Social Welfare: warning over merging of private practice and not-for-profit contracts

Legal aid solicitors have expressed concern that the Legal Services Commission (LSC) is planning to merge private practice and not-for-profit (NFP) contracts for lawyers operating in social welfare law.


The LSC has already received government approval to extend NFP general civil contracts by a year to 31 March 2007 to give it time to determine its strategy for the entire civil legal aid sector. In its latest bulletin to practitioners, it said it is now 'considering moving towards more holistic social welfare law contracts covering debt, employment, housing and welfare benefits which are neither solicitor nor NFP specific'.


The changes could cover debt, employment, housing and welfare benefits.


An LSC spokesman explained that it is considering all its options in light of initiatives such as the fundamental legal aid review, Community Legal Service (CLS) strategy and the outcome of Lord Carter's review of legal aid procurement, but said that from 2007 there could be just one social welfare contract.


Private practices currently work under LSC rules that combine fixed fees for legal help with hourly rates in most cases, while NFP organizations operate under block contracts.


Richard Miller, director of the Legal Aid Practitioners Group, said there needed to be recognition that clients wanted choice, which might not be achieved by a unified contract. 'I think the real concern with this is that the NFP sector operates in a very different way and has a very different ethos from private practice,' he added. 'I have my doubts as to whether a single contract could adequately reflect those differences rather than eliminate them.'



The Law Society argued in its response to the CLS strategy consultation that the main aim of the LSC should be nurturing specialist legal advisers, which were now becoming a rare breed.


It said that some areas of social welfare work were often very different to other categories and that new contracts should reflect this. Contracts that grouped together social welfare practices operating in more than three areas of law should not be imposed or it would 'end up diminishing the quality of services on offer'.