Disclosure

Beyond Belief

I thought I had hit rock bottom regarding Civil procurement. Thought it impossible that there could be anything worse than we have experienced to date. Thought it a certainty, given the time taken, that appeals would be so carefully considered that no more mistakes would be made. Now this;

Appeal point successful, an additional 5 points awarded for Panel membership, as claimed, and originally mismarked by the LSC.
The 5 points originally, and correctly, awarded for membership of the other LS Panel concurrently removed, because the Supervisor is not a member of the Resolution Panel, a claim never made in the bid.

No contract awarded.

JRS offer a bottle of champagne to anyone who can better this monumental cock up.

And all this at a time when the process is under such detailed Judicial scrutiny. How can they defend the legal challenge when they cant even do the basic marking properly?

Gobsmacked

You may well be too!

Ah the "continuing verification process" and nothing to do with this quote;

Collins adjourned the hearing and advised the LSC to ‘consider carefully’ its position. ‘If you fight this and lose it, you could set a precedent,’ he warned.

from this article

More JR Stuff

There is a statement from the LSC now confirming the proposed new timetable
here. New Civil contracts from November 15th.

The Law Society's outline claim is here and you can download the full version there too. It is worth reading.

The "Creighton" group of firms, who have been pursuing their action have also been given special leave to join TLS action as an Interested Party. They are making an Urgent Appeal for new participants and can be contacted via Oliver Hudson At Stamps in Hull. HIs e-mail address is - oliver.hudson@stamps-solicitors.co.uk

Keep Your Course Notes

The last major round of LSC training on new Family costs arrangements was in 2007. These have started to become contentious as many participants remember being told a very different story to that being uncovered during financial stewardship audits. Many do NOT remember the "second meeting" requirement for Level 2 claims being aired and others have distinct recollections of being told that drafting a divorce petition alone sparked the higher Level 1 claim. These are just two examples of what I guess will be difficult to verify points of appeal.

There is a new set of these currently being offered. It might be worth doing some detailed annotation of your course notes this time round.

September Webinars

The impending Law Society JR hearing has blown many things off course - one of the least important being our Webinar programme.

There seems to us little point in running a course on the 2010 Civil Contract until this is resolved and our other planned session on the new Family fee structure is only likely to appeal to the optimists. At the same time we have had some requests to re-run the 2010 CDS Contract session of last month.

This months program is therefore

Friday 10th September
The 2010 CDS Contract

An essential practitioners guide to the changes brought about by the new contract. Make sure your firm is compliant with CDS financial Stewardship and Relationship Manager Assurance visits about to get into full swing.

Friday 17th September

SQM or Lexcel?

How to make sure that you are "Quality Assured" before the auditing of SQM is outsourced in February next year. Alternatively we will explore the alternative option - achieving Lexcel accreditation.

Friday 24th September

What is Happening to Civil Legal Aid

We hope in this session to bring you an unto the minute summary of progress with regard to the recent Civil Bid Round just days after the full hearing of TLS JR application.

Postponed

If you missed this post on Friday - or it was a bit too obscure - here is confirmation that Civil contracts are on hold for another month pending the outcome of the LS JR. This is set to be heard on 21st September.

Out of the Sinking

Closing with this tomorrow;

Another Civil Contract Extension?

Looks like this, albeit a short one, is on the cards following today's JR hearing.

UPDATE

Yep

Done in a Rush (of Blood)

Like Resolution, the Law Society and the LAPG we are somewhat conflicted over the family procurement - we work for both successful and unsuccessful firms. That said we assist both in equal measure and do not have any difficulty in taking an independent overview which is essentially that this is a very shoddy piece of work on the part of the LSC.

This, however is astounding, cannot go without comment, and is likely to be of common ground amongst winners and losers.

Improving family legal aid services for vulnerable people throughout England and Wales is at the heart of the current family legal aid tender.

Wrong. No part of this process had any objective which involved "improving" family services nor could be said to have achieved this.

  We are disappointed that The Law Society has issued a pre-action protocol letter. We agree with Resolution (a family law representative body) that further uncertainty will have a far greater destabilising effect on the availability of family legal aid than allowing the tender to take its course.

