Mr Colin Stutt

Legal Services Commission

Colin Stutt is a barrister employed as a legal adviser to the Legal Services Commission (formerly the Legal Aid Board). He was called to the Bar in 1985 and had a general common law practice at the chambers of Ben Hytner QC before joining the Head Office of the Legal Aid Board in 1991. He works on both legal and policy issues and regularly acts as a spokesman for the Commission, and has had particular involvement in high profile cases, group actions, clinical negligence, the principles of funding, alternative dispute resolution and the European Convention on Human Rights. In relation to clinical negligence, he has been involved in drafting decision-making guidance, the introduction of procedures to restrict clinical negligence work only to high quality expert law firms and related reforms. He was responsible for drawing up the Funding Code, the rules under which the Commission now funds clinical negligence and other cases as part of the new Community Legal Service.