Legal Services Act

Multinational companies with turnovers of over $1bn are spending less than half their external legal budgets on large law firms, a report has indicated. The survey found that specialist firms accounted on average for 28% of their budgets, while freelance contributors and consultants took 18% and online platforms 13%.

The whiplash reforms could cost claimant lawyers £80m in lost fees a year, the Ministry of Justice said yesterday as it unveiled its final impact assessment of the changes contained in the Civil Liability Bill. It also projected that they would cost claimants £990m in lost compensation and having to pay legal fees out of their damages.

North Yorkshire County Council has become the latest local authority to set up an alternative business structure (ABS) with the launch of First North Law. It comes as one of the country’s largest ABSs – Enact Conveyancing – has significantly expanded its presence in Yorkshire, creating 160 new jobs.

Legal services marketing giant NAHL is to create a third alternative business structure this year, which will focus on helping injured people navigate small claims if and when the government’s whiplash reforms happen in April 2019. The news comes against the background of its 2017 annual results, which showed revenue up but profit down sharply.

Justice Secretary David Gauke today finally published the Civil Liability Bill, which the government said “offered hope” of lower insurance premiums to millions of motorists by reducing the “unacceptably high number of whiplash claims”. The bill also contains changes to the way the personal injury discount rate is calculated.

The Legal Services Board has come under unprecedented pressure to reject plans by the Solicitors Regulation Authority to introduce a centralised Solicitors Qualifying Examination. City lawyers, law lecturers and Welsh speakers have called on the LSB not to approve the application, while MPs asked for the decision to be postponed for six months.

A fifth of those buying leaseholds do not recall their solicitors giving them key information such as the length of the lease remaining, service charges and ground rent, according to research commissioned by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. But overall, conveyancing clients were generally happy with the service they received.

The Office for Legal Complaints – the body that oversees the Legal Ombudsman – has exercised for only the second time its power to name “in the public interest” an organisation responsible for dozens of complaints and warned consumers not to use it.

A law firm with offices across south Wales and Gloucestershire has become an alternative business structure to assist ambitious plans to exceed its rapid growth in 2017 and enable its non-lawyer chief executive to become an investor.

It should not be “beyond the wit of man” to design a system for low-value personal injury (PI) claims where insurers and their customers handle cases without the involvement of lawyers, the head of one of the country’s biggest insurance companies. The comments came alongside a claimant warning that the PI reforms left plenty of “meat” for CMCs.