Web-based surveys (ethics checks for law firms)
We have developed what we hope will be a varied and ever-expanding series of short, sharp web-based surveys which will allow incorporated legal practices (and for that matter all law firms) to test the effectiveness of discrete aspects of their ethical infrastructure - the policies and procedures, customs and practices both formally stated and otherwise that nurture and sustain a workplace culture that encourage and reward ethical behaviour and discourage, deter, detect and deal with ethically questionable behaviour.
They will be designed and directed to test the aspects of practice we believe are most likely to be problematic, either for all law firms or particular sub-sets of law firms – supervision practices in high volume cottage conveyancing firms, for example, or billing practices in medium-sized to large law firms.
Web-based surveys (ethics checks for law firms) have the following characteristics:
- they will be designed specifically to minimise the compliance costs to the law firms subject to audit and to maximise the value of the information they elicit. We envisage designing them so they take no more than and preferably less than 30 minutes to complete.
- they will be directed not just to a firm’s legal practitioner director(s) but to all its employees, or in large firms at least significant samples of the different levels and classifications of their employees – directors, senior lawyers, junior lawyers, paralegals and other non-legal staff. We want the employees to give us, and the firm, a window on how the firm’s policies and procedures and systems are perceived and understood and implemented ‘down the line’ by the different levels and classifications of their people.
- they will encourage respondents to be frank, by guaranteeing their anonymity. We note that there is some evidence that respondents answer on-line surveys more honestly than face to face surveys.
- they will have an educational value, if we get the questions right, by prompting each individual respondent to reflect on the significance of the questions and the implications of their answers both for them as individuals and their firm.
- they will add value from the firm’s point of view also, by ‘testing the limits’ of its management systems as they apply to the particular practices or aspects of practice under review. The answers and in particular the patterns of answers across the different levels and classifications of their employees will be a handy indicator of which of their management systems if any might need improvement.
- they will add value from our point of view, too, as a risk indicator. The answers and in particular the patterns of answers across the different levels and classifications of a firm’s employees might be positively encouraging or they might be anomalous, by suggesting that the firm’s systems are not always reflected in what actually happens ‘down the line’ and stand to be improved by clarification or further training and the like. Equally they might hint at deep-seated problems that warrant a closer look by means of a comprehensive on-site review. Certainly the information we obtain in this way will add powerfully to the risk information we will already have at our disposal, including the firm’s complaints history and its legal practitioner director’s self-assessment of the appropriateness of its systems and supervisory arrangements.
- they have potential to add further value again, if as we envisage we publish the aggregated and de-identified results. That will enable law firms to compare their performance with the performance of their law firm peers - and will serve the public interest, too, by exposing aspects of law firm culture to public scrutiny.
Do you want to see the surveys we have developed to date, or to see the survey results to date? If so
and follow the prompts from there.
See also:
- The regulatory framework – an overview
- Appropriate management systems
- Compliance audits
- ILP investigations