After the public spat between the Bar Standards Board (BSB) and
the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) at the beginning of the
month, peace seems to have broken out with the announcement on 23
March of agreement between the regulators on the joint Quality
Assurance Scheme for Advocacy (QASA).
The key issue in the dispute was the inclusion of non trial
advocates in the scheme which the BSB opposed while the chief
executive of the SRA maintained: 'Our position is that it is in the
public interest that all advocates who can demonstrate their
competence against all of the standards are able to gain their QASA
accreditation'. On this issue the SRA appears to have won the
argument.
Those advocates whose practice does not include trial work at
levels 2 and 3 will enter the scheme via an approved assessment
organisation where their competence will be assessed against all of
the QASA standards. This will allow these advocates to appear in
non-trial hearings at level 1 (magistrates' court), 2 and 3 (Crown
Court). All advocates who demonstrate their competence to enter the
scheme will be accredited for five years. During the first two
years of the scheme data will be gathered to enable a decision to
then be made on whether or not to continue these arrangements for
non trial advocates.
It is still difficult to be confident about the final shape of
QASA. However, the bare outline of the scheme is:
- a common set of standards will apply to all advocates
regardless of their route to qualification
- there are four levels in the scheme mapped to the complexity of
work ranging from cases in the magistrates' courts at level one to
the most complex cases in the Crown Court at level four
- a set of standards and performance indicators have been
provided for each of the four levels in the scheme
- advocates will choose to progress through the levels or to
remain at a level in which case they will be required to be
reaccredited every five years
- a solicitor will have attained level one on qualification, but
will need to be reaccredited after five years by assessed advocacy
CPD unless the solicitor has progressed to level two
- advocates will initially self assess where on the scheme they
are competent and then be required to prove their competence at
that level
- the advocate seeking progression by judicial evaluation will be
required to obtain three positive pieces of judicial evaluation
over a period of 12 months
- on receipt of the advocate's application, the regulator will
grant the advocate provisional accreditation at the higher
level
- once provisionally accredited the advocate must be assessed in
their first two cases at the new level and evaluated against the
standards for the higher level
- on submitting the completed evaluations the advocate will
either become fully accredited at the new level or will revert to
their previous level.
The Law Society has been pressing hard for QASA to be flexible
and to accommodate the range of work undertaken in the courts by
solicitor advocates. It has ensured that the allocation of cases
against the four levels reflects current practice in the courts -
notably that advocacy in the Youth Courts should be level 1 and not
level 2 which would have been equivalent to a requirement to hold
higher rights of audience. Inevitably the Society has been
reflecting the opposition of the profession to judicial evaluation
as the principal route to accreditation at the higher levels.
Members of the Advocacy
Section will be kept abreast of future developments in relation
to QASA and how the scheme will impact upon them.
Steven Durno is policy officer for the administration of
justice at the Law Society.