Jury still out on PDSO scheme

Two more Public Defence Solicitors Offices are to open but opinions vary as to whether the offices established to date have been a success

The Journal, November 2003, page 44

Two more Public Defence Solicitors’ Offices (PDSO) are to be opened in Glasgow and Inverness. In addition the geographic restrictions on the Edinburgh office, which opened in 1998, are to be lifted.

According to Justice Minister Cathy Jamieson, extending the pilots to bring in Glasgow and Inverness Sheriff Courts will enable the Executive to make better comparisons between public defence and private solicitors in terms of cost, quality, client satisfaction and the wider impact on the criminal justice system, and to determine whether the PDSO offers an efficient and effective alternative. The Inverness PDSO will work in Sheriff Courts from Elgin to Dornoch and will permit a feasibility study in a rural and semi-rural area.

PDSO solicitors are employed by the Scottish Legal Aid Board, whose Chairman Jean Couper has welcomed the extension. “We will consult with the local solicitors’ faculties in developing our plans for the new offices and aim to develop constructive relationships between them and the PDSO”, she commented. “We aim to have them operating by 30 June 2004.”

The Law Society of Scotland remains sceptical about the project. While some of its reservations about the Edinburgh scheme have been addressed, it believes that the benefits remain to be proved. President Joe Platt said that the decision to extend the scheme “does not add up”. Oliver Adair, Vice Convener of the Legal Aid Committee, voiced his concern that “scarce resources are to be spent on expanding a pilot which has already proven expensive”. “While the research [published in 2001] showed that cases with the PDSO took less time, the client satisfaction element of the research showed less satisfaction with the PDSO than with private practitioners”, he added.

The PDSO claims that since the research was carried out its costs have reduced by around 20%.