Law Society grabs control over paralegals in moves to regain monopoly control over Scots legal services market

Despite last year's Office of Fair Trading's recommendations to open up the Scottish Legal Services market to competition, the Law Society of Scotland has maintained a steady policy of pursuing its policy of protecting its monopoly over access to legal services in Scotland.

Last week, in attempts to placate the cries for freedom of choice in legal services, the Law Society released the Alternative Business Structure policy document, deservedly, as it turns out, to much criticism & condemnation by consumer groups and the public alike where it appears that long discussions & consultations with the membership at large have been generally ignored, the Law Society preferring to extend its grip into the murky world of paralegals.

So, over to less public choice and ever more regulatory failures as clients get a weaker, less safe legal service than ever in Scotland.

The Scotsman reports in the following article that Law Society control over paralegals would be good for clients - but the truth is it will be very bad for clients if the history and habits of the Law Society of Scotland are anything to go by ....

Paralegal registration scheme is good news for the profession and for clients

By Neil Stevenson

WHAT will becoming a Law Society of Scotland registered paralegal actually mean?

The status is a badge of quality, indicating that the holder has met certain academic standards, has a certain amount of work experience and can carry out work to a prescribed standard.

We must emphasise that the exact arrangements are still under discussion, but having spoken to most of the concerned parties we have a clear idea of how the final proposal may look.

The Law Society is proud that this is a true partnership project, with the society and the Scottish Paralegal Association working closely to ensure that this new scheme brings benefits to everyone involved.

Paralegals who have attained a formal recognition under the scheme will be eligible to apply for entry to the register. A wide range of qualifications are likely to be considered relevant, from HNC/HNDs provided by Scotland’s colleges to provision from respected commercial providers such Central Law Training and Rewards Training.

We are also delighted to have worked with the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) to redevelop an HNC/HND in legal services, and are now moving to develop professional development awards in a variety of key areas of law. For the first time this will provide a qualifications framework for paralegals.

Paralegals will then need to undertake an assessed year in practice, supervised by a solicitor. Those already with office experience may be able to follow an accelerated route, with the emphasis on ensuring all those becoming registered meet the required standard.

Those achieving registration will be required to complete annual ongoing training and will have to uphold standards laid out in a code of conduct. A complaints process will be put in place, but the emphasis will be on upholding standards through a variety of regulatory approaches.

There is no doubt that paralegals already provide a valuable service within the legal market, but at the moment anyone can call themselves a paralegal. Introducing a registered status will mean that employers can be sure of the standards met by employees. It will also give paralegals the professional recognition they deserve. And clients will benefit from knowing that the paralegal, who they may have more direct contact with than a solicitor, has been assessed properly.

This development also represents continuing change at the Law Society of Scotland. An innovative regulatory approach has been developed to tackle the issue, and state-of-the-art IT will underpin compliance.

This is also a year when the Society’s own governance arrangements are being reviewed and are likely to significantly alter following the move to bring in more experience from outside the profession and streamline our management.

• Neil Stevenson is from the Law Society of Scotland.

Police complaints commission in tatters as lawyers resign - same to happen in Scotland ?

One way to ensure certain defeat for any moves to independent regulation is to stuff an organisation full of lawyers and legal staff, then get them to resign en masse .. and here we have that very policy being put into practice with the Independent Police Complaints Commission in England ....

Some may now wonder if the same may happen to the new Scottish Legal Complaints Commission, which Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill has also stuffed with legal staff and lawyers .. ensuring a MacAskill recipe for disaster once more.

The Guardian reports :

Crisis at police watchdog as lawyers resign

More than 100 quit over claims of delay and poor decisions by IPCC

* Nick Davies
* The Guardian,
* Monday February 25 2008

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) faces a crisis of confidence after a network of more than a hundred lawyers who specialise in handling police complaints resigned from its advisory body.

In a letter to Nick Hardwick, the IPCC's chairman, the lawyers' leaders expressed "increasing dismay and disillusionment" at what they described as "the consistently poor quality of decision-making at all levels of the IPCC". They said the IPCC's response to their earlier attempts to deal with problems had been "pitifully poor".

The resignation is a blow to the commission's morale and reputation especially as it was welcomed by criminal lawyers when it was set up in April 2004. After 40 years of slow progress, the organisation was seen as providing a robust and independent system for dealing with complaints against police officers.

But an investigation by the Guardian has found evidence of a cluster of administrative problems. These include:

· A failure to provide effective oversight for the work of the police investigators who still handle most complaints;

· a pattern of favouritism towards the police with some complaints being rejected in spite of apparently powerful evidence in their support;

· cases of indifference and rudeness towards complainants;

· extreme delays, with some complaints remaining unresolved after years of inaction and confusion;

· key decisions being taken by casework managers who have no legal qualifications, little relevant experience and minimal training;

· investigators and senior commissioners failing to work effectively with the result that some decisions have had to be overturned with the threat of court action.

Problems with investigators include one case in which an investigator was caught sending "raunchy emails" to a teenage girl whose family had been the victim of a crime he was looking into. In another case a family whose son had died in custody were taken aback when a female investigator walked out early from a meeting to get a facial.

In one sample case among dozens reviewed by the Guardian, Christine Hurst, whose son was stabbed to death in spring 2000, has been waiting for nearly eight years for a resolution of her complaint that police failed to protect him even though they knew his killer had made repeated threats. Police were warned on the night of his death that the killer was waiting outside his house with a knife.

Hurst said: "Despite fighting all these years, I haven't really got anywhere. The sheer fact that they can do this - and if they are doing it to me, they are doing it to other people as well. It is appalling."

