Competence of Legal Professional Work: The Methodology Project

Abstract

Professional competence or expertise lies at the heart of most concepts of professionalism and self-regulation. This is because the asymmetry of information in the professional/client relationship prevents the market from regulating effectively for quality. Thus, the move from self-regulation to co-regulation amongst professionals globally in recent years has brought the threat of quality assurance from external sources to the fore. The repeated failure of professions to pursue quality of performance with sufficient vigour has merely served to reinforce this development. Fortunately methodologies for assessment of the competence of professionals and the quality of professional work have progressed in the last decade, within professional and national boundaries. In law, such methodologies are now operationalised as the deciding factor in allocating public funds to solicitors and the not for profit sector under legal aid, since April 2000 in England and Wales and soon after in Scotland. The project aims to reconsider and further to develop this methodology relating to the legal profession.