On this page:

• About these guides
• What guides are available?
• Launch of the new 'Improving your Quality' Generic Guide
• Improving quality workshops
• Workshops update

About these guides

The Peer Review process provides a unique opportunity to access a wealth of information directly related to the quality of legal advice and information given to clients.  It identifies areas of good practice and areas in need of improvement. 

The guides are intended to give the profession access to Peer Review findings and help support those wishing to achieve the highest levels of quality of legal advice by identifying common quality issues found by category specific Peer Review panels. This information is derived from the entire body of Peer Review reports.

These suggestions for making improvements are not an exhaustive list; they are only some of the ways that improvements can be made.  An organisation may have other ways of resolving the issues raised in each individual guide and it is not our intention to invalidate those approaches.

What guides are available? 

The following guides are available:

• Crime - Second Edition
• Debt - Second Edition
• Employment - Second Edition
• Family - Second Edition
• Generic - First Edition
• Housing - Second Edition
• Immigration - Second Edition
• Mental Health - Second Edition
• Welfare Benefits - Third Edition

The guides are reviewed periodically and are available to view or download under the heading Documents on the right hand side of this page. If you have any queries or require further information on Improving Quality Initiatives please send an e-mail to improvingquality@legalservices.gsi.gov.uk.

Launch of the new 'Improving your Quality' Generic Guide

The 'Improving your Quality' Generic Guide has been produced with a focus on the areas of law where a category specific guide isn’t available. Based on peer review reports from a range of categories it aims, like the other guides in the series, to help improve the quality standard of legal aid work.

It may be of particular interest to trainee lawyers, but people at all levels may find it useful. The issues that are set out in this guide have been derived from an analysis of reports written in the following areas of law: Action Against the Police, Clinical Negligence, Community Care, Education and Public Law. The Generic Guide can be found in the Documents section on the right hand side of this page.

Improving quality workshops

Improving quality workshops delivered by Independent Peer Reviewers provide a great opportunity to:

• Promote and share good practice through the findings of Peer Review;
• Enable delegates to gain an understanding of the issues affecting quality;
• Assist delegates by helping them to understand how they can improve the quality of their work;
• Learn from the Independent Peer Reviewers who will lead the workshops.

All material used during the workshops is prepared by a group of Independent Peer Reviewers and agreed by the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies.

Workshops update

The workshops were a useful training tool and have the potential to promote quality in the profession. However we will not be running any more for the foreseeable future.

Organisations that are interested in attending any future workshops should contact qualitymark@legalservices.gsi.gov.uk and if there is sufficient interest we will run further sessions.

The workshop materials remain available to view and download and can be found under the Documents heading on the right hand side of this page. They are:

• Slides Presentation – Crime
• Slides Presentation – Crime, Seven Steps to Competence Plus
• Slides Presentation – Debt
• Slides Presentation – Employment
• Slides Presentation – Family
• Slides Presentation – Housing
• Slides Presentation – Immigration
• Slides Presentation – Welfare Benefits
• Mock Case Studies – Crime
• Mock Case Studies – Family
• Preparing for Peer Review

http://www.legalservices.gov.uk/civil/how/5563.asp

Civil legal aid will only be routinely available in cases where life or liberty is at stake under plans unveiled by the Justice Secretary today.

Kenneth Clarke said funding will be axed for a wide range of disputes, including those over relationship break-ups, school admissions and expulsions, as well as clinical negligence in a bid to save £350 million over the next four years.

But asylum cases, mental health cases and debt and housing matters where someone's home is at immediate risk will all still be funded.

Mr Clarke told MPs there was a "compelling case for going back to first principles in reforming legal aid".

"It cannot be right that the taxpayer is footing the bill for unnecessary court cases which would never have even reached the courtroom door, were it not for the fact that somebody else was paying," he said.

The importance of the case, the ability of those involved to present their own case and the availability of other sources of funding or other routes to resolve the issue were all considered in the review, he said.

"I propose to introduce a more targeted civil and family scheme which will discourage people from resorting to lawyers whenever they face a problem, and instead encourage them to consider more suitable methods of dispute resolution."

But he added: "Legal aid will still be routinely available in civil and family cases where people's life or liberty is at stake, or where they are at risk of serious physical harm, or immediate loss of their home."

The scope of criminal legal aid will remain the same.

Announcing a fundamental rethink of the £2.1 billion-a-year scheme, Mr Clarke said: "We propose to remove from the scope of the scheme issues which are not, generally speaking, of sufficient priority to justify funding at the taxpayer's expense."

At present, anyone with assets worth less than £8,000 qualifies - with those worth up to £3,000 paying nothing and others expected to make a contribution.

Under the new system, anyone with assets worth more than £1,000 will have to pay at least £100 towards their legal costs.

Civil legal aid will be axed for cases involving divorce, employment, clinical negligence, and personal injury as well as immigration where the individual is not detained, welfare benefits and school exclusion appeals, Mr Clarke said.

But funding will still be available for prisoners to make claims for gross negligence, claims against public authorities, community care, domestic violence and debt matters where a home is at risk, among others.

