Specialist Quality Mark from April 2017

The Legal Aid Agency ("LAA") invited Applicants to tender for a contract to administer the LAA's Specialist Quality Mark ("SQM"), from 1 April 2017. The SQM is the LAA's organisational quality standard designed to ensure that Legal Services Providers are well run and provide good client care. The SQM gives assurance regarding the quality of advice in several ways which, whilst not direct measures of quality are fundamental to reliable delivery of a quality service and therefore are fundamentally important to the delivery of legal aid services. Compliance with a recognised quality standard (currently either the SQM Specialist Quality Mark or Lexcel, The Law Society's practice management standard) is a requirement for providers of legal services that have, or are seeking to obtain, an LAA contract to deliver publically funded legal advice services. The LAA launched the procurement process with the purpose of awarding a contract for the delivery of the SQM service from April 2017.