The Scottish legislation restricts the operation of the pilot, which began in Edinburgh in October 1998, to five years; and the performance of the Public Defence Solicitors Office (PDSO) will be evaluated after three years.
It was considered vital that the office had a workload over that period which would allow a proper evaluation to be carried out. In order that this can be done, and meaningful comparisons drawn between the service provided by the PDSO and the private profession, the PDSO has to handle the full range of summary cases heard in the courts.
To make sure this happens, clients are being assigned to the PDSO if their month of birth is January or February. This criterion should ensure a random allocation of clients to the PDSO and has advantages over other methods of direction, such as the postcode of the client, or some alphabetical split of names, the effect of which is impossible to predict. Solicitors are required to check whether a defendant's date of birth makes him a PDSO client and, if so, direct him accordingly.
In order to retain flexibility in special circumstances, the PDSO will be able to disapply the normal rule when it would clearly be sensible to do so, for example:
where the PDSO is already representing one client in relation to a particular case and there could be a conflict of interest;
where an accused is already represented by a solicitor on the date when the scheme is introduced;
where an accused has a number of cases outstanding in relation to which a particular solicitor is acting, the client may, at the discretion of the PDSO, be permitted to retain the services of that solicitor in relation to any subsequent related case.
In time, the PDSO may generate at least part of their own workload and clients may choose to use the service. 20% of people using the PDSO do so voluntarily. However, the referral criteria will operate for as long as it is necessary to generate an appropriately varied workload.