It seeks views on how best the new service can be evaluated, and in particular how effective comparisons can be drawn between the work of salaried public defenders and LSC contracted criminal defence practitioners.

The paper begins by briefly describing the objectives of the public defender pilot, the work that has already been undertaken in establishing the pilot public defender offices, and a general outline of the research. It then sets out a number of options and issues relating to the methods to be employed in this research, on which we are seeking views.