How to tell a shining knight of a lawyer from an ambulance chaser?

The question takes us straight to this week’s reported news that Phil Shiner’s Public Interest Lawyers is having to close

Friends who have devoted selfless hours to helping asylum seekers for decades get upset when someone suggests that many such people game the system, knowing that they will be rejected as the economic migrants they really are. But a veteran civil liberties lawyer I also know quickly changed her tune when she started examining appeals in detail. There is a lot of abuse, she concluded.

Tricky, isn’t it? People fight for all sorts of rights and humane procedures, only to see them cynically abused by false claimants, wicked people smugglers and nimble-footed solicitors.

Continue reading...