Tonight we will be going here to say tara and thanks to Steve who is leaving us after 6 years. I am sure that I can pass on your good wishes too and would join with me in making public our gratitude for all those years of sterling work.

All the best from all at JRS.

We are doing 4 more Friday webinar sessions in July starting with the introduction to the Civil Bid Round 2010 mentioned in the post below. The other 3 topics are

The Crown Court Litigators Fee

Back to Franchising?

and

Business Planning - The Basics

The descriptive flyer is here. If you are interested you can down load this booking form.

I have had a quick first read of the Civil procurement proposals and have decided two things;

1 - I will do a webinar session on them a week on Friday - I like the way this form of training can be so reactive.

2 - We will do a more thorough 3-hour session in early September - I appreciate that this will overlap with the 6-week bidding window but courses in school holidays never seem to work

I wont steal my own thunder by giving chapter and verse here (long posts are dull too) except to say that there are not any major surprises, save the one below. It is a bit disappointing from a trainers point of view however, that certain key elements, which are the integrated A and B areas, what are the local minimum NMS volumes etc., are not reproduced at this time.

This section did however stand out to me - did anyone have a discussion about this at their consultation events?

5.20. Where the total number of matter starts requested exceed the volume available for the procurement area, we propose that new matter starts will be allocated to providers following a ranking exercise using selection criteria. Providers would receive matter start allocations in order of ranking up to the point where the available new matter starts were used up. The remaining lower ranked applicants would have their bid rejected.

Civil Bid Rounds 2010 consultation response is now out.

Off to read it now.

More later/tomorrow.

The LALY awards took place whilst I was away. Nice to see a North East firm, David Gray, get something.

Back from hols and in the office once again. Thanks to Andy for holding the fort last week.

Nothing much to report on so far so back to the built up admin for me. More later in the week.

Can't believe what I have just read on the LSC Web site headed "A new approach to quality assurance"

This seems to be a major shift in auditing by the LSC but I agree that there is no point in running two very similar Quality assurance standards along side each other (Lexcel and SQM).

However the indication that you will have to pay for the privilege seems a bitter pill to swallow. As reported on this very blog site I have recently passed my Lexcel Consultancy Accreditation. If any one wishes to discuss how the Lexcel process works especially the paying bit please give me a call. Also call me if you are interested in applying for the lexcel standard.

I will leave this one for Simon to get his teeth into when he returns, no doubt he will have a few words of wisdom on the subject.

Andy Bean

As per my entry on Wednesday you will now see on the LSC web site under "What's New" that the response to the Civil Bid Round 2010 consultation documentation is to be published "shortly".

Talk about non committal, If anyone knows what " shortly" means, one day? one week? then please let me know. Perhaps we should run a book on it and see who is the closest. 1st Prize - JRS Mouse Mat!

Andy Bean

Both myself and Steve are audit sitting today, something which we haven't done for some time, although in the last two days I have received two phone calls from different areas of the country stating that the firm has been notified of an audit date. The panic was evident as SQM requirements are tried to be recalled from the dark recesses of the suppliers mind.

The account manager at this audit indicates that the final paper for the Civil Bid round is presently been signed off and will be issued at the end of this month but might slip into early July. The feel seems to be that the commission will try their very best to keep to the set timescales.

Andy Bean

All quiet in the world of JRS although a number of queries with regard to the completion of Supervisor Declaration forms for both Family and Crime. If you have any problems completing these then don't hesitate to contact either myself or Steve.
 
Can I thank all those who have contacted our Middlesbrough office in order to pass on their best wishes on to Steve.
 
Andy Bean

Posting might be a bit thin here next week as I am away for a week. By way of reflecting my demob happy state of mind, the best I could come up with is this, from my O Level year, by the Motors:

Just done my first "on demand" Webinar. It was a 1-hour session on a specific topic with a single firm. Very interactive and more flexible than the fixed time sessions but apart from that much the same. I can see me doing more of this.

The debate about Legal Aid reform breaks out in the letters page of the Guardian.