Out of the shadows
Just who are the members of the Legal Services Board? They have stayed in the shadows, as chairman David Edmonds and chief executive Chris Kenny are the public faces of what they do. We don’t even know much of what they do in their meetings, because the minutes are not easily accessible on their website and Mr Edmonds is always implacable whenever I suggest that it would be good if their meetings were open – or at least part of them, in the same way that the Solicitors Regulation Authority and Bar Standards Board split their meetings between public and private sessions.
Equal before the law?
The strained relationship that black and minority ethnic (BME) solicitors have with their regulator came back sharply into view this week with publication of a report into BME solicitors’ disproportionately high representation in the regulatory activities of the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
The problem with paralegals
Monty Python fans will recall the scene from ‘Life of Brian’ involving the People’s Front of Judea, the Judean People’s Front and the Judean Popular People’s Front. Well, it sometimes seems that this inspired those jockeying for position in the paralegal world. We have the National Association of Licensed Paralegals, the Institute of Paralegals and the Society of Specialist Paralegals. Now we have the Law Society potentially moving into their market by investigating whether there is any scope for it to develop a paralegal qualification.
Who are they trying to fool?
Today’s Law Society Gazette carries an article optimistically entitled “Small firms will be ‘resilient’ in the face of ABSs”. This sums up a report by consultants Oxera, commissioned by the Law Society, and first revealed by Legal Futures last week. It came to the conclusion that ABSs are not only unlikely to undermine geographic access to justice for consumers, but would also not have a detrimental effect upon the businesses of small practitioners.
What is the Coalition thinking?
I thought I would post an update on what I have heard about the Coalition’s thinking about the legal services reforms – there’s nothing concrete, because ministers are still not talking about this subject publicly. This comes just from being round and about and talking to those who are (or at least claim to be) in the know, so I can’t vouch for its total accuracy.