Funding for private family law cases will be axed in a move that could save £178 million per year.

Exceptions will be made for those cases that involve domestic violence, forced marriage or child abduction, Mr Clarke said.

Funding will still be available for mediation as a means to resolve disputes, he added.

Civil legal aid for clinical negligence cases will also be axed, with those involved encouraged to seek other sources of funding, including so-called "no win, no fee" arrangements.

But the no win, no fee conditional fee arrangements (CFAs) will also be reformed to cut the "spiralling costs" involved.

"The key proposal is to abolish recoverability of success fees and the associated after the event insurance premiums," Mr Clarke said.

Claimants "should have to pay their lawyer's success fee and will therefore take an interest in controlling the costs being incurred on their behalf", he said.

"This will also reduce the disproportionate costs burden on defendants."

Mr Clarke went on: "Taken together, my reform proposals complement the wider programme of reform which I will be bringing forward to move towards a simpler justice system."

The new system will be "more responsive to public needs" and allow "people to resolve their issues out of court, using simpler, more informal remedies where they are appropriate, and which encourages more efficient resolution of contested cases where necessary".

Fees paid in civil and family cases will be cut "by 10% across the board", with similar cuts in experts' fees, Mr Clarke said.

He also announced plans to introduce a single fixed fee for a guilty plea, based on fee rates in magistrates' courts.

The same fee should be paid in respect of a guilty plea in the crown court, "regardless of the stage at which the plea is entered", he said.

The move is part of plans to "contain" the costs of the most expensive criminal cases.

Many of the cases in which civil legal aid will be scrapped involve issues "which are not necessarily of a legal nature but require other forms of expert advice to resolve", the Ministry of Justice said.

Telephone support services will be extended to help meet this need.

The disability charity Scope said it was "difficult" to see "how the reforms will allow disabled people to better hold decision-makers to account for their actions".

Chief executive Richard Hawkes said: "The benefit system is notoriously complex and prone to administrative error.

"In an era of budget cuts, job losses and welfare reform that contains some pretty sharp sticks, what now happens to disabled people who fall foul of public and private bureaucracies?

"The courts have traditionally been the last line of defence against poor, unfair and unlawful decisions."

Blair Gibbs, head of the crime and justice unit at the Policy Exchange think-tank, added: "The cost drivers of our system - such as our complex adversarial court process, high crime rates, the Human Rights Act and a growing litigation culture - will not go away.

"That means fundamental reform is required to make the system fit for the long term.

"In addition to taking large amounts of claimants out of scope, there needs to be a plan for what happens once the State withdraws.

"We should be looking at ways of bringing new money into the system, including more use of before-the-event insurance, and asking people to pay extra if they want expensive add-ons such as expert witnesses and the finest legal brains in the land."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/legal-aid-to-be-fixed-for-som...

Campaigners have warned that vulnerable people will suffer from government plans to remove legal aid from many social welfare cases.

The plans, announced by justice secretary Kenneth Clarke this week, are intended to cut the £2bn annual legal aid bill by £350m by 2014-15.

Legal aid will be retained for public law family and asylum cases, mental health tribunals, cases involving domestic violence or forced marriage, and debt and housing matters that could put people at risk of losing their homes.

But it will be removed from child contact and residence cases that do not involve domestic violence, appeals against benefits decisions, employment tribunals, debt or housing cases that do not involve homelessness, and immigration issues.

The government said it would fund mediation for couples in dispute over their children as a "better alternative" to the courts.

"Withdrawal of legal aid for social welfare advice or big reductions in provision with no alternative on offer would leave the most vulnerable overwhelmed by problems with nowhere to turn, and do nothing to address the significant unmet demand that already exists," said Gillian Guy, chief executive of Citizens Advice.

The National Aids Trust was "extremely disappointed" about the removal of legal aid from employment cases.

Chief executive Deborah Jack said it would prevent people with HIV and others with disabilities from asserting new rights to challenge employers who discriminated on health grounds against job applicants.

She also expressed concern over the cuts to benefits and immigration cases. Both systems had been subject to "almost constant change" in recent years, so good legal advice was crucial for claimants, she said.

The Disability Alliance attacked assertions in the government's consultation document that people claiming benefits had access to legal advice from sources other than legal aid, including the alliance itself.

In a letter to the Ministry of Justice, alliance director of policy Neil Coyle said the statement "misrepresents the reality" of its own provision and called for it to be withdrawn because it "demonstrates an unacceptable lack of understanding about the availability of current support".

Family lawyers body Resolution attacked the cuts to private family law.

Chair David Allison pointed out that 90% of couples settled their disputes outside court, so those who sought legal aid did so for a good reason, such as "intimidation by one partner over another or an imbalance of financial power in the relationship".

He added: "Resolving a financial dispute through legal aid can prevent a vulnerable spouse from becoming dependent on the state."

Allison was also "deeply worried that mediation is being seen as a universal panacea".

"Mediation has a real and useful role to play, but there are dangers in this approach, which ignores the range of non-court options," he added.

http://www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/2010/11/18/115844/Legal-aid-cuts...