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Anon 13:43 - LR has provided a key to what the headings mean on the page where the data can be downloaded.

Otherwise, it is not difficult to extract some useful information from the spreadsheet. For example, adding a column in which the number of requisitions is divided by the total intake and sorting on that column gives each firm a ratio of requisitions to applications (regardless of volume of business). It seems pretty obvious why those entities with a zero ratio are mainly banks, whose applications will be mostly electronic discharges (probably difficult to get any requisitions raised in such cases!). However, looking at the other cases (Oct-Dec 18) shows that 70 out of 500 had less than 5% of requisition cases, 14 had 5-10%, 69 had 10-20%, 155 had 20-30%, 69 had 30-40% and 33 had 40-50%, with one solitary firm having a 67% hit rate. The average was around 25%.

A couple of points that might be drawn from this are--
(a) an average of one in four cases resulting in requisitions being raised doesn't actually seem so bad, but
(b) the spread of results is striking, in that, if 14% of firms can achieve a rate of requisitions in less than 1 in 20 cases, why is it that over 60% of firms, who cannot do better than 1 in 4 cases, are more than five times worse?

Of course, it is not difficult to find cases where the requisition was unnecessary or where someone else (e.g. a lender or a person whose consent is needed under a restriction) is to blame for the requisition being raised. However, most requisitions are not raised by mistake and, even if someone else is to blame, this points to the system being capable of improvement, so as to eliminate the cause of the blameworthiness.

And, as any efficient business needs to recognise, errors and delays take time to deal with and therefore cost the business money. If a business has a 30% requisition rate (which the table now tells them about), the it should now be clear to them that there are a substantial number of firms with only a 5% or less requisition rate. That should trigger a reaction that says "how can we bring our requisition rate down to 5% and save ourselves the resource cost of having to pull out files (real or electronic) on another 25% of cases to deal with requisitions that should be avoidable)?"

Just wringing one's hands, or dismissing the LR initiative with a sneer, is not going to change anything. Looked at in a positive way, the main beneficiaries of the LR data are solicitors themselves, as the information gives them the power to assess themselves against others and therefore judge whether or not they need to invest in an improvement process.