Press Release
Peer review ensures clients receive high quality legal advice
7 November 2005
The Legal Services Commission (LSC) has finalised the process for Independent Peer Review of legal aid providers after considering responses to the consultation that took place earlier this year.
The consultation paper Independent Peer Review of Legal Advice and Legal Work was published in March 2005. Consultation ran until 25 June 2005. A total of 46 responses were received to the consultation paper. Responses were received from representative bodies and practitioner groups, solicitor firms, not-for-profit organisations, a local council and peer reviewers.
A major development as a result of the consultation responses has been to strengthen the existing representations process. In the new process, a senior panel member, taken from the existing panel of peer reviewers, considers representations against a peer review rating with the original peer reviewer. Representations against peer review ratings since April 2005 have been dealt with under this new procedure.
At present there are approximately 80 peer reviewers working across nine categories of law including crime, family and immigration. Peer reviewers are recruited and trained through an open selection process. Peer review is a key tool for the LSC to assure the quality of providers’ performance.
More peer reviewers will be recruited and new categories of law will be added to expand the process to all publicly-funded categories of law.
Peter Watson, Director of the Supplier Development Group at the Legal Services Commission, said: “Peer review will provide the foundation for our Preferred Supplier strategy. It enables the LSC to ensure that clients are receiving high quality legal advice. Peer Review has been recognised by the profession as the best mechanism to assess the quality of work conducted by providers and is supporting the development of other ‘quality of advice’ tools, for example, file assessment and quality profiles.”
The peer review process used by the LSC has been independently developed, and is managed by the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies.
Media information
Richard Shand Tel: 020 7759 0491
Notes to editors
1. The final Independent Peer Review Process is available on the LSC’s website at www.legalservices.gov.uk/civil/how/quality_of_advice.asp.
2. Copies of the Independent Peer Review of Legal Advice and Legal Work consultation paper and the Summary of Responses to the Consultation are also available from the LSC’s website.
Last updated: 28 December 2006