The research set out to explore the impacts of public service modernisation as these agendas were being experienced and the dilemmas that were being faced by professionals and volunteers providing legal services within Law Centres. The study was planned to take place in three stages, starting with a literature review and postal/electronic survey of Law Centre staff and volunteers in England (including management committee members/trustees) to obtain benchmarks for the second stage. This second stage was originally planned to involve sets of semi-structured interviews with between 30 and 40 staff and volunteers from a sample of Law Centres. Through this more qualitative approach the research aimed to obtain in-depth understandings to complement the quantitative data from the survey. The third and final stage would then involve focus group discussions to explore preliminary findings and test conclusions before completing the research and moving into the final dissemination stage. The original timeframe envisaged that this would all be completed by 2011.

In the event however, the start of the project was delayed due to circumstances beyond the team’s control. Although the research subsequently got back on track (albeit on a revised schedule, concluding in March 2012) the context was already changing rapidly. Law Centres were experiencing the impact of the implementation of funding changes including the uncertain outcomes of competitive tendering processes.

Following the election of the Coalition government in May 2010, public policy towards resourcing legal aid came under review, with new legislation being introduced, leading to further significant challenges for Law Centres, raising fundamental questions about their longer-term futures. The Law Centres’ umbrella body, the LCF (subsequently renamed the Law Centres Network), estimated that a significant proportion of Law Centres would have very uncertain futures. During the research period several Law Centres closed or reduced their operations, some staff members were made redundant and further financial challenges were being anticipated in the wake of more recent public expenditure decisions. Despite this, however, the annual report for 2010–11 (Law Centres Federation, 2011) was entitled ‘Weathering the Storm’, testifying to the LCF’s ‘optimism in the face of austerity’ together with their determination to safeguard services, despite these challenges. As the co-chairs’ concluded ‘Legal aid may be going, but our clients are not going to disappear. And nor are we’ (Law Centres Federation, 2011).

This changing and increasingly problematic context required some flexibility in the research strategy, as subsequent sections outline.