Market monitor

There has been the usual spate of law firm mergers and acquisitions up and down the country coinciding with the end of the traditional indemnity year, including the continuing growth of national crime firm Tuckers and a Scottish firm entering England for the first time.

Outer Temple Chambers has taken the unprecedented step of setting up what is effectively a separate international law firm, employing a solicitor. Outer Temple International, a Bar Standards Board-regulated entity, has now secured insurance and is set to go live this week.

Sheffield law firm SSB Law has left the QualitySolicitors network to focus on its own brand instead at a time when it says “the traditional law firm approach has a limited future”. It said it joined because “there was a basis for a national brand” but over time there was “an increasing conflict” with its own brand.

PwC – the first of the ‘big four’ accountants to gain an alternative business structure (ABS) licence – has become a true multi-disciplinary practice by merging its connected law firm into the wider business, in a move that has been welcomed by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

Leading investor James Caan has sold his stake in Staffordshire-based law firm Knights Professional Services, Legal Futures can reveal. Mr Caan invested in Knights in 2012, since when the firm has grown its turnover from £8m to £40m and added complementary services to its core legal offering.

The personal injury reforms (PI) first announced 10 months ago are still coming, despite the Brexit hiatus – so claimant lawyers have to be prepared, they were told at last week’s PI Futures conference in Liverpool. The default assumption had to be that change would happen.

Profit is continuing to rise at Co-operative Legal Services (CLS), half-year results published today have revealed. In the first six months of 2016, sales rose 10% to £11m, and it made a £1m profit – having broken even during the same period of 2015.

Saga, the over-50s insurance and travel company, has closed its legal services business, Legal Futures can reveal – but said it may yet return to the market in future. The company was hit by the collapse last year of Parabis, with which it had set up a joint venture alternative business structure, Saga Law, in late 2013.

NAHL Group plc – the AIM-listed legal marketing and services business that owns National Accident Helpline – expects to play a “more pro-active role in the entire conduct and financing of a PI case” following the government’s next round of reforms, it told the stock exchange today.

A third of senior managers at law firms expect private equity to be an important source of funding in the next few years, a survey has found. A quarter also believed that other financial investors, including high net-worth individuals or family offices, will play a key role.