Franchising is not fun.

It has dominated many firms' summer and autumn.

Most solicitors see getting a franchise as a defensive move.

Without one, in years to come, despite all the denials from government and its administrators, many of us feel we will not be allowed to continue to provide legal aid services.

There are many firms now which are heavily dependent on their twice monthly LAB direct debit.

Even with a franchise, legal aid earnings will be vulnerable to cuts and changes.

Without one, the risks must be worse.Franchise compliance is a major expense.

Virtually every firm will have had to change some of its systems and many will have had to develop systems which did not exist previously.

In our firm, our manual has been rewritten, computerised time-recording has been re-introduced and one of our partners has given about a third of his time to knocking our systems into shape.

The rest of the partners have been supervising and managing as never before.

We have had many training days for all our staff and everyone - from the newest administrative assistant to the longest serving partner - has managed to read our new manual.We failed our dummy audit in September so we increased our efforts to get the practice management standards into place.

The real preliminary audit happened in late November.

The board's staff quizzed a random selection of our fee-earners and checked most of our systems.

We managed to pass with a few non-compliances which we are busily sorting out.Solicitors have never been much good at managing or being managed.

If you go for a franchise, you have to create systems and it takes some of the fun out of the work.

But we think, despite the office turmoil, that there will be benefits.

Our file management is improving.

Personnel practices have been sharpened up.

The concept that every fee-earner is a sole practitioner wholly and only responsible for his or her files, the bug-bear of most high street practices, is being broken down.

The board's full audits will start in the spring.

We should know by then if franchising really has improved our systems.

Whether all the time and effort has improved our service to our clients will be more difficult to judge.Back to fee-earning and standard fees are beginning to bite.

There was a holiday period when lower standard fees on short cases seemed to be surprisingly profitable.

But the longer cases are now beginning to come through and the swing is becoming a roundabout.

We are doing more work than we are being paid for.

It makes arguments about £15,000 or £20,000 brief fees seem more than a little odd (see Lord Chancellor v Wright [1993] The Times, 10 June).But no one can get a standard fee until they have legal aid and the Legal Aid in Criminal and Care Proceedings (General) (Amendment) (No.2) Regulations 1993 (SI 93/1895) have not improved our clients' prospects of that.

Every applicant for criminal legal aid must now produce some 'supporting documentary evidence' to be sure of getting their legal aid.

Chasing income support order books, past wage slips, rent books and council tax demands is now all part of a criminal practitioner's daily workload.

It is surprising how few clients seem to think of bringing such things with them when they are being entertained in the custody suite at their local police station.It is not unknown for people facing criminal charges to make false statements about their means or to fail to provide relevant information when applying for legal aid.

The Amendment (No.2) Regulations require solicitors to report any client they know who does this to the 'proper officer' - the clerk to the justices in the magistrates' court.

The provision is broadly similar to reg 67 of the Civi l Legal Aid (General) Regulations and our clients' legal privilege is overridden in those cases.

Criminal practitioners are much more closely associated with financial fact gathering than are civil practitioners.

This duty to report any abuse may well come into play more often than it has with civil legal aid and is a possible pitfall for the unwary.The costs regulations (SI 93/934) for criminal cases provided from April 1993 for interim payments of disbursements over £100 in Crown Court cases and for interim payments of costs in cases awaiting Crown Court taxations.

Interim costs are only available if the claim is over £4000 but given the delays in dealing with the heavier cases, the 40% that we can claim should not be ignored.It is difficult to give exact advice about financial eligibility in civil cases.

The tables in pt III of the Legal Aid Handbook 1993 give some guidance but they are by no means exact.

If the client disputes the financial decisions, he or she cannot appeal them.

The only recourse is to go back to the assessment officer, a DSS official, and try to get a review.

These officers have a number of discretions, particularly in relation to deciding on disposable capital.

R v Legal Aid Assessment Officer, ex p.

Crocker [1993] Independent, 23 July, highlights the very real difference between the functions carried out by assessment officers and those dealt with by area directors and, on appeal, the area committees.

In particular the case shows that wrong assessments can be judicially reviewed.Financial assessments have always been important to clients who have to make contributions to legal aid.

They have become even more so now the contributions last throughout the life of the legal aid certificate.

The Crocker case highlights the gross unfairness of having no appeal system.

Judicial review is a slow and clumsy alternative.

Tax payers and people on benefit all have a proper appeal system if they want to challenge the amount of tax they pay or the amount of benefit they receive.

Why no such system for civil legal aid contributors? An even nastier problem for contributing legal aid clients will be the law's general delay because they must contribute throughout the life of the case.

Solicitors will have to push cases on which we have not, traditionally, been very good at.

Clients will also pay excessively for delays in getting hearing dates.

Worse still, they will continue to pay even when their case is finished while the taxation nightmare winds its slow and weary way to a conclusion and a discharge of the certificate.

There will be plenty of arguments in the future over when certificates can and should be discharged.

A likely field for more judicial reviews?