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The Purchaser-Supplier Approach in Legal Aid
Appendix B: Comparing the MI and PS legal aid funding models
| Features | Mutual interest model | Purchaser-supplier model |
|---|---|---|
| Predominant ideals | Liberal legalism | Administration |
| Professionalism | Bureaucracy | |
| Social service legal professionalism | Efficiency and effectiveness | |
| Legal services for the poor | Integrated, access-to-justice approach | |
| Co-operative federalism | Compartmentalised federalism | |
| Equal access to courts and lawyers | Affordable and appropriate access to legal services | |
| Program culture | Centrifugal | Centripetal |
| Collective | Atomistic | |
| Contractual | ||
| Emphasises long-term government, legal aid agency and legal profession relationships | Emphasises price and outcomes in funder/supplier transactions | |
| Provincial/State centric | Funder/purchaser centric | |
| Multi-focus policies (funding, expenditure, service delivery) | Bifurcated policies (defining expenditure goals and targets/delivery legal aid services) | |
| Legal profession/lawyers at gatekeepers | Economists/civil service professionals/managers as gatekeepers |
| Features | Mutual interest model | Purchaser-supplier model |
|---|---|---|
| Advantages | Demonstrated track record historically | Demonstrated record in current comparable national public policy projects |
| Expression of international post-war courts-legal profession-lawyers' services approach (i.e. the "first wave" of the access-to-justice approach) | Expression of international post-modern/new modern phase public management approach | |
| Brings legal aid management into line with current trends in the welfare state | ||
| Mobilises socio-legal institution of legal aid | Mobilises legal institution of contract | |
| Compatible with goals of social welfare capitalism | Compatible with goals of market capitalism | |
| Inter-active, national, macroconsultative system oriented, centrifugal public policy project | Inter-active, national, micro-oconsultative centripetal public policy project | |
| Shared responsibility for policymaking, resource allocation, outcome agendas and service delivery | Responsibility divided between funders (policy making, resource allocation & outcome agendas) and providers (service delivery) | |
| De-centralises and shifts costs of administering federal legal expenditure | Tendency to centralise and focus costs of administering federal legal aid expenditure | |
| Minimises tension between multiple and conflicting agency roles | ||
| Assists in clarifying agency needs (via contract specification and negotiation processes) and increasing competition | ||
| Increased leverage of funding/policy agency (purchaser) over outputs | ||
| Enables funders to satisfy increasing requirements of Departments of Finance to demonstrate effectiveness and efficiency in legal aid expenditure | ||
| Likely to improve financial accountability and management | ||
| Risk spreading | Risk nodulation | |
| Encourages policy, eligibility and service menu diversity | Maximises opportunities for policy, eligibility and service menu diversity/flexibility | |
| Target policy outcomes to meet identified needs for service delivery | ||
| Tends to integrate national schemes with local provincial/State lawyer elites | Creates fresh opportunities to diversify interest group base in legal aid projects | |
| Promotes self-reliant, autonomous, locally street-smart provincial/State legal aid providers | Increases management autonomy of service providers | |
| Creates new opportunities to bridge build between legal aid programs with other social welfare and justice system projects | ||
| Emphasises quality/equity in participant partner relationships | Emphasises efficient, effective, outcome oriented resource allocation | |
| Provides macro-institutional framework to mediate partner/interest group differences | Provides micro-institutional frameworks (i.e., bargaining, negotiation, contract, and contract management) to mediate funder/purchaser and provider/supplier differences | |
| Mobilises legal professional social service/social justice ideals | Creates opportunities to rejuvenate support base amongst practising lawyers (as governments/consumer re-re-renegotiate 20th century legal professionalism) | |
| Mobilises/engages skills, know-how and social capital of the legal profession | Mobilises/engages skills and know-how of practising lawyers | |
| Reduces opportunities for supplier capture | ||
| Significant degree of compatibility with traditional work models in professional occupations | Potential to mobilise skills and know-how of non-lawyer legal services providers | |
| Potential to mobilise purchaser/ supplier experiences in other public sector agencies | ||
