I see that the Law Society recently advertised for a Lexcel manager and development executive.

The Lexcel manager's mission 'will be to expand the base of solicitors with Lexcel accreditation, and retain the firms and legal departments already accredited.'

Clearly this is long overdue as Lexcel, around since 1998, has only been awarded to 265 private practices, 113 local authorities and three in-house/commercial departments.

Of the private practices, it is of particular concern that only five of the firms have more than 50 partners.

The majority with Lexcel accreditation are 103 firms with two to four partners, yet Lexcel is the Law Society's practice management quality mark written specifically for the legal profession.

What has the Society been doing to promote Lexcel for the past five years? Now is the time for it to write to the senior partners of the top 100 firms as Lexcel has been restructured and revised to improve the marketability of the Lexcel quality mark to the entire legal profession.

All assessments will have to be against the new standard from October 2004.

Richard FA Strother, Polsons, Botley

Law Society response: The Law Society is committed to promoting good practice to the profession and over the last five years has been involved in many events to raise the awareness of Lexcel consisting of local law society conferences, joint seminars with insurance brokers/underwriters, conferences of specialist groups, in-house seminars at law firms, and the bi-annual Law Management Section/Lexcel Quality Forums.

The Society recently increased its promotional activity of Lexcel by placing generic Lexcel advertisements in Yellow Pages in regions across England and Wales.

However, in spite of what we have done to date, we recognise that more marketing of the scheme is required.

Consequently, over the next few months, we will increase the visibility of Lexcel firms on the proposed revised Law Society Web site.

Promotional leaflets explaining the benefits of Lexcel to clients will be redesigned and circulated through various channels including Citizen Advice Bureaux.

Victor Olowe, head of practice standards at the Law Society