The Police Action Lawyers Group, (PALG) which represents specialist lawyers on the IPCC's advisory board, has tried repeatedly to warn the commission about its problems. In October 2005, for example, they presented Hardwick with a dossier warning that, with few exceptions, "mediocrity appears to flourish unchecked, unmarked and, in many instances, unacknowledged".

In a subsequent email to Hardwick 18 months later, one lawyer said "attitudes appear to have deteriorated, reflected in recent examples which serve only to bring discredit and shame upon the IPCC".

The October 2005 dossier summarised 12 sample IPCC decisions and reported: "Sadly, in many of the cases we have dealt with over the 18 months since April 2004, we have been very disappointed by the poor quality of such decisions and, worse, the apparent lack of impartiality reflected in the reasoning given for such decisions.

"One common feature that seems to emerge is that primary decision-making functions are apparently being devolved to inexperienced and poorly trained junior staff lacking the qualifications and experience necessary for this important work and without the benefit of adequate or effective quality assurance procedures. More generally, the performance of those responsible for supervising, managing or conducting investigations has given cause for serious concern ..."

The joint resignation letter, signed on behalf of all of the lawyers last month by two PALG members, acknowledged "islands of good practice" but says their attempts to raise their concerns through the IPCC's advisory board were repeatedly frustrated: "Follow-up on agreed action points has been pitifully poor ... At times, the situation has been almost farcical: key decisions on our agenda items have not been minuted and, when eventually minuted, have not been actioned, even after we have chased progress."

Hardwick says this is unfair and that PALG failed to respond to his attempts to review the working of the advisory board. Speaking to the Guardian, he rejected PALG's grounds for resigning from the advisory board. He said IPCC evidence had held up in front of juries and coroners, and only a handful of decisions had been reversed after lawyers threatened to have them judicially reviewed.

John Swinney expected to reject idea of all in one Scottish 'super regulator'

The idea that all current regulators could be replaced by one 'super regulator', coming from the report by Professor Lorne Crerar into regulation, is expected to be rejected by Cabinet Secretary for Finance, John Swinney.

Merging the 43 or so regulators in Scotland into one organisation, while seemingly logical to some by way of cost savings, will significantly reduce expertise in dealing with the particular problems which many professions have unique to themselves ... and most probably be a poor deal for the public in terms of transparency & accountability, despite what some may claim.

The Scotsman reports :

Swinney is expected to reject super-inspectorate plan suggested by recent Crerar report

PETER MACMAHON

A RADICAL proposal to replace Scotland's growing number of inspectors, auditors, regulators and "tsars" with a single scrutiny organisation has been ruled out by ministers.

John Swinney, the cabinet secretary for finance, has decided against merging the 43 regulators in Scotland into one body, The Scotsman has learned.

Swinney's decision, which has yet to be confirmed in public, came after a Holyrood debate on the plans put forward by Professor Lorne Crerar's report into regulation, audit, inspection and complaints-handling in public services.

The debate in the Scottish Parliament on Wednesday revealed broad support across the political parties for a rationalisation of the audit, scrutiny and complaints in the public sector.

However, only one MSP, Keith Brown, the SNP member for Ochil, argued Crerar's key recommendation, of having one overarching scrutiny organisation, should be implemented.

While not setting out his decision in the debate, which was held to gauge the feelings of parliament, Swinney has decided that there is a general consensus against the creation of a "super-scrutiny" body.

The Scotsman understands the minister will now come forward with proposals which use the current "best value" inspection regime for councils as the basis for scrutiny.

The idea will be that public bodies, including the health service, would have to conform to the best value principles - providing measurable value for taxpayers' money and continuous improvement in services.

However, ministers will insist that there be a greater emphasis on "proportionate" inspections based on an assessment of risk and the possible benefits of scrutiny set against the cost - something Crerar recommended.

In practice, this would mean that if inspectors give a good report to, for example, to a school, care home or social services department, they will not return to reinspect as frequently as they would to a service in which they find problems.

Swinney told MSPs in the debate that the recommendations made by Crerar on continuous improvement were based on the principle that responsibility for providing assurance about services and identifying areas for improvement should "primarily rest with the service providers".

He added: "It must be right that we embed that approach into the culture of service delivery in our schools, hospitals, police forces and other areas of public service.

"We must encourage a culture of continuous improvement in the way in which services are delivered.

"A reduced level of scrutiny and a more proportionate application of it could free up delivery organisations to focus further on improving their frontline services."

He argued that this would require improvements in performance management arrangements and that it was the Scottish Government's view that the basis for these improved arrangements lay in the best-value regime.

Swinney said the Accounts Commission, the local authority statutory watchdog, was reviewing best-value audits for local government and would consider that approach alongside the Crerar review.

He added: "I am sympathetic to the idea of best value acting as a trigger for a proportionate level of scrutiny".

Tom McCabe, the former finance minister, who ordered the Crerar review, echoed the sentiments of most MSPs in welcoming the suggestion that inspection should be proportional and based on cost-benefit analysis.

McCabe said: "I very much agree with Professor Crerar's recommendation that all reviews should assess the scope for amalgamating bodies with common interests.

"One body may well be a step too far, but surely a reduction would go a long way to reduce the amount of professional officer time that is consumed in preparing for multiple inspections."

In contrast, Brown told the debate he wanted to "gently break" the consensus on Crerar's call for one inspections body.

He said: "We should have a single agency in mind when the issue is being considered and we should only consider as exceptions agencies that can prove that there is a good reason why they should be part of the single agency."