Your law firm processes are only rumours about how you do things if you haven't documented them

Previously I gave definitions of terms such as policy, process, procedure and working instruction used to describe the elements of the quality management system.

It may be obvious but it should be emphasised that all of your policies and supporting documentation that will help you put your policies into effect must be documented.

The second principle is that you should "say what you do and do what you say". It is of no use having a pile of policies and procedures which don't reflect what you do in your firm. Your quality management system is not a wish list of what should or might be done, it is what you do now.

With the above two principles in mind I now turn to the quality manual as a requirement of your QMS.

The quality manual is a collection of all your policies, procedures, work instructions and requirements of the QMS and describes the interactions between the processes.

Requirements under the LAW 9000 standard

The quality manual should include:

• the scope of your QMS - since all activities performed within your practice will affect the quality of service delivery no activities should be excluded from the scope

• all your policies and procedures or reference to where they can be found

• a description of the interaction between the processes of your QMS.

All of your policies and procedures form part of your QMS so they all should be included or referenced in your quality manual.

I have enclosed an example of a quality manual establishing procedure.

In the next post I will cover the requirement of the standard to control the documents of your QMS.