Running parallel to the steady erosion, at least in England and Wales, of what we had come, perhaps complacently, to regard as an entrenched human right, the seminar series on which this book is based looked carefully and realistically at both sides of the issue: the shrinking availability of public funds and the practical possibilities of doing more with less. The volume seeks in particular to distinguish between those inroads into access to justice which are unacceptable on any principled view and those which are either unavoidable or at least negotiable. Wherever possible it does so, in contrast sometimes to central government, from an ascertained evidence base.