Alternative business structures

The growth capital fund which became the first external investor in a high street law firm last week has said it will consider investing in other legal practices.

McMillan Williams, which has 20 offices in London and the south of England, has become the first high street law firm to take external investment after securing a £5m private equity deal.

Plans by the Solicitors Regulation Authority to relax the separate business rule could cause “irreparable damage” to the solicitor brand and “drive significant numbers of the profession” into the unregulated sector, the City of London Law Society has warned.

Alternative business structure gunnercooke has taken its pioneering law firm model of only employing senior lawyers and used it to set up a consultancy business.

The number of current and former shareholders in AIM-listed alternative business structure Quindell registering with a Liverpool law firm for a potential group action has doubled to over 500.

Small and medium-sized law firms “face the most threat” from new entrants and increased competition, a wide-ranging survey of the UK legal services market has found.

An entrepreneur has revealed plans to combine a claims management company, a consumer website and the clinical negligence department of a top 100 firm to form a market-dominating alternative business structure.

Thomas Miller, an international group of companies providing specialist insurance, investment and professional services, is to launch an alternative business structure next month.

A debt collection business has become an alternative business structure (ABS) and can now offer an end-to-end service that enables it to collect, litigate and enforce clients’ debt.

Quindell was the centre of renewed criticism this week over the grant of over 8m in share options to Richard Rose, the AIM-listed company’s new non-executive chairman, whose appointment was announced on Monday.