Last month LAG blogged that we should seek engagement with the new Lord Chancellor whilst keeping the placards on hold. The question following Michael Gove’s speech this morning is whether the agenda he sets out provides a window for engagement or a more sophisticated level of rhetorical hot air.   It is certainly refreshing to hear a conservative Lord Chancellor talk of tackling the “inequality” at the heart of our legal system, that Government must uphold both access to justice and the rule of law, and that big reforms are needed to both the civil and criminal systems to advance social justice. There is little in Gove’s analysis though of how justice fails for those without money.   Few can doubt his powers of literary description where he says “Were Mr Tulkinghorn to step from the pages of Bleak House or Mr Jaggers to be transported from the chapters of Great Expectations into a Crown Court today, they would find little had changed since Dickens satirised the tortuously slow progress of justice in Victorian times.” However, it will take more than good literature or grammar to solve the problems he has described.   The search for efficiency and online (or video and telephone) solutions are not new ideas – they have been part of the talk and policy agendas of reforming Lord Chancellors for two decades, likewise with clearing delays and paper backlogs, re-routing through more proportionate processes or ADR, and rationalising the Court estate. In many respects shrinking the physical justice estate through efficiencies has become part of the problem rather than part of the solution, as it means that the justice system has become more remote from local communities with higher travel costs for both lawyers and court users operating in more expensive centralised venues. It seems politicians want to showcase the cutting edge of “Legal London” but care little about what happens when the County and Magistrates courts close in unknown market towns, or when local lawyers or law centres shut up shop closing their doors to clients.   Gove  glosses over the full impact of LASPO – ‘change was required to save money’. His speech was focused on court users and not the hundreds of thousands who will never get to a court or tribunal hearing due to the LASPO cuts. One of his more specific solutions is around  securing more pro-bono help, but lawyers will legitimately ask why should they step into provide services for free that were previously funded by the state?   As a former Education secretary he should be aware of the need for public legal education, so that people can engage with the system more constructively – but public information and education about rights and responsibilities is strangely absent from the Gove wish list. The Lord Chancellor also needs to engage more in questions of what advice is needed, where in the system, for what, and at what level of quality. However successful the MoJ may be (and they will only be successful if they work constructively with the Judiciary) in re-engineering the courts through procedural and structural changes, digitalisation and simplification of dispute resolution, users will still need information and advice even for basic navigation of the system.