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I can't be sure since it was such a long time ago, but I've a feeling that legal aid was still under the control of the Law Society when a decision was made in about the early to mid-1990s to bureaucratize the whole thing with contracts for different areas of practice, manuals, checklists, 6 monthly checks by non-solicitors and so on. Before this no one considered needing a checklist to remind you to get your new clients' names, addresses, dates of birth, etc. This was long before the SRA started talking about outcomes-focused regulation and foisted similar regimes on the whole profession. The changes to legal aid put a lot of firms off at the time and they stopped providing legally aided services. Forgive me Law Society if you'd ceased to run the legal aid scheme by then. Otherwise, aren't you carping about something you originally helped to bring about?