We have discussed this issue before.

Yesterday you should have received a letter about this. Now I'm not one to cast aspersions. I would bet good money however that it is likely that by now this correspondence is unread and filed someplace where it is never going to be. (We have just "market tested" this on two clients and that is precisely what has happened).

Cut to the chase. All criminal solicitors must register* to remain on the scheme by May Day.

If that is too techie for you find the letter and complete and send the attached form by Friday 28th April - May Day being a Monday and a bank holiday.

The nature of the reaccreditation scheme is yet to be finalised however this step is vital.

When I hit the dashboard please perform an emergency stop.

* You need to scroll down the page don't follow the blue links in the body text.

I don't want to treat this headline story flippantly though the temptation is obvious. I have to say that given the experience of the last two years I am not surprised.

A return to a "popular" subject as again I'm shouting at an (un)lucky bunch of lawyers this pm. Before that though I am having a long look at some of their files to give me a bit of ammo for the afternoon session.

This is becoming an increasing part of our work and so our team had a consistency day on Tuesday, rotating files and comparing views. We aren't too far off however we notice that we have individual nuances in our approach and in the detail of some of the conclusions. As we have said before though this type of assessment is fundamentally different to all others. Although SQM issues do impact on the process and one can never quite ignore contract compliance issues, judging, and scoring files on the basis of the quality of the job done is a very different beast. It is also a skill that supervisors must develop not least properly to undertake file reveiw.

Finally check the date of the linked post above - July 2005. It has taken nearly a year for most firms to wake up to this if you haven't yet - WAKEY WAKEY!

Below we run a guest post from IT firm Afentis. In the past we have run short pieces by other organisations such as the Institute of Prison Law and we regularly post info from our friends at the LAPG and CLSA.

With traffic through the site increasing and to break the tedium of endless posts by me about depressing subjects this is something we would like to expand. So here is an open invitation to anyone out there if there is something you would like to plug, get off your chest have a rant about just e-mail us and so long as its legal we'll publish it.

In the alternative use the comments boxes.

IT Forensic specialists Afentis have published the slides from their recent seminar into advances in cyber-crime and how the legal community are shaping up to deal with ever increasing numbers of digital evidence exhibits. Confused about the black art of data recovery or how criminals are tied to the scene of the crime with cell site analysis? This material is a digestible, jargon free, introduction to this field – information that needs to be high on the radar of today’s criminal defence solicitor.

As the LAPG point out the LSC have announced their CLS strategy. Central to this are CLACs and CLANs. None the wiser? read on....

The Legal Aid Practitioners Group today commented as follows on the CLS
Strategy published by the Legal Services Commission.

Positive elements

Director Richard Miller said, "There are some positive elements in this
paper. We welcome the commitment to independent, specialist advice. The
principle of better co-ordination of funding and of services is a good
one. And we believe that CLS Direct is worth expanding, so long as this
is not at the expense of face to face services, which are still clearly
many clients' preferred or only realistic method of getting the help
they need. But there is much to cause concern, particularly the
abandonment of the idea of piloting new initiatives."

CLACs and CLANs

LAPG vice-chair Stephen Hewitt said, "The draft strategy on which the
LSC consulted used the word 'pilot' 37 times. The final strategy does
not use the word at all. The LSC has quite unreasonably taken support
for pilots as proposed in the consultation, as support for the system of
CLACs to be rolled out without any piloting. This is no way for a public
body with a duty to consult to operate."

LAPG was one of the respondents to support piloting CLACs and CLANs.
Richard Miller said, "If you were starting from scratch, the CLAC and
CLAN models would be very good. But we are not starting from scratch,
and there are many risks in getting from where we are to where the
strategy proposes we should go. We do not know if local authorities will
co-operate. We do not know if the Centres can be set up at reasonable
cost. We do not know whether suppliers will be willing and able to work
in the way proposed. We do not know whether clients will in practice be
able to get the help they need when they need it at a Centre. And in
testing all of this out, there is a real risk that existing good
suppliers will be damaged. This is why we supported the proposal for a
pilot, in order to plot a sensible course from where we are to where we
want to be. We have never offered support for an untested roll-out."

