in court. Self-employed barristers don’t get paid for days they do not work, i.e. for sickness or holiday, when they are on maternity leave or when they have to care for poorly children – and in most cases when a legal aid case they have prepared is cancelled or postponed at short notice they will be paid little or nothing to reflect the work they have done. They make their own pension contributions (if they have a pension at all) and can often wait months or years to be paid their fees or to be reimbursed their travel expenses. In 2025-6, as a result of a hack of the ancient Legal Aid Agency computer system, family legal aid barristers were not paid at all for 7 months.

The ‘VAWG’ Agenda

Tackling violence against women and girls is one of the Government’s key priorities. Almost every case a family barrister touches in the family court will involve issues relating to violence against women or children, and one of the main functions of the court is to protect those victims against further violence and harm arising from domestic abuse – many of them will wait for years for the criminal justice system to deal with their cases, which makes the family court even more essential. In disputes between parents almost all legal aid lawyers will be representing those victims. The role of a legal aid barrister like Carrie, representing parents and children whose lives are affected by domestic abuse, should be one which is recognised and supported. Without these lawyers the system would be less fair for everyone and less safe for the victims of domestic abuse. We need those dedicated, hard working junior barristers to choose this line of work and stick at it and to be paid enough for doing so that they don’t have to burn themselves out by taking on too many cases in order to meet their bills. It should be a no-brainer that they are paid a fee which reflects their training and expertise and the important role they play in this system.

What happens if barristers like Carrie decide it isn’t worth the stress, heartache and hard work to do this work through legal aid, and move to only accepting privately funded clients – or leaving family work or the law altogether? What if she decides that – now she has a baby who she cannot afford (or does not want) to keep in childcare until 7.30pm at night – she ought to earn her income some other way? This isn’t a hypothetical question. Those of us who have been around for a while see those decisions being made by more junior barristers all the time. Whilst it might not have started to bite in terms of overall numbers just yet, concern is growing that before long there won’t be enough experienced junior lawyers to replace those of us who will be retiring in the coming years. And who will protect the vulnerable and the victims of domestic abuse then?

Affecting people’s real lives

Again, this isn’t hypothetical – generally, or, as it turns out, for Carrie in particular. When I met her back in 2024, she was in her first weeks as a new tenant in chambers. In summer 2026 she has been self employed for 2 years and now has a young child. This is what she said to me – unprompted – when I went back to her recently to check some figures before publishing this post (note that when she talks about maternity leave this will have been unpaid leave):

“The unpaid aspect of FAS [the legal aid scheme in private law children] has really hit me hard in my transition back from maternity leave. For instance, I took my second case on from maternity leave when my daughter was 16 weeks old – a short hearing remotely. This was to go towards one of my ‘keep in touch’ days. I spent 3 hours of my sleep deprived time prepping – reading, drafting a Position Statement and draft order etc. On a personal note, I expressed milk and did a test run with my husband desperately trying to feed my daughter. Then, the next day, psyched myself up to spend more time away, only to be contacted by the court 3 hours early with instructions to join the hearing immediately. I was walking around the park with my daughter. I rushed back when I spotted the message and tried to join but the hearing had seemingly already been and gone as the court had brought the hearing forward by 3 hours after sending out the original notice of hearing with the later time on. I then spent the next few hours panicked, waiting for clarification, until I was told that the hearing went ahead without my client or me. I will get a cancelled hearing fee apparently [a cancelled hearing fee is less than £70 gross]. I then didn’t do a FAS case for a month and a half because I felt too much mum-guilt of being away from my daughter on that occasion for nothing. It really is woeful. 

A couple of days later, I then found myself having to pull an all nighter whilst exclusively breastfeeding to draft advice on appeal, grounds, skeleton etc for which I will probably get about £90. This was unavoidable and it was exhausting knowing I was working for a couple of pounds per hour, at best. 

Pre baby, I just absorbed this as part of our job but now it pains me to know how little I am paid sometimes to spend hours away from my new family.” 

It’s difficult to know what to say to this. It makes absolutely no sense for young barristers like Carrie – who should be the future of the profession – to stay. Young barristers like Carrie (and they are mainly women and often considering or juggling young families) are having to make these impossible choices between their own family and the families they went into this job to help every day. With every extra unpaid task and every percentage point drop in their real income due to inflation and need to do more unpaid work to be able to claim the same fee (fee deflation), more and more of them are going to choose what makes sense for their own family – a switch away from family legal aid work, or a job with a decent and reliable income and reasonable hours. And that will inevitably be at the expense of family justice and the families it serves. Particularly since it is the Carrie’s of today who we will need to handle the most complex family cases in 10 or 15 years.

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[1] For comparison, the QLR will have been paid a total of £721.16 for his work – had he been allowed the bundle uplift that fee would have been £1,157.90, and only £192.52 less than Carrie was paid for preparing and conducting the entire 3 day trial. However, it appears from the order that the bundle uplift fee was disallowed because the QLR hadn’t considered all the documents or asked questions about them. (See fees regulations for QLRs and add 10% as per the guidance, to see source of my calculations. All figures are gross.)

It’s worth noting that if the QLR had completed the cross examination properly on day 1, rather than having to come back on day 2 to have a second go, he would only have been paid £893.34. According to the magistrates’ facts and reasons, it appears he still didn’t do a good enough job on day 2, as the magistrates’ legal advisor had to complete the task.

[2] Most barristers will pay something like 20% of this gross income in ‘rent’ to chambers (essentially a service charge which funds barristers’ clerks and support staff), and will also have to meet travel, subsistence, training and other professional costs (e.g. indemnity insurance and a practising certificate) out of their gross income.

[3] Meanwhile, the average hourly rate for a lawyer in London varies from £146 to £579 per hour, though elite “Magic Circle” corporate firms frequently charge private commercial clients anywhere from £750 to £1,500+ per hour (says Google AI).

Other publicly available comparators are the guideline hourly rates for trainee solicitors and paralegals doing civil (non family) cases in London, which are £146-210 per hour. Whilst these are charge out rates for solicitors rather than barristers and for litigation type work rather than advocacy, and for civil rather than family work, the comparison is pretty stark.

What about privately paid barristers in family work? Barrister Connect suggests a fee of between £1,000 to £2,500 per day for representation by a barrister (without a solicitor) at a multi day family hearing, which is at least 3 x more than payable under legal aid. In my experience this multiple is sometimes as high as 10 x. Equality of arms?