Canadian (Barrister and Solicitor) here.
In the province in which I reside and mainly practice, Legal Aid pays about 1/3 to 1/4 of the average private commercial rate and, taking into account their hourly caps, closer to 10% to 15%.
That is fine if you take the approach that those hours and staff resources are donations (without the tax deduction) but you are better off working at McDonalds than filling your practice with Legal Aid files, if for no other reason than the absence of reputational, financial, and regulatory risk. You're starting to see people being convicted in the Provicial Court despite a thorough and therefore grossly undercompensated Legal Aid-funded defence, appealing their conviction on the basis of ineffective representation, and then defence counsel has to trot over to the Court of King's Bench and explain why he didn't do a shitty job of defending his client notwithstanding whatever Legal Aid-appointed appellate counsel claims he did or didn't do. And if the appeal is successful, maybe then he gets a phone call from the provincial Law Society.
All for a $40,000 sexual assault that the lawyer was paid $8,000 for and probably now can't afford a lawyer to represent him in his disciplinary hearing.
So my approach to Legal Aid is simply this: I don't take Legal Aid, and instead pursue a mixed general practice. I live in a very small city and there is high demand for lawyers.
Apparently the Legal Aid program in Britain is in even worse shape than in this province.
So really, why not just say "no" to Legal Aid?