Reliance on telephone services in rural areas

There is a further concern about the decision to withdraw face to face
services from rural areas, and to require clients to rely on telephone
services. Richard Miller said, "The extent to which a client can rely on
a telephone service depends, among other things, on the nature of the
problem, the complexity of the issue, the volume of documentation
involved, and the characteristics of the client. It does not depend to
the slightest extent on whether the client lives in a rural or an urban
area. To say that clients living in rural areas can rely more heavily on
telephone services is irrational."

Contradictory proposals

The Group is also critical of contradictions as to the future of family
suppliers. Miller said, "The Strategy says that when commissioning
services, the LSC will 'work to ensure that services are provided in an
integrated way that reflects clients' needs. This means services that...
are delivered across different categories of law (including linking
social welfare law to family and crime).' It goes on to say that 'Family
law contract holders may also hold social welfare contracts but it is
likely that there will not always be a sufficient volume of funded work
to allow or require every family supplier to do so.' Then it continues,
'Where a [CLAC] is successful, we may restrict the social welfare
contracts given to other family suppliers.' I am insufficiently fluent
in doublethink to be able to work out from this what our members who do
family law and other social welfare law services should plan to do if a
CLAC is set up in their area. There is a high probability that these
contradictions will lead to lawyers the Commission still needs
abandoning social welfare law contracts at the first available
opportunity, to the significant detriment of clients."

Money

Stephen Hewitt concluded, "The bottom line is that without new money, no
strategy is going to help deliver more and better legal advice to the
public. At the very least, there will be significant transitional costs
in moving to new ways of working, which cannot be met from the existing
budget without doing significant damage to the service to clients."

LAPG is an independent grass roots movement, representing around 700
firms at the heart of the provision of publicly funded legal services.

We can now confirm the final details for the Preferred Supplier and Peer Review training tour.

Initially we intended just to do the latter however when the PSS consultation hit desks we thought it made sense to cram a briefing in on the mornings at the same venue. We have as promised added a London date but are struggling with a date and venue for the West Midlands.

So now these dates involve:

Preferred Supplier Scheme: An Outline 11 am to 1 pm
Are you Competent? A Guide to Peer Review 2 pm to 5 pm

VENUES

MANCHESTER - Tuesday 25th April
Victoria & Albert Marriott

LONDON - Tuesday 13th June
Mostyn Hotel, Marble Arch

Remember Fred Pontins advice!

Ian Kelcey (scroll down a bit) has just been on my radio (BBC 5 Live) talking about the problem of being locked in interview rooms with criminal cleints.

Today's a day when I am doing jobs relating to 2 Internal Reviews (one heading for JR), a CCA appeal, a Costs appeal and a Peer Review appeal. I am glad I am not to be locked in a room with any of these justifiably angry clients.

In recent times we have discussed this issue a bit.

We have heard from two firms who have attempted to assert their rights to the "pull forward" described in the Commissions letter of 2000. It is also we think a Criminal Contractual right.

The first firm is awaiting an answer and the account manager has gone to get some further advice.

The other has had a slightly different response - a request for the firm to prove its financial viability, against a tight deadline. This because they mentioned "cash flow benefits" in one of their letters.

Be careful what you ask for!

Do you subscribe to this publication?

Its strap line, " the eyes and ears of the the legal aid profession" is pretty close to the mark - though I'm biased as I do the odd 500 words a month for it.

It's founding editor Fiona Bawdon moved on recently and her replacement Jon Robins has given it a new look and produced his first issue - a "Carter Review Special" including an interview with the man himself. I'm not going to tell how the story ends however he gets this cracking and highly illustrative quote out of Lord Coles:

"We want to pay for efficiency. Don't expect the government to 'subsidise' a lawyer's 'life style' choice"

Another fantastic bit of reporting comes from an exchange at the Constitutional Affairs Committee in February:

Keith Vaz MP - 'What is the telephone number of CLS Direct?'

Vaz - 'If you cannot remember, how do you expect the public to know how to get access to these services'

(I might be going a bit soft but I do feel this was a tad unfair on Brian he's hardly the receptionist is he)

Anyhow don't just read these edited highlights subscribe here.

