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No claimant personal injury (PI) law firm will exist in five years’ time if it does not have 20-30 fee-earners, a leading PI practitioner predicted last week. Richard Langton, managing partner in the Birmingham office of Russell Jones & Walker, said this would enable firms to open from at least eight in the morning to eight in the evening, and perhaps on Saturdays too.

High street solicitors may soon become a thing of the past if steps are not taken to curb and regulate the predatory marketing of national organisations keen to move into the legal sector next year, the Lawyers Defence Group has warned. It spoke out in the wake of an announcement by the Co-operative Group that it intends to launch a nine-week campaign promoting its legal services to shoppers in its nationwide chain of 3,000 supermarkets.

Top law firms are outsourcing as much to elsewhere within the UK as they are to India and South Africa, new research has found. Litigation support was the most popular service, followed by knowledge management, legal process and secretarial/typing work.

Scottish solicitors have voted against the planned introduction of alternative business structures (ABSs), it was announced today. Law Society of Scotland members voted 3:2 that only solicitors should own law firms, while a compromise that solicitors should be in the majority of owners was defeated, despite support from the floor at today’s reconvened SGM.

Just 11 accountants have blown the whistle on their solicitor clients over concerns about fraud, theft or other conduct that may render them unfit to hold client money, as required by the Solicitors Accounts Rules, it has emerged. Blowing the whistle became an obligation, rather than an encouragement, just over a year ago.

As chair of the new Legal Services Consumer Panel, Dr Dianne Hayter challenges the profession’s orthodoxy with strong views on how the legal landscape should develop. Neil Rose finds that she also uses a different kind of language.

The new president of the Institute of Trade Mark Attorneys has highlighted the challenges of the legal profession’s new regulatory structure as a key challenge facing her as she takes up office. ITMA is one of the eight approved regulators under the Legal Services Act and it has combined its regulatory function with that of the Chartered Institute of Patent Agents.

With alternative business structures now 18 months away, Neil Rose looks at how the recommendations of the Jackson report could be overtaken in the new legal services environment. In particular, what might claims management companies, third-party funders and class action specialists do?

Many accountants are failing both to qualify their reports and to blow the whistle on solicitors’ wrongdoing, the chairman of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales’ solicitors group said last week. Only 35% of accountants’ reports are qualified – despite the intricate nature of the rules – while hardly any accountants have blown the whistle a year after the rules were changed to require it.

Law firms currently in the assigned risk pool (ARP) have paid just 22% of their insurance premiums, while insurers are rapidly increasing the reserve for claims these firms may cause, it has emerged. The 262 firms currently in the ARP were liable for £7.5 million in premiums – both record figures – of which just £1.7 million has been paid.