The Legal Services Commission (LSC) announced on the 5th September that it would be appealing the judgment in the judicial review brought against the Unified Contract by The Law Society.
The new systems were due to be released October 2007 and Scott Ridley of DPS software who is also a member of the Independent Software's Vendors Advisory Committee said, “We have already re written OneOffice criminal case management and committed to updating all of our users in time for the changes to take place. We will continue to monitor the position and make changes to our software to suit whatever our clients need”
Though the changes are not coming in until January 2008, reporting requirements for existing contracts are changed and DPS will be posting new software on the web for clients to update their systems with. All the DPS updates are being supplied under existing maintenance agreements.
Osman Ismail of DPS said, “There are enough financial stresses and uncertainty in the criminal departments without us adding to the burden by charging for the updates that have been necessary by these forthcoming LSC changes”
Commenting on the decision to appeal the judgment, Carolyn Regan, the Legal Services Commission Chief Executive, said: “The legal aid reforms are specifically about maximising access to legal aid for the future. By achieving best value for money and rebalancing the overall budget to provide more funding for civil work, we can continue to increase the growing number of people helped.
“The judgment could possibly result in the need for much shorter contracts to ensure that we can amend the ‘technical specifications’ at regular intervals to reflect changes in circumstances or Government policy. Such short-term contracts would not be in the interests of providers, or clients.”
Due to this announcement there will be no Criminal changes made in October. The changes will now take place in January 2008.DPS will be introducing the Civil Billing module in 2008.
The LSC shortly intends to:
- terminate the existing General Criminal Contract with effect from 13 January 2008
- run an open process leading to the award of new contracts which will operate for 6 months from 14 January 2008
- re-allocate duty solicitor work and issue rotas on that basis for the six months of the new contract.
This means that the following legal aid reforms for criminal work that were to be implemented between 15 October 2007 and 1 January 2008 will now be incorporated into the new criminal contract which will come into effect from 14 January 2008:
- new Police Station fixed fees and revised boundary areas
- expansion of the Defence Solicitor Call Centre to ‘own client’ work
- expansion of CDS Direct to those elements of ‘own client’ work suitable for telephone advice
- introduction of the Very High Cost Case contracting panel (to run for 18 months, as previously announced).
DPS supply a full range of criminal magistrates and crown court billing software that fully manages contracts for firm for more information visithttp://www.legalservices.gov.uk/aboutus/press_releases_6258.asp