This just in :

"LAPG is delighted that the LSC has agreed to think again. This is not
just about the Specialist Support Service, but about the whole way the
LSC makes decisions. Consultation is not a hurdle to be avoided if
possible, or overcome with the least impact possible on proposals. It is
a sensible and important way of engaging with the profession so as to
find the best available solutions to the challenges we all face."

Richard Miller
Director,
Legal Aid Practitioners Group

Once again you will have to get your snail mail copy of the Gazette out of its plastic bag to read the lead story. (As ever their web site only has last weeks headlines).

This weeks issue leads with "Solicitors hit out at LSC supplier scheme". It summarises some of LAPGs initial response plus quotes Stephen Hewitt of Fisher Meredith who, hitherto, has been a keen proponent of the scheme having taken his firm through the pilot. Much of this you know if you have read the posts below.

Most interesting however are the final two paragraphs which veer off into Peer Review and quote the motion to be put before Law Society Council next week. It is one which concurs with our own views:

"peer review for legal aid practitioners is no longer supportable in the absence of any increase in rates of publicly funded criminal defence work"

And to evidence this are the review results I have in front of me today. 10 bullet points, only one extending to a substantive paragraph, on one side of A4 to tell an over 20 year experienced lawyer that he is "below competent".

Mandate you regional LS Council rep today.

UPDATE

Belated Link to the Gazette Story

It is Peer Review all ways round today. Whilst writing the above post (I know its a bit about face but I want that one, not this, as the top entry) I get a call from a appellant eager to support the above motion and two London lawyers intending to apply for the panel tomorrow. Along side me I have the new appeal mentioned yesterday and a further application to vet on the Mac.

In never rains .....

N.B. We are training on this subject and Preferred Supplier in London on June 13th.

Despite the advent of PSS and the dark cloud of Carter the routine work of JRS trundles along.

On a traditional theme another Peer Review appeal has arrived. Yes, you can guess the profile - long admitted, very senior criminal practitioner now told "below competent".

We completed our first CCA appeal for some time yesterday hopefully one of the 4 out or 5 with a wrong initial categorisation.

Sadly the latest attempt to get Points of Principle certified has failed. Why are some CCs so pro-Commission and seemingly anti profession?

Finally we might have a further South Yorkshire venue for the Peer Review Tour (should we make tee shirts?). If there is enough local interest we can bring the circus to a town near you!

Perhaps the most telling phrase in the entire documentis "we have worked closely with Lord Carters team". This project, despite its longevity, has become a delivery mechanism for the "market based reform" of Legal Aid procurement. As we predicted on the recent Carter Training tour - "minimum value contracts" crop up as does talk of consortia or "lead supplier" arrangements to allow smaller firms to meet this.

To a degree this is Franchising Mark II, save that it involves "significantly higher up-front entry criteria". In brief these relate to previous audit history (good supplier reputation or GSR as we've called it for years), more demanding financial and business planning requirements and, surprise, surprise a good Peer Review outcome. In addition there will be the use of a new file assessment process combining old franchising audit, cost compliance and data verification - no lying about your end points!

The Commissions major marketing angle is the promise of a new relationship of partnership and trust with a lighter audit and inspection touch. As the LAPG say below this is to be welcomed. But so too are mom and apple pie and no place like home.

In fact the audit regime has been moving in this direction for some time. On-site audits are no longer the routine annual plod they once were - which is not necessarily a good thing. Additional inspection is usually cost related, CCA or "high" average cost inspired - often with significant penalties. It is sad therefore to see the words "contract compliance" reappear especially when, on the basis of our experience they get initial categorisation wrong 4 times out of 5.

There is also a lot to agree with the LAPG over the frustrations of trying to achieve A Peer Review "Excellence" rating on "Threshold Competent" (or arguably Below Competent") levels of remuneration. Can anyone do ever a "Competent Plus" Divorce on £148? And break even? A small ray of hope is that there will be a period of grace to establish Excellence or Competence Plus with 2009 as a final cut off point.

