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When the custody officer asks whether you want a solicitor, most people say yes and take whoever is sent. Very few know who that will be.
If you ask for the duty solicitor, you are not choosing a lawyer. You are accepting whoever is next on the duty rota for that police station at that hour, from whichever firm of criminal solicitors holds that slot. The person who arrives may be a solicitor. They may equally be a police station representative, accredited to advise at the police station but not a qualified solicitor. You will usually meet them for the first time minutes before the interview, and they will know nothing about you or your case until then. They will often have a limited window to advise you, because their duty rota slot covers other detainees, and sometimes other police stations, at the same time. That commercial pressure limits the advice you receive at the first, and arguably the most important, stage of your case. The same applies whether you take the duty solicitor or ask for a named lawyer who works under a legal aid contract.
I have sat on both sides of a police interview, as a prosecutor reviewing the file it produced and as the solicitor in the room. The interview is where the prosecution's case often takes its shape: what is said, what is not said, and how it is put. This guide explains what the duty solicitor scheme actually provides, how to ask for your own solicitor instead, and what a private criminal defence firm does differently before, during and after the interview. It is written for anyone who has been arrested or invited to a voluntary interview, and for the families and employers trying to help them.
A duty solicitor is a criminal defence solicitor on a rota run under the Legal Aid Agency's duty solicitor scheme, who provides advice at the police station and in the magistrates' court to people who have not named a solicitor of their own. Duty solicitors are criminal defence solicitors working in the crime team of firms that hold a legal aid crime contract with the Legal Aid Agency; they are not employed by the police, the court or the Crown Prosecution Service.
Three features of the scheme matter more than any other, and most people have never been told them.
The rota decides who you get. When you ask for the duty solicitor, the duty call goes to whoever holds that police station's slot on the duty rota at that time. It is the luck of the draw: a different hour, or a different police station, and you would have a different firm, from different offices, and a different person. Nobody has looked at your case, your profession or the allegation before deciding who should advise you.
The person in the room may not be a qualified solicitor. The duty solicitor on the rota must hold the duty solicitor accreditation under the Law Society's criminal litigation accreditation scheme, but the work at the police station can be carried out by an accredited police station representative working under that solicitor's supervision. Representatives are trained and accredited for police station work, and can give independent legal advice and assist you in interview. They are not qualified solicitors, and few people think to ask which they have been sent.
The fee is fixed. Legal aid pays the firm a fixed fee for a police station case, however long the work takes. The next section explains what that means for you.
The duty scheme exists to provide free legal advice to anyone held at a police station, and that matters. It is worth being clear, though, about what the money pays for, because the money shapes the work. Legal aid pays the firm a fixed fee for each police station case. The fee is the same whether the lawyer spends two hours on your case or twenty, and it rises only if the work crosses an exceptional threshold. A duty firm that spends an extra evening analysing your disclosure, chasing CCTV or drafting representations to the CPS is, in most cases, doing it for nothing.
So the system builds in no reward for the proactive work that can see cases dropped. Legal aid does now allow some pre-charge engagement work to be claimed, but at legal aid rates and subject to its own conditions, and in practice it is rarely done. The commercial model is volume: attend, advise, interview, move on to the next custody suite. Duty slots on the rota can mean one lawyer covering several stations in a shift, often overnight, with other detainees waiting. The time you get is the time the rota allows.
That is why so many people are told, after a duty interview, to go home and wait to see what the CPS decides. Waiting costs a duty firm nothing. It can cost you your case. We explain why in our guide to the advice that ends careers.
Many people assume the person who walks into the consultation room is a solicitor. Often they are not. Police station work can be done by accredited police station representatives, who have passed the Police Station Representatives Accreditation Scheme but are not qualified solicitors. They are trained for custody work and are entitled to advise you, but they have not qualified as lawyers.
Many criminal solicitors also use agents: freelance accredited representatives, paid per attendance by the firm, who cover police station calls the firm's own staff cannot reach. An agent may advise you, sit with you in interview, and then hand a note back to a firm whose solicitors you never meet. Nothing about that is unlawful, and some agents are very experienced. It is not, however, what most people think they are getting when they ask for a solicitor. You are entitled to ask the person in front of you whether they are a solicitor, and which firm they act for.
Advice at the police station under legal aid is free and is not means-tested. That is true whether you take the duty solicitor or name a firm yourself, as long as that firm holds a legal aid contract. Asking for "your own solicitor" does not, on its own, mean you are getting private representation. If the lawyer you name works for a legal aid firm, the case runs on the same fixed fee, under the same pressures, as the duty scheme.
