Droughts and Deserts: immigration legal aid in UK social policy

高质量、免费的法律咨询对于确保寻求庇护的人得到他们所需的保护至关重要；确保任何公共服务具有成本效益和足够的质量也符合公众利益。法律援助从业员和组织是满足这两种利益的唯一机制。我的博士研究问题是‘庇护和移民法律援助服务市场的供应方发生了什么？’我博士后工作的核心项目是过渡到社会政策领域，利用我研究的见解来影响政策和实践，并推动它们的进一步研究。大量审查得出结论，很难理解法律援助工作中成本、法律复杂性和质量之间的关系，包括卡特法律援助审查(2006年)、基本法律援助审查(2004年委托进行，但从未发表：见Flood and Whyte 2006)，凯普和穆尔黑德提交给法律服务委员会的关于需求驱动因素的报告(2005)，下议院宪法事务特别委员会(2007年)和包括社会法律学者在内的学术作者(Moorhead，2004年；Goriely，1998)和经济学家(Bevan，1996；Gray等人1999；Fenn等人2007)。我的社会科学和法律培训相结合，使我能够将经济学和社会政策的概念应用到复杂的法律问题上，从而促进对需求、供应、质量和财务可行性问题的更有力和细致入微的理解，这些问题在这些对系统碎片的审查中一直被遗漏。在我的博士学位中，我构思了术语“建议枯竭”，指的是似乎有足够供应的领域，但实际上存在能力危机，部分原因是司法部和法律援助署误解了这个市场的需求和供应。我的博士学位提供了在语境中理解这些概念的新模型。与此同时，有证据表明，市场的整体质量正在下降，形成了一个“柠檬市场”(Akerlof 1970)，这保护了劣质供应商的市场地位，并在质量、财务可行性和客户获得咨询之间产生了明显的冲突。把“柠檬市场”比喻成法律援助是我论文的另一个创新之处，它为法律援助的质量问题提供了一个清晰的解释。英国下议院公共账目委员会(2015)严厉批评法律援助机构未能理解这一问题。这项奖学金将使我能够过渡到研究职业，集中这些技能，专注于影响社会政策。该奖学金的第一个要素将是与一系列非学术合作伙伴合作，通过一个以实践为重点的横向网络传播对法律援助市场的见解，并使用变革理论方法来制定明确的目标和途径，从而增强我的研究的影响力。这将与我现在通过Joseph Rowntree慈善信托基金资助的一个倡导项目开发的“垂直”或面向政策的网络相结合。第二个要素是建立一个出版记录，以传播我的论文发现，建立我的学术网络，并巩固我不断发展的学术形象。第三个要素是一个自给自足的补充性研究项目，将现有研究结果与苏格兰的情况进行比较，苏格兰在同一庇护法律制度下实行不同的法律援助制度。这将为现有的发现提供重要的新见解，并为适用于整个英国大陆的进一步研究提供坚实的基础。这些元素中的每一个都将提供给第四个元素：资助研究补助金申请，包括ESRC的新调查员计划，以促进我的学术研究生涯和这个重要但研究不足的社会和经济政策领域。

High quality, free legal advice is critical for ensuring that people seeking asylum receive the protection they need; there is also a public interest in ensuring that any public service is cost-effective and of adequate quality. Legal aid practitioners and organisations are the only mechanism through which both of those interests can be met. My PhD research question was 'What is going on in the supply side of the market for asylum and immigration legal aid services?' The core projects for my post-doctoral work are to transition into the social policy field, using the insights from my research to influence policy and practice and taking them forward with further research.Numerous reviews have concluded that it is difficult to understand the relationships between cost, legal complexity, and quality in legal aid work, including the Carter Review of Legal Aid (2006), the Fundamental Legal Aid Review (commissioned in 2004 but never published:see Flood and Whyte 2006), Cape and Moorhead's report to the Legal Services Commission on drivers of demand (2005), the House of Commons Constitutional Affairs Select Committee (2007) and academic authors including socio-legal scholars (Moorhead 2004;Goriely 1998) and economists (Bevan, 1996;Gray et al 1999;Fenn et al 2007). My combination of social scientific and legal training enables me to apply concepts from economics and social policy to complex legal issues in a way which facilitates more robust and nuanced understanding of issues around demand, supply, quality and financial viability, which has been missing from these reviews of fragments of the system.In my PhD, I conceived the term 'advice drought' for areas where there appears to be adequate supply, but there is in fact a capacity crisis, arising in part because the Ministry of Justice and Legal Aid Agency have misunderstood demand and supply in this market. My PhD offers new models for understanding these concepts in context. At the same time, there is evidence that overall quality in the market is being driven down, creating a 'lemon market' (Akerlof 1970) which protects the market position of poor-quality providers and creates an explicit conflict between quality, financial viability and clients' access to advice. This application of the 'lemon market' metaphor to legal aid was another innovative element of my thesis and provides a clear explanation of the quality problems in legal aid, which the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (2015) severely criticised the Legal Aid Agency for failing to understand.The fellowship will enable me to make the transition into a research career with a strong focus on influencing social policy, drawing together these skills. The first element of the fellowship will be working with a range of non-academic partners to enhance the impact of my research by disseminating the insights into the legal aid market through a 'horizontal', practice-focused network and using a Theory of Change approach to develop clear goals and pathways. This will mesh with the 'vertical' or policy-facing network which I am developing now through an advocacy project funded by Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.The second element is building a publication track record to disseminate the findings of my thesis, build up my academic network and consolidate my developing academic profile. The third element is a self-contained complementary research project comparing the existing findings with the position in Scotland, which operates a different legal aid regime within the same asylum legal system. This will contribute important new insights to the existing findings and also provide a solid foundation for further research applicable across mainland Britain.Each of these elements will feed into the fourth:funding applications for research grants including the ESRC's New Investigator scheme in order to take forward both my academic research career and this vital, but under-researched, area of social and economic policy.