You have until early June to respond and we will be briefing, in tandem with our Peer Review course. The sessions will be on the mornings and at the same venues between 11am and 1pm. Sandra is by the phones.

Hot on the heels of the Carter review comes the long anticipated Preferred Supplier Scheme. The consultation is launched today.

On a first read the three key factors that stand out are:

It will become exclusive (by 2009)
It will have "significantly higher up-front entry criteria"
Will rely upon and expand remote performance management

All in all pretty much what we have been predicting for some time now.

At time of writing we are looking at piggybacking some briefings on the mornings of the Peer Review training tour. Keep in touch.

More detail to follow once we've read it all.

UPDATE

Quick of the mark as ever the LAPGs initial thoughts are below.

The Legal Aid Practitioners Group today welcomed the publication of the
long-awaited consultation paper on the roll-out of the preferred
supplier scheme.

Director Richard Miller said, "LAPG has long believed that the preferred
supplier scheme provides the basis for a much-improved relationship
between the LSC and firms, which will benefit clients, the profession
and the LSC alike."

However, the Group was disappointed that much of the detail of the
scheme is omitted pending the publication of Lord Carter's final report.
"Issues such as how value for money is to be assessed will be crucial in
developing a workable scheme. This paper leaves us none the wiser as to
what the criteria will be. While we understand why this has been done,
it is nonetheless disappointing."

The Group is also concerned about the balance between quality and cost.
Chairman Roy Morgan said, "The LSC would like all firms to achieve at
least level 2 on peer review: competence plus. So would I. The reality,
however, is that many firms are assessed only at threshold competence,
and do not feel that current remuneration levels enable them to make the
investment necessary to achieve a higher standard. Excluding these
firms, which are at least competent even if not ideal, would create even
worse advice deserts than we currently have. The quality of work cannot
be considered in isolation from the rates paid for it."

Miller also expressed concerns about how quickly the LSC can reasonably
complete the roll-out of the scheme. "Had the preferred supplier scheme
been rolled out last April as originally proposed, then it might just
have been achievable to complete its introduction by 2009. Given that we
will not have the final detail of the scheme before this summer, and
given that there are approximately 5,000 firms at present, the LSC would
have to complete the assessment of 33 firms every single week if they
were all to apply. The experience of assessing the 25 pilot firms
demonstrates how difficult a task it is. The Commission must set out a
more realistic timeframe for this work."

But overall, the Group welcomed the proposals. Morgan said, "A
light-touch audit system with firms the LSC is willing to trust has to
be the way forward. We are delighted that the Commission agrees, and
look forward to working together on the detail of the assessment
process."

LAPG is an independent grass roots movement, representing around 700
firms at the heart of the provision of publicly funded legal services.

Just had a phone call from a firm shortly to convert to an LLP. The LSC have been made aware of this and have requested personal guarantees from the current partners. Other clients tell us they have converted with no such request.

As below any experiences of this would be gratefully received.

On Friday I briefly mentioned the issue of contract reconciliation. Since the publishing of their Corporate Targets last summer LSC Account Managers have been trying to balance individual contracts for the end of this month/year.

This is an old battle. It is also one that has resulted in a number of outcomes.

The essential position is that from the very inception of both Civil and Criminal contracting there was a financial inducement regarding the reconciliation of payments and claims. This is best summarised in the letter we referred to last week which indicates that the SPL will include:

"a one month 'pull forward' of payments against claims, designed to improve contracted firms' cash flow"

Something similar was actually contained in the Criminal contract.

The standard position has been for the LSC to try and achieve an exact balance at year end unless the firm resists by relying on the above. Then there are a number of results including not allowing criminal firms the extra 10% allowed for in contract but rather 5 or 7.5%. This year they seem to be trying even harder.

We negotiated a very sensible result for an under-reporting firm last week though, seemingly against the run of play. However a friend of this site in the Midlands is currently getting a less receptive response from his RO regarding the "pull forward" which he, quite rightly, thinks is better off in his bank account rather than theirs.

All experiences of these negotiation gratefully received.

A couple of quick points - on my way out for another day of shouting.

