Market monitor

The listed company that owns NewLaw Solicitors has completed its acquisition of a fleet accident management group that itself has a joint venture alternative business structure (ABS) with NewLaw. Meanwhile, would-be ABS Metamorph Law will shortly have a £4m warchest that will enable it to buy at least five firms next year.

Mergers have been unveiled across the country in recent days, with firms of all sizes and practice areas choosing to join forces. There is usually a rush of mergers each year timed to coincide with the 30 September deadline to secure professional indemnity insurance, and 2015 has proven no different.

Any short-term “bonanza” in legal work triggered by Britain’s exit from the EU would be followed by a drought, City lawyers have warned in a report by the Law Society. The society highlighted the impact on England and Wales as a centre of international dispute resolution.

Barristers are shunning the chance to go into direct competition with solicitors and conduct litigation for clients in addition to their advocacy, it has emerged. Delegates at Saturday’s Bar conference also heard that while public access also remains “under the radar”, there is evidence of clients preferring the cheaper option of going direct to a barrister.

Most of the top 100 law firms now recognise ‘the need to respond to the digital age’ in the face of market disruptors, but less than a quarter have actually done so, accountants PwC have found.

National Accident Helpline (NAH) has announced its third and largest acquisition since becoming a listed company, after agreeing to buy Bush & Company Rehabilitation Ltd for £28m. It announced a placing of new shares to raise £14.2m, which will part fund the cash consideration for the deal.

A three-way merger into a new alternative business structure has created a top 200 law firm, Legal Futures can reveal. The ABS, Taylor Rose TTKW, is made up of Peterborough-headquartered Taylor Rose Law, its associated costs firm Jaggards, and London firm Tucker Turner Kingsley Wood.

MTA Solicitors, the alternative business structure behind the consumer-facing high street LawStore brand, this week opened its third store and plans to open a fourth by the end of the year. MTA has begun to sign up panels of local law firms to deal with instructions it cannot handle.

A fast-growing consumer credit management group in the middle of acquisition by a company funded by the global investor that also backed LegalZoom, has launched an alternative business structure. Lowell Group employs more than 1,200 people.

A Bar Standards Board-regulated entity that challenges unlawful detention is to put on free immigration advice clinics, including one at Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre. Meanwhile, a north-west BSB entity run by two solicitors hopes to expand its boutique family law practice into overseas private client work.