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The Legal Services Bill is now law. On April 11, 2011 it passed through the final hurdle of New Zealand's legislative process, the granting of royal assent by our Governor General, Sir Anand Satyanand. The act aims to provide legal services to those with insufficient means, and to deliver these services in the most efficient and effective means possible. However, it takes away the right to choose your legal counsel for low category criminal charges if you are in need of financial assistance, despite the fact that such assistance is in many cases a loan. In March, Georgie Fenwicke talked to the General Manager of the Legal Services Agency, Stuart White.

Do you believe that the right to choose your own counsel should exist for Category One and Two charges?
I don’t think there is a right to choose your own counsel, and that is because what the agency needs to focus on is that there is a fair allocation of cases supported by legal aid across the lawyers that are available and competent to do so. Therefore, a rotation of the sort that we have recently introduced enables that fairer allocation of cases. One of the key benefits of this is that it helps the court process, because previously some lawyers were taking on more work than they were able to cope with.
 

How have you ensured that the people who use your services are informed of the changes?
It is quite difficult to reach the client base of the LSA because they are people who require a lawyer and who usually can’t afford one. We have been able to inform those people primarily through the media. In some areas we have done active promotion of the changes, particularly in South Auckland where they were likely to have greatest effect.
 

Traditionally, clients demonstrated their satisfaction with their feet, going back to those lawyers who served them well. How is the LSA measuring satisfaction in a system that now allocates cases to lawyers?
I guess the only basis on which we can determine whether the system is working satisfactorily is by the level of complaints we receive. We don’t currently have an active customer survey approach to determine satisfaction.
 

Did you agree with the points outlined in Dame Margaret Bazley's report on the LSA?
Rather than commit to my own personal views about it, this was a report that was accepted in full by the Minister and cabinet, so therefore the LSA has been tasked to work with and in conjunction with the Ministry of Justice in response to those changes. Dame Margaret’s report was very comprehensive, she visited almost every court site in the country and talked to groups of lawyers and community law centres.
 

How has the LSA addressed Dame Margaret's concerns about lawyers who were “rorting” the system?
The most significant change we have made is to more actively follow up complaints about lawyers. Previously, the agency had not resourced this area properly; most complaints were dealt with at a local level. The agency has established a centralised complaints management service and we have put some extra staff into it.
 

How many complaints have been made since the changes went through?
I can’t tell you that actually. There is quite a significant number of complaints.
 

Do you think it has been a successful measure?
I think it has been a very successful measure. I think it has been acknowledged by people who complain that it is encouraging to know that their complaint is going to be taken seriously and it is going to be followed up on.
 

Was the system in need of review?
Yes, clearly it had reached a point where the growth in the spending on legal aid was such that it was unaffordable, particularly in the current economic climate, but even without the financial situation that the government currently faces, it was becoming an unaffordable system.
 

What impact has the movement of the LSA to under the umbrella of the Ministry of Justice had on the operation of services provided by the organisation?
The LSA will come under the responsibility of a legal services commissioner who will have statutory independence in terms of supporting the public defence service in terms of decisions around the granting legal aid. Decision making will be independent from the Minister or Secretary for Justice. There will be some synergies from being part of a larger organisation and from corporate functions and, as time goes by, potentially better integration at a regional level.
 

Do you think the changes have delivered what Simon Power aimed to achieve in a higher quality service?
They will. It’s early days; we’ve made early steps to do that by improving our audit systems and our complaints management systems. What will actually make the difference is the introduction of a quality management system that comes in with the new legislation. This will require all legal aid providers to be approved under a new set of criteria, and contracts with legal aid providers in the future will contain some very specific practice standards.
 

What is the average amount of time it takes for your organisation to process a legal aid application?
Well, it depends on the jurisdiction, but 95% of the time, criminal applications are processed within 24 hours. 95% of family applications are processed within five days, so we generally stick to those time frames.
 

Many legal aid payments come in the form of a loan, what consumer rights do those who sign the contract have?
Whether you are looking at this as a loan or not does not make any difference to the way in which we assign the case.