Only solicitors with proved expertise in medical negligence cases will get legal aid funding for such claims in the future, under plans unveiled by Britain’s lord chancellor last week.

The UK government believes it is wasting millions of pounds a year on non-specialist lawyers who fail to deliver an optimum service in this complex area of practice. From August 1999, only law firms with a clinical negligence franchise from the Legal Aid Board will be funded by taxpayers for malpractice claims. Solicitors who are members of specialist panels run by the Law Society and Action for Victims of Medical Accidents and who prove specialist competence, will be eligible for a franchise.

Only 185 solicitors in a total of 131 firms in the United Kingdom belong to the specialist panels, raising fears that some parts of the country will have insufficient expertise. But the lord chancellor, Lord Irvine, said that specialist solicitors would be expected to travel to see clients if necessary, as many already do.

Medical negligence cases have a notoriously low success rate compared with other types of case. Nearly half of the cases in 1996-7 ended inconclusively, with no trial or settlement, but costing the taxpayer 14m [pounds sterling] ($22.4m) in legal aid fees, more than half the total 27m [pounds sterling] net cost of clinical negligence cases to the board. Only two of every five cases that went to trial or were settled out of court resulted in compensation for claimants.

The board believes that one reason for the high failure rate is lawyers’ lack of expertise. The move to specialisation is likely to mean more successful claims, bigger awards, and higher legal costs for the NHS. But this could be offset to some extent by plans to limit aid to applicants whose cases have a 75% predicted chance of success.