At the touch of a button

Our shopping habits are changing. According to a recent report, more and more people are shunning the congested High Street, and are instead buying their Christmas presents and groceries online. Sainsburys, for example, expect their online food business to grow by 30% this year.

The experience of buying books, concert tickets and even flights over the internet has gone from being a novelty into something which is routine. It’s easy to see why. Instead of having to maintain a chain of outlets, the retailer only has to maintain a website. For the public, the service is convenient, quick and reliable. Choice is greater, and prices are usually competitive.

A few years ago, the Government realised that many of the same benefits could come from providing public services electronically. Why make people cash their benefits books at post offices, when money could be paid directly into bank accounts? Why not allow self-assessment tax returns to be completed online? The Modernising Government Fund was set up, and agencies were invited to bid for grants. One such agency was the Scottish Legal Aid Board. Its bid was successful. SLAB Online was born.

A&A for starters

From the project start in mid-2001, SLAB planned that every type of transaction (applications, sanctions, accounts) for every type of legal aid (advice and assistance, civil, children’s or criminal) would be capable of being done online. The Board hoped to have everything up and running within a couple of years, but for a host of reasons – including personnel changes, new legislation and technological glitches – the deadline kept being pushed back.

The Board decided to start with advice and assistance (“A&A”). This had been relatively untouched by reform in recent years. There was also a certain logic in that A&A tends to come at the start of cases, before other forms of legal aid might become available. In retrospect, the Board might have found other types easier to implement online – A&A is by far the most commonly granted, with many more interim transactions (in the form of increases) and much more detailed accounts (as opposed to the block accounts required in many civil and criminal cases).

At the start, the Board made it clear that it wanted to proceed in partnership with the profession. Various firms were selected to pilot the new system. A liaison group was set up, including solicitors and representatives from the Society, and monthly meetings were held. Changes in personnel at the Board led to these meetings becoming less frequent, before they ceased completely in 2004. Piloting in firms only began in earnest in early 2005. By this time, the Board’s systems were largely finalised, allowing relatively little scope for feedback to be taken into account.

The Board’s A&A system is now at the point of being officially launched. A number of firms are using it already, and the Board estimates that around 1% of all A&A applications are registered online. For the project to be economically viable, that figure will have to rise substantially. The next six months will show whether that will happen.

How does it work?

If you’ve ever bought anything over the internet, you’ll have some idea of how the system works.

First, you need to have access to the internet. Provided your computer isn’t more than a few years old, and runs one of the more recent versions of Windows, you shouldn’t need to change it. The Board recommends that users have broadband (the fastest connection commonly available, usually costing upwards of £15 per month). While the system should work with dial-up connections, it may well grind to a halt, which is not good for the user’s blood pressure.

The Board will issue you with a username and password. There has been some debate about whether such an arrangement is sufficiently secure: the Board could have used a digital certificate, such as the Society’s LawSeal. It remains to be seen whether the Board’s choice will cause problems in the long run.

It is important to keep the password secret. The temptation to get your secretary to remember it for you is to be resisted: anyone who has your password would, in due course, be able to access a swathe of confidential material, including, perhaps, details of payments made over a period of time. They would also be able to enter details without your consent. Aside from the obvious problems this might cause, there would be compliance and professional practice implications. If you wouldn’t let your staff fake your signature, you shouldn’t give them your password.

All your staff will, instead, receive their own usernames and passwords. You can then decide what they will be able to do: for example, whether or not qualified assistants are able to register applications in their own name; or whether to enable your secretary to type increases for you, rather than do it yourself.

When you log in, you see your home page, which includes a list of notifications (the online equivalent of the envelope from SLAB). This will give you a record of applications lodged, increases determined, and so on.

The first stage in the A&A process is the initial application. At present, a two page form (the AA/APP, or “pink”) is completed, signed by client and solicitor, and sent off to the Board. The Board enters the data, then issues a certificate, usually about a week later.

With A&A Online, the details are entered directly onto the website. A short form containing a financial declaration is either printed from the data entered, or handwritten, and signed by the client. This is not sent away – it is retained with the solicitor’s file. The Board may ask for a sample of these forms to be exhibited at a later date. Once all the data are entered, the solicitor clicks the “submit” button, and receives an almost immediate acknowledgment, which includes the allocated reference number.