We have fielded lots of questions recently regarding (re)accreditation for existing Duty Solicitors. It now seems that the issue has raised its head again and is a news story on page 5 of this weeks Gazette (yes regulars, no link to the tinternet version is possible as once again they are at least a day behind on the web). It seems that something is moving under the "impetus" of the Carter Review. Portfolio preparation ahoy!

On contract reconciliation we have generally found firms being assertively pressed into balancing their contracts to 100% by the end of this month. This runs counter to the promise to reconcile to 110% or to always allow a month payment to be carried forward. The latter is now confirmed by an eagle eyed reader in the Midlands who has a letter from the then RD confirming the latter. If you are having such difficulties with the LSC get in touch.

UPDATE

Here is the Gazette article.

Posts here about Contract Compliance Appeals tend to be a bit triumphalist. This is hardly surprising given that we win in excess of 80% of those in which we are instructed.

So by way of balance today we have been notified of one of the small percentage of failures. I do spot a number of possible points of principle however so all might yet not be lost.

10 months and a ton and a half entries later this blog has become a central part of JRS family life. Blogging is of course a wider phenomenon with various different varieties in existence - politics, sport, music and even sex (or so I am told).

This is I suppose a "business" blog. It was partly inspired by the political blogs I read and have contributed too, such as Harry's Place and partly by a mate of Harry's I met in London who runs this one for his sheet metal business.

We obviously use it to try and improve communication with clients and the profession in general. The political, and other, blogs tend to involve people with an opinion to propagate often with journalistic or writing pretensions. The good ones stand out, the less good tend to involve a "listen to me, me me" level of desperation.

That said I have to express a concern that I am heading in a similar direction over Peer Review. This site seems increasingly obsessed with the subject and every conversation I have with lawyers tends to lead in this direction. One Managing Partner I spoke to yesterday agreed that having begun using our new File Review forms has dramatically altered his perception of his firm's work and its general quality. He also commented on how this development had nearly completely passed him by. It is an observation with which we concurs.

So at the risk of sounding completely self absorbed - listen to me - Peer Review is very, very important.

A busy morning so far involving holiday jabs and physiotherapy and now I'm helping with a Peer Review application.

By coincidence this applicant is the same number of years PQE as someone I met last weeks who had recently been turned down by the LSC. The reason? She had only worked for one firm since being admitted and the person specification prefers applicants who have worked for a number of firms.

So let me get this straight, long years of continuous service with one firm bad, hopping between a few firms and never settling down good.

This looks like another failure then.

Slightly later than originally promised, due to the intervention of the Carter proposals, we are about to tour an updated version of our Peer Review course.

The course - Are you Competent: A Guide to Peer Review - grapples with the requirements of this largely unnoticed addition to the assessment process. This is an issue we have discussed regularly.

Venues confirmed to date are:

MANCHESTER - Tuesday 25th April
Victoria & Albert Marriott

NEWCASTLE/GATESHEAD - Thursday 18th May
Marriott Metrocentre

We are also seeking venues and dates for Birmingham and London in June.

All courses are 2-5pm afternoon sessions.

Sandra is by the phone eagerly awaiting your bookings.

A mole tells me that this needs updating. Aparrently Leeds RD Peter Nelson has landed both posts with Nicola moving into project work.

Best wishes (no really) to both.

It looks as though we got a result on this this one which is remarkably similar to this one.

One might conclude that the assessors are operating to a completely different definition of "reasonableness" than Cost Committees and that the message is not filtering back from these final determinations. Isn't it a simple management task to ensure that this is not the case?

Off shouting at people in exchange for cash again. This current "product" - look at a sample of closed files and build the findings into our "Are you Competent: A Guide to Peer Review" course is currently selling like hot cakes.

What is clear is that even those procuring the course (to use the word of the moment) have largely missed the introduction of this new assessment technique. It is one now inextricably linked to any post Carter reform. Received with warm words from most commentators the importance and potential impact of this new scheme has largely gone unnoticed.

We will be updating and re-running the course in April and May confirmed dates will be here on Friday. The in-house option can be booked now.

The new contract year begins shortly. One of the many functions of our free CDS 6 & and CMRF Wizards is a sheet dedicated to contract management and reconciliation. Consequently every year you need to start a new one for each contract.

