The Scottish Government

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Main findings

• There are numerous UK-based helplines and internet sites available to the public and providers to help them access legal services. They are provided by both the commercial and not for profit sector. A key challenge is to co-ordinate the development, and maximise the use of, these IT resources.
• Providers favoured targeted use of outreach services to specific locations such as courts and health clinics as opposed to ad hoc provision or drop-in centres. There is currently a dearth of planned outreach provision of legal services.
• At present, there is only limited formal referral practice taking place between providers. Barriers to referral included a lack of knowledge of and trust in other providers and the perceived 'failure' to help a client if a referral to another provider is made. Referral is more likely to occur between organisations with a clear organisational remit.
• Most existing quality schemes include standards that measure agency competence. However, only a few schemes include standards by which to measure individual competence and very few are concerned with assessing consumer satisfaction. Peer review of advice and casework is limited to a few of the larger providers.
• Lawyers and non-lawyers are already working effectively together in a number of organisations. For this to occur, it is important for everyone to be clear about their respective roles. Lawyers are seen to contribute most effectively by providing diagnostic services, second tier support and specialist casework. However, in some subject areas (for example, welfare rights) it was recognised that non-lawyers are often more experienced than lawyers.
• Evidence found that contracts for legal services in England and Wales have helped to improve access to legal services within a controlled budget and have improved the quality of service operations. However, there are signs of gaps in supply opening up as suppliers withdraw their services and new ones are unwilling or unable to take on contracts.
• Overall, a more strategic approach to planning and implementing advice resources, including IT, outreach services, referral practice and quality assurance should go some way to improving legal information and advice provision in Scotland. Further, clarifying the role of lawyers and non lawyers and developing their respective skills, should help to ensure gaps in provision are minimised.

Introduction

In November 2001, the "Review of Legal Information and Advice Provision in Scotland" ¹ was published. This report examined how a community legal service in Scotland could be developed and structured. The Working Group which produced the report did not propose a blueprint for a community legal service, but instead focused on a number of key recommendations for further work including the need for gathering evidence on a number of areas. Six topics for further research were identified from the recommendations:

• Information Technology
• Outreach
• Referral
• Quality Assurance Schemes
• Contracting in England and Wales
• The Role of Lawyers and Non-Lawyers.

This project reviewed the literature on the selected subject areas between 1997 and the present and conducted face-to-face interviews with 34 key stakeholders on these topics. Interviewees included representatives from voluntary, private and public sector organisations in Scotland and England. It was also necessary to conduct a search of on-line legal advice provision available to UK-based users.

Information Technology

The review examined the ways in which IT in the form of telephone helplines, emails, websites, on-line work and PC/camera links can improve access to users and providers. There has been a proliferation of publicly and privately funded on-line and helpline provision. However, better planning of resources is required to ensure that IT services complement, rather than replace face-to-face provision, are quality controlled, user-friendly and effectively promoted.

Providers described the ways in which IT is assisting advisors in their work. This included retrieving information to inform their own practice, receiving specialist assistance by telephone or email to help them in their work, case management, recording statistical information about clients and, potentially, referral (although there were few examples of this). Providers commented that in a situation where resources are limited, the impact on services would be greater if the focus was on improving the use of IT by advisors rather than by the general public. One of the main perceived advantages of IT is that it can enable specialists to support advisors in an effective way, making best use of the specialist's time and allowing the advisor to work to the highest possible level. However, there are still issues of up-skilling in relation to using IT and resourcing, both in the initial purchase of hardware and software and its ongoing maintenance and upgrading.

The full report includes tables with short descriptions of the main telephone helplines and websites available in Scotland.

Outreach

The aim of outreach is to improve access to services by placing a service in a particular locality or geographical area. The review found that current outreach services have generally developed in an ad hoc manner and rarely as the result of careful planning. Interviewees considered targeted outreach to be the most effective and efficient model. This approach offers the service at the place where the targeted client will be found, for example at the sheriff court; at centres for people with mental health problems; or at the location where asylum seekers are being housed. Interviewees considered this to be a more effective way of offering outreach than the more traditional drop-in approach in an outlying office or area.

Referral

Although interviewees agreed that referral is an important part of an effective service, it was difficult to find many examples of formal referral frameworks in Scotland. Interviewees suggested that providers may be reluctant to refer clients to other providers. This may be perceived as a failure to help a client. The lack of feedback to the original point of contact once a client is referred is also viewed as de-motivating. Interviewees also perceived that a basic lack of knowledge and/or trust between providers reduces the number of referrals. Some interviewees in England and Wales believed that formal referral networks have had little impact on providers' behaviour and that referrals, where they do occur, tend to be between agencies where staff know and trust each other. This review found that referral is more likely to occur between organisations that have clear parameters for their own work. For example, Shelter sees itself as handling issues of housing, homelessness and housing benefits and it commonly refers to other agencies for advice relating to issues lying outwith their remit.