Benefits both ways

This process is better from the Board’s perspective for a number of reasons. First, the data goes straight into their systems – there is no need for administrative staff to type in details from paper forms. Secondly, incomplete forms are a thing of the past, as the system won’t allow applications to be submitted unless they are complete. Thirdly, it allows the Board to have completely electronic systems, which saves on storage costs.

The advantages to the solicitor are perhaps a little less obvious. Why type all the information onto a website when a pink form can be scribbled out in a matter of seconds? Yet:

• The immediate issue of a reference number makes it easier to submit increases before the certificate arrives.
• Where a client has previously been granted A&A for another matter, the form is automatically completed, only the financial declaration and subject matter needing to be amended.
• Completing A&A applications onscreen when the client is present saves secretarial time, and avoids the risk of forms being sent out of time.
• For those not on Legal Post or DX, there will be substantial savings on postage.

Perhaps more benefit is to be found with increases, which are dealt with in a similar way to applications. In cases of special urgency, the increase can be considered almost immediately upon submission, with a decision being made within an hour or two. Non-urgent increases are currently dealt with much more quickly than the paper equivalent, largely because the delivery time (one or two days each way) is cut out.

The A&A account system is less useful, as it requires each item to be entered individually. This will probably only be of use to those solicitors who prepare their own accounts manually in-house. Those who generate accounts automatically from their case management systems will still have to submit accounts on paper. The Board has promised to work with case management system providers to develop some form of integration, but as yet nothing has been done. Those solicitors who employ law accountants will probably continue to do so.

The drawbacks…

All the above having been said, don’t expect SLAB Online to be a beautifully designed, intuitive, error-free web service. It isn’t. The design and functionality are quite a bit below that of many websites you may know. The Board could have learned something from the Registers’ ARTL project (online conveyancing), which has a wonderfully clear and instructive layout. Instead, SLAB Online has lots of scroll bars, constant refreshes (where typing something in causes the whole page to reload), and confusingly positioned buttons. Moreover, it is unsatisfactorily slow: one wonders how things will be when the 1% figure mentioned becomes 10, 20 or 50%.

There are also plenty of unresolved practical issues. Most new criminal A&A grants happen outwith the office (in police or court cells) – are solicitors going to complete a form with the client, and then re-enter the data when they return to the office? Will the Board accept a paper account when the original application was submitted electronically? Perhaps most significantly of all: if completing the application online adds 10 minutes to an initial meeting, will the Board pay for it at accounts stage, or try to abate the entry? In recent months I have come across a number of accounts where the initial entry has been part-abated on the basis that the act of granting A&A is not chargeable.

All these are valid concerns. They are not, however, reasons to avoid using (or at least trying) SLAB Online. Electronic service delivery is one of these things that is going to happen, whether we as a profession like it or not. In a few years’ time, we may have no option but to transact electronically with the Board. By participating now, we have the potential to influence the continuing development of systems for other forms of legal aid. If we don’t, we are likely to have a poorer alternative forced on us.

I urge every legal aid practitioner to give SLAB Online a try. If you come across a problem, don’t give up; contact the Board, and demand they fix it. Tell the Society – the Technology Committee will happily take up concerns raised by the profession.

And the next stages…

Once SLAB Online is finally up and running, it will soon spread to other forms of legal aid. It is in those areas that solicitors should see the most substantial benefits. In criminal cases, for example, there is no real reason why the profession shouldn’t expect same day determination of summary legal aid applications, and same day payment of fixed fee accounts. In civil, we should see provisional means assessments being issued as soon as the application is submitted. Sanction applications in all forms of legal aid should be determined much more quickly than at present.

We shouldn’t just sit back and let SLAB determine their own systems – the profession should be forcing the Board to raise the bar, and deliver a package that is also in the best interests of solicitors and their clients.

Stuart Munro is a partner in Livingstone Brown, Glasgow, based at the Shettleston office, and a member of the Society’s Technology Committee