I would like to address the Legal Services Commission's (LSC) much-repeated claim that good quality is cheaper than average quality.


Even assuming the LSC's statistics are reliable, what it fails to understand is that while the cost to the LSC of providing average advice might be higher, the cost to the firm is lower. A less qualified and trained adviser producing average-quality work will cost the firm far less than a senior lawyer producing excellent work. Yet legal aid pays nothing extra to those who produce this higher-quality work, which can only force quality down.



The LSC's professed commitment to quality is further undermined by its withdrawal of support for panel membership. The best way to ensure good-quality work is to ensure that you have people doing it who have been objectively assessed as of good quality. In the LSC's risk-based world, a before-the-event check like that reduces the amount of expensive after-the-event auditing you need to do.



Richard Miller, Director, Legal Aid Practitioners Group, London