Our Research Unit
Our research programme
The Board’s research unit provides policy and operational departments with evidence to inform policy development, implementation, and evaluations. Projects include primary research, secondary analysis, evaluations, and scoping papers of research needs. Work can be commissioned to external research organisations, managed collaboratively with partner agencies or carried out in-house.
The Board has a rolling three year research programme that covers three broad themes:
For more information on our programme or to discuss any of our current or planned projects please contact us.
Stakeholder engagement
We engage and involve a range of stakeholder groups to ensure that we are engaging the ‘right people, at the right time in the right way’. Some of our main stakeholders include: applicants and opponents of legal aid, the profession, general public, advice sector and the wider justice system such as The Law Society of Scotland, Bar Associations and the Scottish Government Justice Department to name a few.
Current and forthcoming research
The Board has plans to conduct research with both the profession and applicants and opponents in 2008/09. Scoping work for these projects is currently ongoing.
Completed research
Understanding the level and nature of legal aid provision
There are a number of current and planned projects that aim to build evidence on the level of supply of solicitors providing legal aid advice and representation and on the factors that may be influencing it.
Current and forthcoming research:
We are currently exploring anecdotal evidence of problems with recruitment and retention of trainees and assistants in both civil and criminal work, and possible implications for future supply of legal aid. The main aim of the research is to identify where and why recruitment and retention difficulties may be occurring across the profession, with a particular focus on legal aid provision. There are four separate elements to the research:
- Analysis of Law Society records on trainees, solicitors and firms
- Interviews with career advisors at each Scottish law school.
- Exploratory interviews with 35 trainees and solicitors.
- Quantitative survey of over 500 trainees and solicitors and people responsible for recruitment at legal workplaces.
We expect to publish the findings of the research on this website in autumn 2008.
Completed research:
Improving operations
Research in this area may involve: exploring how change might impact on our processes; identifying areas where we can improve, and finding more effective ways of working. Research methods in this area vary considerably, ranging from a few days reviewing literature, to large projects using a variety of different methodologies. The outputs from this work can also vary greatly, whilst they include traditional reports and papers they may be simply a recommendation or table of figures.
Current and forthcoming research:
Work to inform the civil simplification project is in progress. For details of the simplification project see our most recent update for civil solicitors (pdf format), or contact our Simplification Manager.
Completed research:
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