Solicitors are constantly being asked to be more efficient.

Yet equating efficiency with quality is not a realistic attitude to adopt.The requirements of the Legal Aid Board (LAB) for franchising can be of undoubted benefit to the efficient running of a matter and the provision of information to the client.

But there is a cost to the firm in terms of time.

Obtaining a franchise means, as I understand it, that a whole series of systems for opening, running and closing the file must be in place.

A strict regime for costing is required and, more importantly, the client must be kept informed at all stages of everything that is going on.

Generally the profession is expected to pay for this additional work from existing fees.

There is one serious flaw in franchising which is not addressed in any of the documents I have seen from the LAB: what real check is there that the client has been given proper advice? Part of the file review procedure, for which we are not paid, requires the reviewer to see if the law is being properly applied.

Yet the reviewer will only see a small number of files.

Even the LAB seems to recognise that a solicitor on legal aid rates of pay cannot afford to check every file of another fee-earner.In the same way, kite marking for conveyancers would require adherence to a set of steps which would ensure that the transaction was carried out efficiently, that searches were made, the mortgage advance arranged in good time and so on, to ensure that the transaction proceeded smoothly, with the clients getting their new houses when they wanted them and any previous mortgage being suitably discharged.What neither fra nchising nor kite marking actually addresses is the quality of the advice that is given to the client.

Neither system checks, on a comprehensive basis, that the client has been given the right advice.

For example, assuming a conveyancing kite mark scheme followed the outline in 'Adapting for the future' -- a consultation paper on conveyancing prepared by the Law Society's property and commercial services committee and sent out in March 1994 -- at some stage in the purchase of a long domestic lease the lease would be examined and the person carrying out the transaction would tick a box saying that this had been done.

What this check would not reveal would be whether the person doing the work had examined the lease sufficiently carefully to note that the covenant for enforcement was defective, which is a common fault on domestic leases over 25 years old.

It would be said that the conveyancer carried out the job efficiently, the boxes would have been ticked and the failure to spot the defect would slip by, eventually generating a claim for negligence.Computer systems might work better than manual systems.

But you can train a monkey to press a series of buttons in the correct sequence.

This yields no evidence that the presser of the buttons or the administrator of the tick in the box has any idea what they are doing.

Of course, not all conveyancers are made like monkeys but there is clear evidence that some are.

Problems with titles arise at regular intervals and they are not always spotted.

The interpretation of restrictive and particularly positive covenants is often difficult and the consequences to the client can be horrendous.Some of you will no doubt recall the frightening tale related by Malcolm Brahams of London (see [1995] Gazette, 1 November, 15).

Mr Brahams complained that a firm which had made a series of blunders in purchasing a leasehold flat -- including addressing a letter enclosing the deposit cheque to a DX number and then putting it in the ordinary post -- had been awarded ISO9001.There is some conveyancing which a computer-literate individual could manage without any risk of a claim on insurers.

However, freehold titles without mortgage or restrictive covenants, with clearly defined boundaries and clear rights of access directly from the road into the garage, are not that common and most conveyancing needs an intellectual input.

If a mortgage is needed it requires a careful eye to ascertain all the devices that lenders are putting into their instructions so that if something goes wrong the lender can sue the solicitor who has adequate insurance.

I have heard of a lender who wanted the solicitor to ensure that there were not unsecured loans outstanding at the time of completion, presumably in order to preserve the lender's right to sue the solicitor for breach of trust or negligence in the event of the borrower having misrepresented his or her financial position to the lender.Quality of service means an assurance that the client will get a property without problems and a good title, that the lender will be content with what the solicitor has done and that the mechanical steps have all been carried out properly.

No proposals for kitemarking produced so far suggest to me that there is to be any attempt at all to check on the quality of the advice given.

I suggest that quality of advice is more important than the strict adherence to a set of rules.