Justice in a Time of Austerity is a project about peoples’ experiences of the civil justice system after the 2013 legal aid cuts. It combines academic and journalistic research to better understand the experiences of people as they move through the justice system of England and Wales.

The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO) severely restricted the state provision of legal aid funding for civil justice. It has impacted on areas such as community care, debt, discrimination, employment, family, housing, immigration, mental health and welfare benefits.

Our research looks at whether these restrictions affects the fairness of the justice system by asking, how are people who use the justice system impacted by legal aid cuts? We will be talking to people who have relied on and/or been denied legal aid to draw out the human aspect of justice system.

• Justice in a Time of Austerity is a collaboration between Jon Robins of the Justice Gap and Dr Daniel Newman of Cardiff University supported by the City law firm Ashurst. Over the next 12 months Daniel and Jon will be reporting on the impact of the 2013 legal aid cuts

• Articles will appear here and on the LegalVoice site

As part of this project, we are also crowdsourcing stories from lawyers on the front line of the justice system, working in these areas. Crowdsourcing means that 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. (There is a second survey for non lawyers asking for peoples’ experience of the justice system, see here.)

We want to understand your experiences of the civil justice system. We want to know about the legal aid work you have done, the cases you might have been able to take, the clients you have worked for or the people you had to turn away.

If you have a story to tell about your experiences working in the civil justice system, please tell us about it by completing the follow form. You will be helping us to understand the impact of legal aid cuts and will be making sure that future discussing about civil justice are more fully informed about the reality of what it is like to use the justice system today.

Complete the survey here.