Legal aid costs

The legal aid bill continues to grow and is now at around $100 million.

Now the top legal aid earner was Kensington Swan at $2.2 million. But that could be for several dozen lawyers. Second top was a sole practitioner, Wellington lawyer Sonja Cooper who earnt $950,838.

Now they claim legal aid lawyers are only paid between $95 and $165 an hour. If so then Ms Cooper worked somewhere between 110 hours and 192 hours every week. As there are only 168 hours physically in a week, we assume it is not at the 192 end of the scale.

Maybe she has a lot of staff. Can’t find a website to check.