Alternative business structures

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has so far received more alternative business structure applications than it expected, chief executive Antony Townsend admitted yesterday. He also suggested that there will in time be growing momentum towards consolidating the eight current legal regulators into one.

Duke Street has become the first private equity company to buy a legal practice after acquiring “a significant stake” in the Parabis Group, whose law firm Cogent Law sits behind both the AA and Saga’s legal services websites. It plans to turn Parabis into a business process outsourcer.

Slater & Gordon’s takeover of Russell Jones & Walker is evidence that law firms are “joining the real business world” and that there is realisable value in legal practices, leading consultants have said.

Our latest news round-up takes in an innovative partnership to combine financial, taxation and legal advice, an update on ABS applications, the role for ABSs in the conveyancing market, growing fraud claims against solicitors, support for provisional assessment, and new blood at the OLC.

Russell Jones & Walker aims to use its new access to capital to become one of the two or three players that will “dominate” the consumer legal market in the years to come, its chief executive has said.

The world’s first listed legal practice, Australia’s Slater & Gordon, is to enter the UK market after agreeing to buy national law firm Russell Jones & Walker for £53.8 million. All of RJW’s principals will continue to work in the new business and are becoming shareholders in S&G.

Leading welfare-to-work business A4e is planning to offer both consumers and businesses a broad range of legal services at a “more affordable” cost than currently seen in the market, it has confirmed.

The Legal Services Board’s “unduly detailed approach to oversight” risks undermining professional independence, the Law Society president has claimed. John Wotton also argued that alternative business structures have “no magic bullet in competitive terms”.

Liverpool law firm Silverbeck Rymer is set to become the first legal practice acquired by a listed company, it was announced this morning. AIM-listed Quindell Portfolio plc is to spend £19.3m on the leading personal injury firm.

National law firm Irwin Mitchell has named the former vice-chairman UK of PricewaterhouseCoopers its chairman-designate as it continues preparations to become an alternative business structure.