| Compatible with traditional work practices of legal profession (i.e. lawyer defined competence, quality, cost and scope of service delivery) | Creates opportunities to reconstruct lawyer work practices in legal aid work | |
| Enables funding/policy agencies to create or intervene in occupational markets |
| Features | Mutual interest model | Purchaser-supplier model |
|---|---|---|
| Disadvantage | Efficiency and effectiveness contestable | Conversion to a purchasersupplier model inevitably disrupts relationships of long standing (short or long-term) |
| Mismatch between reporting/outcome criteria and Departments of Finance program management criteria | Possibly associated with trend towards reduced central expenditure on legal aid programs | |
| Cost-benefit of federal expenditure on legal aid may be problematic | Risks federal funders losing national perspective (and concentrating on efficiently targeting legal aid in federal matters) | |
| Effective monitoring of federal expenditure can be problematic | Risks federal governments/ legal aid funders/policy makers retaining insufficient incentives to collect comprehensive national data | |
| Lack of central awareness/ sufficient knowledge of local markets for legal aid services, peculiarities of regional/local legal cultures etc. | Risks providers' pursuing shortterm savings/ benefits at the cost of sustainable, win/win relationships with suppliers (e.g., provincial/State agencies, practising lawyers, NFPs etc.) | |
| Diminished resonance of socio-legal institution of legal aid in market welfare state | Demands new investment in monitoring technologies, research, needs management and contract management | |
| Less compatible with goals of market capitalist states (e.g., de-regulation, reforms to markets for legal services) | Risks contract/separating funding/policy and service delivery functions being seen as one-stop solution to problems of funding/managing complex, multi-relationship and dynamic legal aid projects | |
| Not necessarily attuned to current visions of state/legal profession relationship of practising lawyer opinion leaders | Risks uncompensated costshifting to provincial/State/ legal profession suppliers of costs of administering/ accounting for expenditure on federal legal aid priorities | |
| Risks collective/partnership culture producing lowest common denominator or majority interest (i.e. favouring provincial/ State legal aid provider) solutions | Introduction of divide between federal and provincial/State legal aid matters introduces artificial divide, out-of-step with emergence of national economies and globallysensitive local/regional communities | |
| Political voice of provincial/ State legal aid agencies possibly disproportionate to funding quid pro quo | Introduction of divide between federal and provincial/State legal aid matters risks prejudicing clients with mixed/ overlapping/fused legal problems and cases | |
| Shared responsibility for policy, resource allocation and service delivery can lead to gaps in accountability | Potential to damage desirable/productive aspects of legal professional work practices | |
| Partnership approach not necessarily attuned to linked-up, seamless, integrated approach of access-to justice policies | Over-regulation/reporting and excessive controls/ restrictions on legal professional work risks alienating otherwise empathetic and effective practising lawyers willing and in practice cohorts for which legal aid work is otherwise financially viable | |
| Savings in cost of federal administration may be at the price of non-optimum match between policy and service delivery outcomes and responding to needs | ||
| Problems in collecting comprehensive, reliable cost, services delivery and outcome data | ||
| Semi-autonomy of provincial/State legal aid agencies may produce over emphasis on regional/local interests at cost of national and federal interests and meeting client needs | ||
| Institutional design/cultures creates potential for capture by non-federal interests | ||
| Imbrication of socio-legal institution of legal aid as institutional/cultural/ ideological template protects/projects interests of the legal profession and practising lawyers | ||
| Reinforces professionalism (at costs of efficiency/ effectiveness, competition and consumer interests) | ||
| Tends to protect potentially negative features of work practices of the legal profession (e.g., how legal work is performed, at what cost, and in what bundles) | ||
| Reliance on mobilising the legal profession promotes opportunities for capture of centrally-funded legal aid projects | ||
| Exclusive aspects of the socio-legal institution of legal aid (eg, inadequate voice for social welfare and consumer groups) Institutionally/ culturally less willing/able to respond to new market needs in a timely fashion | ||
| Decentralised policymaking/ expenditure may lead to lack of uniformity in eligibility for federallyfunded legal aid |