Quality Assurance

The review included a cross-analysis of the quality assurance models adopted by the main publicly funded legal advice providers. The review also scrutinised the Community Legal Service Quality Mark in England and Wales and quality assurance criteria used by the Law Society.

An analysis of quality schemes adopted by the public sector showed that agency competence forms part of most quality assurance schemes. However, there are few requirements for specific qualifications to be held by advisors outwith the legal profession. The introduction of peer reviewing for advice and casework was welcomed by many interviewees in England and Wales. However, peer review is part of only two quality assurance frameworks in Scotland: Homepoint and Citizens Advice Scotland. Rather than introduce an entirely new scheme in a future community legal service, providers thought that gaps in existing quality standards should be filled. This would help reduce unnecessary duplication and the administrative burden of implementing new procedures. Overall, there was consensus that the contribution of the quality regime in England and Wales has improved the running of organisations and the operation of services. However, literature from England and Wales suggests that attaining the Quality Mark in England and Wales is time-consuming, costly and has introduced excessive bureaucracy. Concerns have also been raised that the Quality Mark does not focus on consumer satisfaction with advice.

Contracts for Civil Legal Aid in England and Wales

The review explores the benefits and drawbacks of contracts for legal advice in England and Wales. There is currently limited documentary evidence on how well contracting is functioning as part of the community legal service in England and Wales so it was necessary to supplement the literature review with interviews with key stakeholders.

Contracting has allowed the Lord Chancellor's Department (now the Department for Constitutional Affairs) to control expenditure on legal help and, in principle, has provided a means of responding to different forms of legal need. The ability to fund and develop different approaches, alongside standard models of contracts for casework is seen as particularly important. However, the capacity to do this in practice has been limited by the letting of a large number of long-term contracts at the start of the community legal service which were not targeted to emerging patterns of highest priority needs.

The introduction of the Quality Mark is widely welcomed. However, there are signs that gaps in service provision are opening up as suppliers decide that the effort required to take up a contract is not compensated by the financial returns.

The Role of Lawyers and Non-Lawyers

The research examined a number of organisations where lawyers and non-lawyers currently work alongside each other. A review of these organisations suggests that, in terms of planning future legal information and advice provision, the focus should be on clarifying their respective roles. Overall, it appears that there are three main ways in which lawyers have contributed appropriately to the provision of advice and information:

• by providing second tier advice and information to non-lawyer advisors;
• by providing a diagnostic service to help clients identify where they do have a legal issue which requires the assistance of a lawyer;
• by providing casework in specific/ specialist instances.

This review found that non-lawyers often have considerably more experience than lawyers in advising on areas of social welfare law (e.g. benefits entitlements). In general, respondents suggested that the best approach may be to improve the skills of non-lawyer advisors in order that they can progress cases further with the assistance and advice of a lawyer, where appropriate.

Conclusions

It is clear from interviews and an analysis of on-line and telephone provision that IT and outreach services can play a key role in helping to improve access to services for the public and help to deliver expert knowledge to providers. However, at present it appears that access to these services is not maximised due to a lack of co-ordination and planning. The key challenge will be to target existing provision and ensure that training and resources are available to maintain and up-date these services.

In Scotland, the roles of lawyers and non-lawyers requires further clarification to ensure that their respective skills are deployed effectively and that measures for demonstrating the individual competency of non-lawyers is developed. Evidence from England suggest that extending the availability of legal aid to quality assured non-lawyers through contracts has helped to fill gaps in provision and attracted clients who would not consider approaching a solicitor for advice. Contracts have also raised the individual competency of non-lawyers through the quality mark. However, contracts have been less successful in helping to target services to high priority needs.

In terms of improving the quality of advice provision, the preferred approach is to fill existing gaps in quality assurance mechanisms to minimise the administrative burden that would be required to attain new quality standards. Measuring individual competency of non-lawyers and peer review of case work were identified as key areas for improvement.

The review highlighted that referral was most likely to take place between providers who know and trust each other. Recent attempts to improve links between local providers in Scotland may help to encourage providers to refer users to alternative sources and plan service provision more effectively. However, it will be important to evaluate the pilot partnerships between legal providers in Scotland, and to scrutinise the forthcoming review of Community Legal Services in England and Wales to assess the extent to which collaborative working has improved referral practice, planning, access and the quality of services

1 Review of Legal Information and Advice Provision in Scotland, Scottish Executive, 2001.