Guy Beringer: Commercial firms must learn from Carter
Legal Week reports
September 27, 2006 at 08:03 PM
4 minute read
Lord Carter's recently published Review of Legal Aid Procurement produced a considerable response from legal aid practitioners and those involved in the legal aid world. It generated little interest elsewhere in the legal profession, where it is generally presumed that legal aid and commercial practices are worlds apart.
There is, however, one key area where these worlds come together – quality. Lord Carter's report is entitled "A market-based approach to reform". Many commentators have wrongly assumed that the key to this market is pricing. In fact, the key to any market that does not deal in commodities is quality. Unless there are clear benchmarks for quality and transparent means of judging quality, pricing is meaningless.
As a powerful purchaser of legal services (legal aid funding is in the order of £2bn through more than 3,000 law firms), the Government is well positioned to demand guarantees of quality. This is especially important when the services being bought are often for extremely vulnerable clients. But the whole profession should be able to assure everyone – from large City investors down to individual homebuyers – that it puts quality at the top of its commitment to clients.
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