Justice in a Time of Austerity

Justice in a Time of Austerity is a project about peoples’ experiences of the civil justice system after the 2012 legal aid cuts – and we want your stories.

The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 severely restricted the state provision of legal aid for civil justice. The cuts have impacted on areas of publicly funded legal advice, such as:

• community care
• debt
• discrimination
• employment
• family
• housing
• immigration
• mental health
• welfare benefits.

Our research looks at whether these restrictions affect the fairness of the justice system by asking, 'how are people who use the justice system impacted by legal aid cuts?'

Tell us your story

We want to tell the stories of people who have relied on legal aid or been denied it to draw out the human aspect of justice system.

As part of this project, we are crowdsourcing stories from people who have found themselves in the justice system facing these kinds of issues. We are inviting contributions from anyone who thinks they have a story to tell that can help us to paint a picture of civil justice today.

Get in touch

We want to understand your experiences of the civil justice system. If you have a story to tell about your experiences with the civil justice system, please get in touch with Daniel:

Funding and partners

Dr Daniel Newman from the Cardiff University School of Law and Politics will be collaborating with Jon Robins of the Justice Gap. The project has been funded by Cardiff University and the City law firm Ashurst. Throughout 2018/19, Daniel and Jon reported on the impact of the 2013 legal aid cuts with regular articles available online.