These are now available so as Fred Pontin would say "book early!" and contact the office.

I have a good old fashioned taxation hearing this afternoon. It is a CDS 7 Criminal NSF subject to four major "reasonableness" reductions. There are none of the potential, wider considerations of a CCA appeal, general findings and extrapolation and ultimately only a small amount of costs at stake.

It has trundled on for ages and seems to me, preparing for the hearing, that it should never have come to Committee. Nonetheless me and the fee earner will wander along this afternoon to expand upon the written representations. Thankfully I have other appointments in the area which will make it much less of drudge and hopefully leave me less angry than previously.

Remember our motto - Appeal, Appeal, Appeal.

Update

Arrived at the hearing in advance so as to review a file we haven't seen in months. Attached to this is a copy of our written reps. with some hand-written notes conceding around half of the contentious points. Needless to say we had not had these communicated to us in advance of today. It might have saved us a trip out though but.

Today is Manchester and the end of the Carter mini tour, or it was. I have it to do in-house on Wednesday and there is a new Hull date - 5th April. Sandra is also finalising dates for Peer Review in April/May details to follow.

Spent Friday looking at an appeal against a refusal of a Specialist Fraud Panel application. The immediate impression is that they are looking for any reason to refuse and the best finding was (and I paraphrase) as follows -

"you had this case between March 2003 - October 2004 this is only 6 months and so this cannot be considered as a VHCC SF case"

Maths revision starts this morning.

This weeks travelling is over and I'm back in the frozen north, with a flooded kitchen to prove it. The car is in for a pit stop before starting over again next week.

The main topic has of course been Carter. The phrase coined earlier in the week "resigned incredulity" remains an appropriate description of the reactions.

Some other things appear to have been happening however.

Probably Carter related but the LSC are advertising for Peer Reviewers again. Deadline date is 24th March so get going - supposing you can spare 2 days a month.

We have another lawyer as a political party leader. What do the lib dems think about Legal Aid reform?

I'm dusting down the DJ for next weeks annual Law Society dinner.

I've just ordered steak for lunch on my in-house training day next Wednesday - who says there is no money in Legal Aid.

I have also agreed to speak at the North West Legal Aid Conference on the 25th May 2006 - can't find any web advertising to link to though yet.

I am now off to check on the washer. Perhaps I'll take my own advice and get on a plumbing course, though fortunately this does seem to be simply a frozen pipe.

The Gazette (sorry no link as ever they are a day behind on the web site) reports on the Law Society Access to Justice Committee's concerns over UPOA. That is, if you've not had to deal with it, unaccounted for payments on account on long dead certificated cases. We have experienced clients being asked to go back and find evidence of what happened on cases closed in the 80s as well as the LSC being almost entirely wrong in their recollections of unbilled cases.

We even had a short held victory in the County Court over limitation, many of these go back over 6 years, but lost on appeal.

Consequently we've been shouting about this for years however nobody was listening. The Law Society now apparently is so if this is happening, or has happened, to you let them know.

I have met very few celebrities. I did however spend a fantastic evening in the company of Linda Smith. Subsequent to a benefit performance for the voluntary sector in Stockton-on-Tees she identified our table as the one most likely to be going elsewhere, drinking, and tagged along. She was genuinely interested in our work and had none of the edge or conversation dominating self-importance one might have expected. She was fantastic company and very, very funny. Saw her live a couple of times after that and was sad to here of her death yesterday.

We are half way through the Carter briefing mini-tour. It is difficult to describe the general reaction but if I had to I might create a new phrase "resigned incredulity".

It is difficult to find anyone who is (even privately) vocally pro the proposals. We have however spoken to some who might place them in the "opportunity" rather than "threat" section of their business plan SWOT analysis. Anecdotally I would put this ratios at a "Whiskas" mirroring 9:1 against. Those in the 1 camp are unsurprisingly the larger players in their locality yet they are not without concerns of their own not least that the final scale of the project is very hard to decipher.

If nothing else we do seem to have managed to dispel some of the immediate panic - including some who on the back of this first document have begun seriously to think about mergers.