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Measuring the Quality of Legal Services: An Idea Whose Time has Not Come

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Rick J. Carlson
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Abstract

There is a record of concern about the quality of legal services. And there is a record of the attempt to ensure quality through restricting the admission of persons to the practice of law. But beyond this, there is no “system” for, nor for that matter, any theory about, assuring the quality of legal services. This paper proposes such a system, and at the same time offers a theoretical framework for its development. And this is done despite the fact that it is highly unlikely that any such system will be utilized in the near future.

The paper develops its theoretical base, and its concrete proposals, from an extended examination of the systems of quality assurance which have been developed for medical care services. Given a sufficient degree of similarity between the medical care and legal service systems, analogical analysis is used.

The paper concludes that a quality assurance system can be fashioned for the provision of legal services, even though such a system is likely to remain a theoretical construct for the foreseeable future.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 11 , Issue 2: Delivery of Legal Services , Fall 1976 , pp. 287 - 317
Copyright
Copyright © 1977 by the Law and Society Association.

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References

1. This may be a phenomenon peculiar to California. As Garry Trudeau points out in his comic strip “Doonesbury,” 80 percent of the Watergate miscreants were from California. He adds comfortably or uncomfortably, depending on where you are from, that it is probably due to the drinking water. Los Angeles Times, November 16, 1975.

2. For a comparison of the respective plans, including the AMA's, see Hodgson (1973).

3. This figure has been adapted from Carlson (1970).

4. These studies fall into two types: research focused on why lawyers deviate from ethical and professional standards, and research on why existing practices and procedures of disciplinary agencies fail to control even outrageous departures from community and professional standards. Examples of the first are Carlin (1966) and Handler (1967). An example of the latter is the Clark Committee report (American Bar Association, 1970). Both are discussed in Marks and Cathcart (1974).

5. This isn't the case with other fields. There is a very rich regulatory literature in medicine, some of which will be discussed in later sections of this paper, as there is in engineering and architecture.

6. The literature on “access” to legal services ultimately bears on the question of quality if the assumption is made that access to a lawyer is valuable to a client irrespective of the outcome to that client. But access is far from determinative. As Marc Galanter (1974) argues convincingly, access to legal services for certain socioeconomic groups is less important because their relative social and economic position renders them far less vulnerable.

7. I am aware that this use of schematics is unsophisticated and subject to criticism for the lack of adequate representation of coordinates. Nevertheless, I am trying to sketch the ideas visually and graphically, leaving questions of statistical nicety to those who wish to ask them.

8. There is a fairly substantial literature to support these points; ranging all the way from Milton Friedman's purely theoretical arguments (1971), to Robert Derbyshire's thorough survey of the failure of input controls as quality regulating devices (1969).

9. By this I don't necessarily mean that most of client fees go for this type of service. As in the case of medical care, the brain surgeon makes more money per unit of time than the pediatrician; but the pediatrician renders far more units of service.

10. Legal services is, of course, subject to one unique regulation. The quality of law itself is dependant upon the quality of the bench. This is a public function. Perhaps, then, the major governmental regulatory role today is to select and maintain the judiciary.