Practice management and quality of advice standardsQuality standardsPractice management:quality of advice standards, andPerformance monitoringQuality standardsPractice management:quality of advice standards, andPerformance monitoringQuality standardsPractice management:quality of advice standards, andPerformance monitoring
19.3The LAA has set quality standards for practice management, known as the Specialist Quality Mark (SQM), which applies to professional legal services, with additional requirements for telephone services. The LAA also accepts the Law Society’s Lexcel standard in place of the SQM. The Mediation Quality Mark applies to family mediation. An organisation must be accredited to one of the acceptable standards in order to hold a contract. The standards can be downloaded from the LAA’s website:
www.gov.uk/guidance/legal-aid-agency-quality-standards/.
19.4The Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA) is to be introduced for all advocates in criminal courts (see chapter 17) but at the time of writing the timetable had been suspended.
19.5The LAA worked with the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies to create a peer review scheme that assesses the quality of legal advice. See
www.gov.uk/legal-aid-agency-audits. If selected for peer review, organisations with face to face contracts must reach at least Threshold Competence in order to demonstrate that they meet contractual requirements.