Legal Services Board
LSB foresees increased turbulence in market as more firms enter, exit and merge
There is set to be increased turbulence in the legal market, with more new entrants, consolidation and the exit of those who cannot adapt, the strategy director of the Legal Services Board has predicted.
Consumer panel: “remarkable innovation” in the market but is deregulation going too far?
The Legal Services Consumer Panel today expressed concerned that “the recent emphasis on deregulation… is being taken too far”, while also praising the innovation seen to date through alternative business structures.
BSB apologises for failing to review contractual terms and cab-rank rule
Vanessa Davies, director of the Bar Standards Board (BSB), has apologised “for any impression that may have been created that we do not take our regulatory obligations seriously” after the BSB failed to launch a review of the standard contractual terms and the cab rank rule.
Unbundling – a necessity for consumers or risk to professional standards?
The potential for unbundling legal services to help consumers – and particularly litigants in person – is to be examined in a research project being commissioned by the Legal Services Board and Legal Services Consumer Panel.
BSB anticipating hundreds of barrister businesses after receiving entity regulation green light
The Bar Standards Board has doubled its prediction of how many entities it expects to be overseeing by the end of 2015 after receiving Legal Services Board approval to regulate businesses.
LSB may end SRA monitoring as turnaround time for ABS applications improves
The average time taken by the Solicitors Regulation Authority to approve alternative business structure applications has fallen to an average of three months, it has emerged. As a result the Legal Services Board may end its formal monitoring of the authority’s progress.
LSB rejects plan to cut indemnity cover limit
The Legal Services Board (LSB) has rejected plans by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) to cut the indemnity cover limit for law firms from £2m to £500,000.
Government plans could “undermine our independence”, LSB warns
Chris Kenny, chief executive of the Legal Services Board, said he had written to “senior officials” at the Ministry of Justice objecting to plans that risk “undermining our independence from government”.
Kenny: redress “safety net” will enable innovation and access to justice
Chris Kenny, the outgoing chief executive of the Legal Services Board, yesterday called on legal regulators to implement a “trade off” between access to the law and quality of service, with a “safety net” of easy redress when things go wrong.
Lawyers will be seen in future as “small part of diverse legal ecosystem”
Regulated lawyers should be viewed in the future as “a small part of an increasingly diverse ecosystem”, the Legal Services Consumer Panel has said in a report being launched at today’s Legal Futures Annual Conference.
Blog
Is competition in the legal sector stifling innovation?
As the legal sector’s competitive landscape continues to evolve, Nobel laureates remind us that innovation is not inevitable,and that competition may not always be an incentive to innovate.
What high-performing consumer claims firms get right
Recurring concerns about parts of the volume claims sector show that the gap between well-run firms and those struggling to manage volume effectively is widening.
The SRA’s 2025 AML report: What law firms need to know
The SRA has released its 2024-25 anti-money laundering report and the scale of supervision is striking – it carried out 935 proactive engagements in the year to 5 April 2025.
