Evidence submitted by the Law Society
SPECIALIST SUPPORT
CONTRACTS
INTRODUCTION
1. The Top Slice Review was a review of
the Commission's spending under the CLS Fund excluding that made
under the General Civil Contract. This spending is referred to
as top slice and is how a number of experimental initiatives are
funded. The Commission wrote to the Law Society in August 2005
inviting a response to the Top Slice Review Terms of Reference.
The Society responded to specific requests regarding contributions
to the costs incurred by solicitors gaining professional accreditation
and on the training contract grants fund. In January 2006 the
Review of the Civil Top Slice Budget was published and the Commission
announced that Specialist Support (SS) contracts would be terminated
on the 19 July 2006.
SPECIALIST SUPPORT
CONTRACTS
2. The Scheme began as a pilot in 2000,
Specialist Support providers gave advice and support over the
telephone, for solicitors and legal advisers in specific areas
of law. The final evaluation of the pilot was very positive and
satisfaction surveys confirmed a high level of satisfaction.
THE COMMISSION'S
REASONS FOR
TERMINATING THE
CONTRACTS
3. The Commission's press release insisted
that the reason for this termination was to release money for
the provision of 9,000 additional acts of assistance (matter starts)
or the expansion of CLS Direct. The Commission states that the
Specialist Support Budget will free up £2.3 million in 2006-07.
As the total budget is £800 million, this represents an increase
of approximately 0.25%—an infinitesimal amount.
4. Anecdotal evidence is constantly received
by practitioners as to the large numbers of clients they are obliged
to turn away due to lack of capacity. Legal aid practitioners
are constantly dropping out of the system, the LSC statistics
showed a drop of 45 solicitor contracts last month. However, no
evidence has been received as to a shortage of matter starts,
in fact, on the contrary firms report they are constantly being
offered more matter starts than they can take on.
ADVICE DESERTS
5. National Specialist Support Services
are operated by those who are experts in their field and cover
a broad spectrum of categories offering assistance for specialist
practitioners in complex and unusual cases. This enables clients
in advice deserts around the country to receive high quality legal
services.
6. The Top Slice Review states . . . "it
is questionable that we should be buying in second tier services
at an improved rate when with contracting, the assumption is that
we are buying requisite specialist services at the first tier."
(Recommendations, page 13).
7. It is na-£ve to assume that even
the supervisor of two to three categories of law in a rural market
town can achieve the same level of knowledge as Garden Court Chambers,
Doughty Street Chambers and the Terence Higgins Trust to name
but a small sample from the list of Specialist Support Services.
8. The Law Society believe that the termination
of these contracts will simply increase costs as firms, when dealing
with complex and unusual cases will have no alternative but to
instruct Counsel. We also believe that the termination of these
contracts will deter firms and not for profit agencies from actually
taking on difficult and unusual cases thus reducing further access
to justice, particular in rural areas.
9. As Kevin Martin, Law Society President
stated "many frontline voluntary agencies depend on this
service for immediate, specialist advice and training in unusual
and complex cases. The removal of this service will have a huge
effect. It will leave clients abandoned in rural areas where there
are already acute shortages of advisers. It is a further erosion
of vulnerable people's ability to access high quality legal advice."
VALUE FOR
MONEY
10. Provision of second tier support leads
to a net saving of public money as it enables advice to be given
that leads to the early resolution of cases, an aim of the CLS
Strategy. If there is no case to answer then this is established
at an early stage and prevents the waste of valuable caseworker
time and public money. Specialist support enables work to be done
more quickly and cheaply than if generalist providers act alone.
Specialist intervention may mean there is less need to instruct
counsel.
11. SS supports advisors through cases rather
than taking it over, disseminating knowledge for future cases.
The client receives high quality advice and the advisors skills
and confidence in dealing with the advice increases. Advisors
are able to progress matters more quickly and confidently and
reduce the time taken to solve client's problems. Increasing knowledge
of front-line advisors for a very small sum of money and ultimately
creating a better front-line service.
12. Front-line services would be unable
to develop and maintain the same level of expertise of the two
tier provision. Telephone consultancy provides good value for
money. The specialist advice is provided from a central service
which is again more cost-effective.
13. The specialist advise prevents cases
from being referred on which again provides value for money. In
addition, the need for a seamless advice service for disadvantaged
groups is echoed throughout the Commission's Strategy and the
SS service provides such seamless advice.
The Law Society
February 2006
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