FORM FEEDBACKAt the beginning of legal aid franchising, I urged all my friends in Liverpool not to become franchised and, of course, if nobody had then the Legal Services Commission (LSC) could not have the control over us, which it now does.

This control will be tightened with the introduction of contracts.

The LSC doesn't seem to have a clue about criminal practice.

All it seems to understand is how to operate an audit system of ticking boxes and having neat files, which contain forms, necessary and unnecessary, and an administrative system within the office of the solicitors concerned which satisfies its obsessions.

It appears to know nothing about - and gives no brownie points for - expertise, experience, or the quality of advocacy shown by those solicitors who have franchises and who will have the benefit of contracts.I once put it to a senior member of staff of the LSC, which was then the Legal Aid Board, as to whether he would rather have a solicitor to act for him who had a beautiful file which complied with all the requirements of the board and a mediocre result.

Or a solicitor who wrote down his instructions on a back of a cigarette packet and achieved a great success.

He had to agree that it was the latter.The prime duty of a solicitor practising criminal law is either to get his client acquitted or to obtain for him the minimum sentence, not to spend his life filling in pointless forms.

There is nobody in the Legal Services Commission - with the exception of Tony Edwards, who is on the board - who seems to have the foggiest idea of what goes on in the criminal courts.

The idea of sending criminal clients questionnaires at the end of their cases to ascertain how happy they are is ludicrous in the extreme.

A number of them cannot read or write and would certainly not be bothered to send the forms back.

Brian D.

Woodhams, E Rex Makin & Co, Liverpool