Legal Services Board

The Legal Services Board has stepped carefully into the debate over legal aid cuts by highlighting the increasing number of people handling legal problems alone.

The Legal Services Board has approved new rules proposed by the Solicitors Regulation Authority requiring law firms to publish prices for a range of consumer and business services.

When small businesses believe they can trust the transparency of legal providers on fees, they are twice as likely to seek the advice of lawyers, according to the Legal Services Board.

The Legal Services Board is to impose reform that will end the “different treatment” for accountancy regulators which also oversee legal services.

The Centre for Ethics & Laws at University College London is to hold an independent review into the regulatory framework for legal services.

The Legal Services Board finally has a permanent chair after Dr Helen Phillips was given an unprecedented five-year term, while the Law Society finally has a permanent CEO.

The Legal Services Board’s public censure of the Law Society last month is evidence that its rules on regulatory independence do not need tightening, the Bar Council has argued.

The Legal Services Board has approved an application by CILEx Regulation to license alternative business structures, which will now go to the Lord Chancellor for a final decision. If successful, the regulator of chartered legal executives will become the sixth ABS licensing authority.

The Legal Services Board has handed out a public censure for the first time, after finding that the Law Society had governance arrangements in place that could have interfered with the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The Law Society’s actions undermined “the public interest in effective regulation of legal services”.

A former senior servant with substantial experience of competition law has been named the new chair of the Legal Services Consumer Panel. Sarah Chambers replaces Dr Jane Martin, who resigned after just a year in post to become a member of the Office for Legal Complaints, the body that oversees the Legal Ombudsman.