Private lawyers are not free. You instruct them, or a family member instructs them on your behalf while you are in custody, and they are paid on terms agreed in advance. That is precisely what buys the difference: time before the interview, a qualified solicitor in the room, advice without time pressure at the most important stage of the investigation, continuity after it, and proactive work aimed at stopping the case rather than processing it. When a firm is paid for the case rather than per attendance, the time it gives the case is set by what the case needs.
| Duty solicitor | Lex Vindico Group | |
|---|---|---|
| Who attends | Whoever is next on the rota, who may be an accredited representative rather than a solicitor | A qualified solicitor from our firm |
| How they are chosen | By the rota, not by you | By you, for your case |
| Before the interview | Usually meets you for the first time at the station | Prepares with you in advance wherever there is time, particularly for a voluntary interview |
| Disclosure and strategy | Worked out at the station, often against the clock | Analysed before the interview, with the strategy agreed with you |
| After the interview | Depends on the firm and on what legal aid will fund | We stay with the case through bail or release under investigation and up to the charging decision |
| Pre-charge representations | Not routinely part of the duty service | A core part of our work |
| Employer, regulator and press | Outside the scope of police station advice | Planned alongside the criminal case |
| Funding | Legal aid, fixed fee per case | Private, on terms agreed with you |
The right to legal advice comes from section 58 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. A person arrested and held in custody at a police station is entitled, on request, to consult a solicitor privately at any time, and the police must allow it as soon as practicable. PACE Code C requires the custody officer to inform you of the right, and prohibits officers from doing or saying anything to dissuade you from exercising it. The same right applies at a voluntary interview under caution.
The right is to consult a solicitor, and it includes the right to ask for a particular solicitor. You do not have to accept the duty solicitor. You can give the custody officer the name of a solicitor or firm, and the police pass that request to the Defence Solicitor Call Centre, which contacts your chosen solicitor on your behalf. If you are not sure whom to name, a family member or colleague can contact a firm for you, and that firm can contact the police station directly.
Rarely. Under section 58(6) and (8), delay is permitted only for an indictable offence, on the authority of an officer of at least the rank of superintendent, on specific grounds such as interference with evidence or the alerting of other suspects. You must be told why, and in any case you must be allowed to consult a solicitor within 36 hours. Separate rules apply to terrorism and national security detentions.
For minor offences and some less serious offences, for example being disorderly, or other matters that are not indictable, the call may be routed to Criminal Defence Direct, which advises by telephone only. If you have been offered telephone advice and the matter is more serious than it has been described, say so, and ask for a solicitor to attend.
At the police station, the officer decides how much of the evidence to disclose before the interview, and it is often very little. A solicitor meeting you for the first time at the custody desk has to take your account, assess the disclosure, advise you on whether to answer questions, give a prepared statement or remain silent, and sit with you through the interview, often within an hour or two and sometimes in the middle of the night.
Where you have instructed your own solicitor, particularly for a voluntary interview arranged days or weeks in advance, that work can be done properly. Your account can be taken in full, your documents, messages and witnesses can be gathered, and the strategy for the interview can be agreed before you arrive. We set out what that preparation involves in our guide to practical steps before an interview under caution, and how the central decision is approached in our guide to no comment or a prepared statement.
What is said in a police station interview cannot be taken back once the recording stops. That is why we think the decision about who advises you should be made deliberately, and not by default at the custody desk.
Most cases do not end at the police station. Suspects are released on bail, sometimes with bail conditions, or released under investigation, for weeks or months while the police gather further evidence. That period is where the evidence can still be shaped: medical records, CCTV, messages, witness accounts and expert evidence can be secured, and the case can be put to the decision-maker before anyone decides to charge.
That work is the centre of what we do. Through written pre-charge representations, we put the evidence and the legal analysis to the police and the Crown Prosecution Service before a charging decision is made. Whilst some duty solicitors may advise clients simply to wait and see what the CPS decides, we do not wait: the period before charge is where the most can be done. We explain the difference between the two forms of release in our guide to released under investigation and conditional bail.
Many of our clients come to us after a duty interview, once the adrenaline has gone and they realise how little was explained. You can instruct a private solicitor at any point, and the switch is simple. We obtain the custody record and what was disclosed, review what was said in interview and what was not, and assess honestly where that leaves you. If the account given needs to be corrected or completed, there are ways to do it. If further interview is planned, we prepare you for it properly.
Then we do what the duty system is not paid to do. We secure the evidence, raise lines of inquiry with the officer, and put written pre-charge representations to the police and the CPS before a charging decision is taken. If a charge has already been brought, our work continues: we seek a review of the charging decision and, where the evidence does not support it, a discontinuance. The interview may have been yesterday. The decision about your case has not been made yet.
