This is a report of a qualitative study of the impact of training and regulation on the management and delivery of civil legal advice and representation, the fieldwork for which was conducted from 2005-6. Since the mid 1990s, but particularly since the reform of legal aid signalled by the Access to Justice Act (AJA) 1999, contracts for the delivery of publicly funded legal advice services have been held not only by private solicitors’ firms, also known as the For Profit (FP) sector, but also by a range of Not-for-Profit (NFP) organizations, such as Citizens’ Advice Bureaux (CABx), and national VCOs. However, the FP and NFP sectors are characterised by very different regimes of regulation and training. The FP sector is heavily regulated, and solicitors are subject to lengthy periods of training and extensive assessment before qualification. By contrast, NFP advice workers are not required to possess any formal qualifications, and are subject to a variety of training regimes. They experience the comparatively light regulatory regime overseen by the Charity Commission. The divergence between the extent and quality of the regulatory and training regimes of the two sectors raises both questions about the respective value of their divergent approaches, and concerns about the levels and consistency of quality in the publicly funded sector as a whole. The introduction of a rigorous quality standard for publicly funded legal advice work, the Specialist Quality Mark (SQM), and the systematic audit and management of contract by the LSC has sought to address some of these concerns. However the impact of this form of performance management on firms and agencies raises issues about the policy objectives of the current regulation of the sector, and the levels of quality and efficacy of the legal advice and representation it is able to deliver.
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)