Interesting post yesterday from the Legal Action Group blog recalling the old legal aid picnic table logo, which was officially dropped more than a decade ago and yet is still perhaps the most familiar image associated with legal aid.
The LSC itself resurrected it – or a version of it – for the 60th anniversary two years ago. As LAG points out, the term “legal aid” itself was officially dropped when the Access to Justice Act 1999 came in, yet the attempted rebranding (CLS / CDS or just “public funding”) never caught on and the government and LSC quietly went back to referring to legal aid after a couple of years. For the profession and public, the term “legal aid” never went away. It may be over 60 years old*, but as a piece of branding summing up what we do, it has never been bettered. And neither has the logo – so, yes, bring back the picnic table.
*As an aside, there is an interesting quote from the Modern Law Review of 1950, in an article considering the passage of the 1949 Legal Aid and Advice Act, and its subsequent rather limited implementation. “The profession can take pride in the part in which it has played in a useful piece of social and legal reform. Unhappily, it seems the Act is to be one of the victims of the economy axe” has a certain contemporary resonance.
Legal Aid Handbook 
The picnic table logo is still used by the Scottish Legal Aid Board:
http://www.slab.org.uk/
Very true – and if you look on the websites of many Scottish law firms the logo is there, as it is displayed on their offices. No doubt it helps the Scottish public find a legal aid lawyer more easily – and helps legal aid lawyers market their services to the public too.
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