Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Dowler family cross-examination puts advocates on the spot

Concern about the quality of the defense led to the introduction of a controversial plan to evaluate the performance

fury on questioning the parents of Milly Dowler has put the defense in court in bright light. Putting the rights and wrongs of the case side Dowler, public debate has certainly come at the right time for the common defense group (JAG), soon to be in place a quality assurance system for the defenders of the controversy (Qasa) working in the criminal law.

JAG consists of three key regulators of lawyers - Standards for the bar, lawyers Regulation Authority and ILEX Professional Standards - and its origin in 2006 Lord Carter report on legal aid recruitment, which identifies a customer "driven by the need to ensure the quality of the defense" as a vital part of an effective judicial system.

JAG argued that regulatory intervention is necessary because of concerns raised by the judges on the quality of defense (while recognizing that only a minority of supporters to cause problems) , "the fallibility of relying on market forces" to eliminate performance of the defense, and the need for consumer confidence.

In 2009, a report on the pilot of the Legal Services Board for a similar scheme for quality assurance relied on the standards of the legal defense. Professor Richard Moorhead, vice-director of the Cardiff Law School and a part of the research team, says that some of the default rates were at an unprecedented number in any assessment of the quality of the lawyer participated in the last 20 years. "

He adds: ".. This requires either a statutory or regulatory response further investigation seem to accept the need for regulatory intervention"

Qasa to assess all human rules, but a fair bit has changed since the work was started in 2009. Particular has been a debate about the role of judges in assessing the competence of the defense to raise four levels within the system, working in the court of first instance for the treatment of severe cases in the Court of Assizes.

The argument (of the bar and judges), was that judges are the ultimate "consumers" of the promotion, but at the same time, they can not see what is before them.

The dominant role of the judiciary has been criticized for several reasons, as if it could jeopardize the defense worried about disturbing a judge, that the judges can not evaluate the work of court The additional workload that could heap on them, and the fear that senior judges, in particular - because it is composed almost exclusively of lawyers -. may they discriminate against non-lawyer advocates A route that minimizes the evaluation of judicial intervention was introduced. It also calls remain the same level of reaccredit every five years.

But this is almost certainly not. Regulators and prosecutors lawyers "signed the plan, professional standards because of Ilex vote on it next month. The following is submitted to the Legal Aid Board for approval to roads Qasa introduction from January 1, 2012.

The Council took a very active participation in developing the plan, and some of the changes were made in response to strong pressure from the commission, which even threatened the regulators use for the first both its executive earlier this year, such was his misfortune.



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