I am sure you are and would like all of your works to go unchallenged, and I don't know if Resolution said this or if they have been misquoted, but this assertion is palpable nonsense.

It was always clear that this would be a competitive process. The Legal Services Commission carried out a formal public consultation on the process which was followed by discussions with representative bodies. These led to many of their recommendations being adopted, including accreditation.

Lie. The competitive element was at best hidden and glossed over during the Consultation process, and then only partially explained in the final IFA. (See S.5.20 of the consultation response)

Under the new contracts, the LSC will commission the same level of help as last year, therefore, contracting with fewer legal firms does not equate to providing less access to justice. The LSC has selected providers who demonstrated the under the competitive process and allocated work in accordance with their bids.

Utter nonsense, especially geographically e.g. suburbs of Leeds, most West Yorkshire mill towns, Blackburn, most rural areas especially Northumberland - could go no all day. Many individual firms with the "highest level of expertise and experience" have lost out, on occasions to very poor firms with a recently "employed" "consultant" involved in their bid.

We are aware that, in a very small number of procurement areas, there are issues for us to address. However, the tender is not yet complete as we are currently carrying out a verification exercise and completing appeals.

Define very small and how will they be addressed without calling into question the entire integrity of the process.

We remain confident that, by the end of the tender process, we will resolve these issues. Once the process is complete we will undertake and publish a full review and we will discuss the scope of such a review with The Law Society, Resolution and other representative bodies.

Oh good a review they always sort things out.

The LSC is fully aware of its statutory obligations and will continue its discussions with The Law Society and other representative bodies to ensure the continued availability of high quality legal aid services for clients.

Already too late for many firms

Was there any need for this rubbish? Why not just say, reasonably, we are involved in litigation no comment rather than insulting everyone's intelligence.

E-Mail Alert

Over the past few days we have been having a significant problem with our e-mail, and other internet, services at the new office .

If you have sent something urgent and not received a response please give us a ring to discuss.

Is There an End in Sight?

A constant feature of recent time has been coming to the office - on days when I am not out at pointless meetings - with a plan of action and finding myself, mid afternoon having, achieved none of my intended tasks. Something always happens which knocks me off track and I end up immersed in a new matter, with an ever increasing pile of other jobs. (The pile is becoming physical where it involves financial stewardship).

Just listed 10 priority tasks for today in the certain knowledge that I may get 1 done. It is also a weekend I can't utilise to reduce my backlog either.

"Nearly Legal"

We have one client currently sitting in a meeting with the LSC to discuss their "capacity to deliver". We are aware that of a couple of these took place last week and that one in happening tomorrow. They essentially seem to be seeking to persuade firms to hand back matter starts as is discussed in this very interesting article.

It is from a Housing Law blog called "Nearly Legal" which I was directed to over the weekend - primarily because of their converge of the CLP Judicial Review case.

The linked article explains, legally, what we describe as the "makeitupaswegoalongery" being displayed by the Commission post procurement. My thoughts on the subject do tend to concur. This is mainly following a discussion last week where a firm has been advised that any contract sanction based upon failure to meet, say, the 85% NMS delivery KPI, would be unlawful.

Well worth reading the whole thing though.

All Change

It took me ages to get logged in to the e-portal today but once there discovered that this weeks maintenance has resulted in a radical, visual change to the site.

You may well get a surprise therefore, if checking for an appeal notification.

I Will Survive

It remains to be seen if our under-rehearsed cover of the karaoke classic (but which takes more from this superior version) will work next Saturday night. If you are close to Teesside you are very welcome to come and judge for yourself. If you do you will see West Yorkshire's finest lawyer based band too.

Victory in Sight?

Is the question Andrew Keogh asks in the comments below with regard to this story in the Gazette.

If you have not read it, it covers the comments made by Mr Justice Collins in a JR of the Procurement round brought by CLP of Birmingham. Irrational is a phrase I have used in discussing this process but am surprised not only that a High Court is in agreement but so vehemently so.

The answer to Andrew's question remains to be seen but gives a good indication that things might be about to unravel. I understand that TLS are issuing tomorrow and hope for a hearing next week - perhaps before the same judge.