The comparisons we draw are generally in favour of such firms. Sometimes we turn green with envy as we hear about an HR department of three individuals who deal with all the HR matters, and (this is the one I always drool about) a fully staffed IT department with a software manager and a hardware engineer on site! Visiting a larger firm very recently, I was introduced to their head of catering, given a guided tour of their kitchens and shown the staff restaurant.

But, oddly enough, legal aid practices do have a thing or two to teach the larger firms. Having dinner with a colleague in a much larger firm, I heard a dreadful tale of a probate matter that had gone very badly wrong, with a senior probate practitioner selling off proceeds of an estate to a family member. The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) is now involved.

‘Don’t you have a system of file supervision?’ I enquired. ‘What’s that?’ he said. I explained that ever since the birth of franchising in 1994, we had to check colleagues’ files regularly to see how matters were progressing and make sure any problems encountered were speedily rectified.

We had a tier of ‘file supervisors’, who had the training and knowledge to check files, make reports and keep records of what they had done. These records were reviewed annually and trends spotted.

My colleague was genuinely surprised at the sophistication of our file review processes and said that he would be putting it on the agenda at their next management meeting.

The conversation then turned to appraisal of staff. ‘We don’t really do that’, he said. ‘We thought about it, but took the view that we would end up upsetting everyone.’

When I explained that we did a yearly major staff appraisal and a minor appraisal every six months, he looked a little embarrassed. Again, this is a product of the rigid regime introduced by franchising in 1994 and one of the features of the system which we have found extremely helpful in ironing out problems, planning training and developing staff through other routes such as ILEX. Appraisal is not just a tick-box exercise, but a real attempt to make our firm a happy place, grow staff successfully and identify problems before they become difficult to control.

Finally our conversation turned to counsel. ‘What system do you have in place when choosing a barrister to instruct?’ I asked. ‘Staff simply use anyone who happens to be available’, he said. They had no approved list of counsel, no approved list of experts and certainly no comments in a book containing a list of experts, which might give useful guidance to those choosing a barrister in the future, such as how good is their paperwork, how good are they on their feet and what is their client care like.

Legal aid practices may be small, and some of us may be struggling, but the lessons learned over 20 years of legal aid franchising and contracting have made us rather good little businesses.