LEXCEL Accreditation
Management

Compliance Services For Law Firms

LEXCEL is the Law Society’s legal practice quality mark for client care, compliance and practice management for law firms and in-house legal departments. The LEXCEL framework is based on the following seven key quality areas:

• Structures and strategy
• Financial management
• Information management
• People management
• Risk management
• Client care
• File and case management

Achieving LEXCEL means a firm is recognised as offering excellent client service and managing risk effectively, which can set your firm apart within a competitive market. A LEXCEL quality mark can help your firm prove authority, expertise, and competence in your practice.

It is also accepted by the Legal Aid Agency and the Money Advice Service as an alternative to the Specialist Quality Mark (“SQM”) accreditation. – find out about our SQM accreditation pre-audit services.

To learn more about how LEXCEL can benefit your organisation, visit the Law Society’s website here.

Preparing for your LEXCEL Accreditation

The Regulation and Compliance Office works with Law Firms to prepare for and secure the Lexcel Accreditation.

Once authorisation is obtained, we can work with the Firm to maintain its authorisation, preparing the Firm and its staff and guiding them through the annual maintenance review of the re-accreditation audit.

The initial assessment requires you to show that the LEXCEL Standard has been embedded in your firm for a 3-month period. The year 1 and 2 visits are slightly less involved and require less staff to be interviewed and a lower number of file reviews, depending on the size of the firm. The full reassessment is as thorough as the initial assessment.

Therefore, our costs for assisting vary according to the type of assessment you are due to have.

When working with a Firm to obtain and maintain their Lexcel quality mark, we can assist with:

• Initial Preparation – prepare the Firm for its Firms application to ensure it meets the requirements of the standard.
• Application – submit the application Form and prepare the Firm for the approval process and audit.
• Review the firm’s policies and procedures– this is to ensure the firm’s policies and procedures meet the requirements of LEXCEL Standard and to identify any required updates.
• Interviewing staff – we will interview a good sample of your staff to ensure they have a sufficiently good working knowledge of the firm’s policies and procedures relevant to LEXCEL, and that they fully understand the firm’s approach, enabling them to answer the key questions asked by auditors.
• File Reviews– undertaking file reviews on a sample of closed files to ensure that the processes and procedures are demonstrated on file. This is also a requirement for the supervision process. Firms are expected to perform appropriate and regular audits.
• Information and Documents Preparation– completion of the necessary review application and preparing a pack of documents and information for the assessment once you are satisfied that everything is in place, including liaising with the auditor in advance of the audit.
• Attendance– where necessary, attending the site for the audit day to work with the firm and the auditor as required.

The cost of this service starts at £2500 per annum plus VAT, which can increase based on training, file reviews and general policy management. We will confirm the exact price before commencing the service.