This has been a relatively more important issue than in other jurisdictions, largely because of the much larger sums of publicly money being spent.This has given Government and its institutions a direct concern with value for money. There are now essentially three elements to the system of quality assurance which may prove interesting to those from other jurisdictions: accreditation of individual lawyers and legal service providers; requirements, largely set by the professional bodies themselves, as to how an office should be run and organized; direct testing of work undertaken on files, initially by a method involving ‘transaction criteria’ (essentially a checklist approach to essential elements in handling a case) but increasingly now involving peer review. View the item