Guide to solicitor satisfaction and accuracy

We have trialled a new approach to surveying solicitors about their satisfaction with our service. Solicitors were asked to indicate their satisfaction using a 5-point scale.

The percent satisfied score reported here is the percent of solicitors who responded either Fairly Satisfied (4) or Very Satisfied (5) on the scale.

The satisfaction question was targeted separately on a three-month rolling basis at solicitors carrying out Civil work, Criminal work and Children’s work. Within each area one question was asked regarding the applications service and one question was asked regarding the accounts service.

In the first month we asked the application question and the accounts question of solicitors who had made any civil applications in the past three months. In the second month we did the same for criminal and in the third month we did the same for children’s. Then in the fourth month we went back to civil and repeated the approach.

We developed this approach to minimise the level of repeat questioning any individual solicitor might receive in one month. We also provided the option for solicitors to respond with open comments in a free-text box.

Accuracy

This is being measured by the Independent Checking & Quality Unit (ICQU) team through sampling of cases in both the applications and accounts areas.

Scoring Accuracy has been given a range of 1 to 4.

1 = Fundamental error – an error caused an incorrect decision to be taken

2 = Non-fundamental error – an error was found but this did not result in an incorrect decision

3 = Issue – a correct decision was taken but some of the justification was inaccurate

4 = Correct decision taken with the correct justification

The percentage figure reported is the percent of measurements that are scored 4, i.e. Correct. This is a more discriminating figure compared with the previous implementation of Accuracy when only errors affecting decision, i.e. 1s, were reported as incorrect.