Praise where praise is due.

Five years ago, the Lord Chancellor's Department (LCD) could not have reasonably decorated the foyer of its headquarters with an advert for its research programme.

Yet, a big billboard has been doing this for the last three months without incurring derision.

The department's increased commitment to research is to be welcomed and its programme developed.The department is proud of its new baby.

The head of research, Sarah Tyerman, argues that establishment of the programme represents a major development -- 'a step change'.

Previous research undertaken for the department 'has been on a one-off basis.

This is the first time that we have had a research programme.'The programme's first fruits were 11 reports published in December.

A further 32 are on the stocks to come out over the next two years; and an annual budget of around a quarter of a million pounds appears to have been committed.

The bulk of the reports turn out to be rather less research than survey.

This is not necessarily a criticism.

The LCD should have available to it, and share with us, literature reviews on such matters as out-of-court alternative dispute resolution (as in number three by Tamara Goriely and Tom Williams); legal aid delivery systems (number ten, by Tamara Goriely); the causes of indebtedness and, by implication, the recent rapid decline in debt summons (number eight by Mike Hope); judicial appointments commissions (two studies published as number six by Cheryl Thomas and Kate Malleson); law and economics (number four by Anthony Ogus and Rachel Amass); regulating legal services (number five by robert Baldwin); and the division of marital assets after divorce (number seven by Anthony Dnes).The one study that stands head and shoulders above the rest is John Baldwin's work on the effects of raising the small claims limit in the county court to £3,000 (number one).

This was misused by government ministers before it was even published to justify a further rise to £5,000.

In fact, the report is a careful assessment distinguished by its attention to empirical detail.

Professor Baldwin is expressly cautious about any further raising of the limit.He examines using litigants' experience, the pros and cons of small claims arbitration as opposed to formal trials.

In doing so, he observes consequences that ministers and officials have not rushed to publicise.

For example, little heed has been paid to his key observation, backed by empirical evidence, that it is clear that 'litigan ts who do not seek preliminary legal advice are likely to run into difficulty' in handling small claims.The need for legal advice raises an important policy point.

An increase in the small claims limit may be justified, at least for some types of cases.

However, some of the tempting legal aid savings have to be offset by increased legal advice and assistance.

Without that, any claim to be increasing access to justice is hollow.

Professor Baldwin has some useful supporting quotes on the danger of litigation without lawyers, among them: 'I was operating on the basis of common sense .

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but I ran up against the law.'Only one other study in the first batch has an empirical base.

This is a pilot study of ethnic monitoring of defendants in Leicester magistrates' court (number 11).

On its chosen topic this turned out to be a bit of a dud because their was insufficient data.

However, the strength of the empirical method is its contact with the real world.

Asians make up 25% of the population of Leicester City; 9% in the rest of the country; 7% of adult defendants in indictable cases and 4% of those before the youth court.

In such a context, the proportion of Asians on the other side of the justice system is surely unacceptable: 2% of Leicester police and 4% of Leicester City magistrates, with none appearing to sit in the youth court.There are occasional signs that some of the work is a little too 'quick and dirty'.

Study nine on legal services' expenditure is not really at a deep enough level to be much use.

It also gets some figures wrong, for example treating the Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) service as if it represented the whole of the advice sector.

The range of other agencies is correctly described in one of Ms Goriely's studies but she complains of having to rush her overseas report out to a deadline that did not allow consistent following up of queries.

A reading of these reports suggests that the research programme gives the best results when its researchers, surveyors and consultants are given their head and allowed to report their own judgment of the data that they are processing.

Furthermore, the success of Professor Baldwin's research suggests that the department should direct as much of its resources as possible to empirical study of what is actually going on.

Anything that encourages rational debate of current problems and the empirical consequences of prospective reform is to be welcomed.

And never more necessary.