Anyone can, and anyone may name their chosen solicitor at the police station. It matters most where the consequences of the allegation reach beyond the criminal case:
Yes. You are not tied to the duty solicitor or to the firm that advised you at the station. You can instruct a private solicitor at any point: before a voluntary interview, after an arrest, while on bail or under investigation, or after charge. The earlier you do so, the more there is that can be done, and a change is easiest before a charging decision has been made, because a private lawyer can dedicate time to your defence at the pre-charge stage.
The duty scheme also runs in the criminal courts: there is a court duty solicitor scheme in the magistrates' court. If you make your first appearance at court without a solicitor, for example after being charged and kept in custody overnight, the court duty solicitor on the rota that day can represent you at that hearing, including on bail. Court duty solicitors are, like police station duty solicitors, whoever is on the rota that day, and they are meeting you for the first time. The service is not means-tested at that first hearing, but it is limited to it: for the next hearing and the rest of the case, you need legal representation of your own, whether funded by a representation order, which is subject to a means test, or privately, and that includes any case sent to the Crown Court.
If you are charged, the first hearing is often where bail and the venue are decided. A solicitor already instructed on the case, who knows the evidence, can arrange representation at that hearing and complete the paperwork in advance, rather than leaving it to the court duty rota.
To qualify as a solicitor today, a candidate usually completes a degree or equivalent, passes the Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE1 and SQE2), and completes two years of qualifying work experience. To join the duty solicitor scheme, a qualified solicitor must then complete a further accreditation in police station and magistrates' court work, and the whole route typically takes several years. Police station representatives, by contrast, do not need to be solicitors at all. Duty solicitors operate across England and Wales, available 24 hours a day, and they can also guide people on whether they are eligible for legal aid for court representation. The court duty solicitor scheme runs alongside the police station scheme, and court duty work is usually done by the same criminal defence solicitors.
Where someone has already been charged, the analysis does not stop. We put the same analysis to the prosecution and seek a review of the charging decision and, where the evidence does not support the charge, a discontinuance, rather than waiting to win at trial. We explain how charging decisions are made in our guide to how the CPS decides to charge.
We are a private criminal defence firm, and our criminal defence team and criminal law practice represent individuals across England and Wales, including regulated professionals, business owners and public figures. When we are instructed:
No solicitor can promise an outcome, and we do not. Our work is paid for privately, and the time we give a case is set by what the case needs, not by a fixed fee. What we can tell you in advance is who will be in the room, and the work that will be done before and after it.
If you have been invited to a voluntary interview, or someone close to you has been arrested, speak to us before the interview takes place. You can ask the custody officer for Lex Vindico Group by name.
The duty solicitor on the rota is a qualified solicitor holding the duty solicitor accreditation, but the person who attends you at the police station may be an accredited police station representative working under their supervision. Representatives are accredited for police station work but are not qualified solicitors. You are entitled to ask who is advising you and in what capacity.
Yes. Tell the custody officer the name of the solicitor or firm you want. The police pass the request to the Defence Solicitor Call Centre, which contacts your chosen solicitor for you. A family member or employer can also contact a firm on your behalf.
It depends on what is at stake. A private solicitor is chosen by you, can prepare before the interview and stays with the case afterwards, including through the period before any charging decision. Where the allegation is serious, or a career, a regulator or a reputation is involved, those differences matter most. No solicitor can guarantee an outcome.
Advice from the duty solicitor at the police station is funded by legal aid, so there is no charge to you. What is funded is the police station work, paid to the firm as a fixed fee per case.
A voluntary interview is still an interview under caution, and what you say can be used in evidence. It is arranged in advance, which makes it the clearest case for instructing a solicitor of your choice and preparing properly before the day.
Only in limited circumstances. For an indictable offence, a superintendent can authorise a delay on specific grounds set out in section 58 of PACE, and you must be told why. Even then, you must be allowed to consult a solicitor within 36 hours.
No. Asking for legal advice is a statutory right, it is recorded as such, and the police are not permitted to discourage you from exercising it.
Lex Vindico Group is regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. We represent individuals nationally across England and Wales in criminal, regulatory, and parallel-proceedings defence at every stage: our work starts at the pre-charge stage and continues through charge, trial and appeal.
This article is written by Akram Mula, LLM, Solicitor Advocate and CPS-approved Prosecutor, founder of Lex Vindico Group. It is general legal information about legal advice at the police station in England and Wales, not legal advice on any specific case. For advice on your specific circumstances, contact our team directly.
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