Unsurprisingly, this scenario is a lot more complicated than the guardian reported it.
I just started having a quick read through and the existing pay structure and even the proposed one are quite convoluted.
At the moment the basic fee for a guilty plea is £1,714, while the basic fee where there is no guilty plea is £2,856. See any conflict of interest here?
Then on top of this there are other various fixed fees and weightings per page of evidence, etc.
I’m not bothered about this enough to go through an do various experimental calculations. Would have been nice for the Guardian to have though?
From the existing fee structure, one could argue that there appears to be currently a perverse incentive for lawyers to persude guilty clients to plea not-guilty even with a weak case, which takes up court time and eventually lands their client with a heavier sentence.
