Legal Services Act

The ‘millennial’ generation of legal services buyer is taking over from the ‘baby boomers’ and bringing a range of new expectations that lawyers must respond to, such as flexibility of service and working hours, predictable pricing, and value for money, according to a new report.

The Bar Standards Board has licensed its first alternative business structure, a combination of barristers from 2 Dr Johnson’s Buildings and football agents. VII Law – which started life last year as a BSB entity – is working alongside VII Management, a sports, entertainment and media business.

Top 50 accountancy firm Barnes Roffe has become the latest to gain an alternative business structure licence, Legal Futures can reveal. Meanwhile, Nottingham Law School’s ABS and ‘teaching law firm’ has launched a business and enterprise law service to provide affordable legal advice to small businesses, entrepreneurs and charities.

The Legal Services Board has dismissed concerns about the “negative” impact of its requirement that lawyers tell clients about their complaints procedures before any work has been done. Research found “negative reactions” to the prominence of this information but the board said the problem was how some lawyers have chosen to provide it.

A personal injury firm was forced to sell its multi-track work at a “considerable” loss after the “sudden and unexpected” withdrawal of support from its bank, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has heard as it fined two partners and a non-lawyer partner for retaining unpaid professional disbursements in its office account.

A law firm has acquired an alternative business structure licence to facilitate an equity swap, as part of its bid to integrate with a firm of Singapore lawyers and comply with restrictive local laws on ownership. A regulatory rule change in Singapore made it difficult for the branches of foreign firms to operate.

The Legal Services Board is to meet with the deputy president of the Supreme Court, Baroness Hale, after she expressed the senior judiciary’s concern over its statement last year that the regulatory objective of ‘encouraging an independent, strong, diverse and effective legal profession’ was “problematic”.

Increasingly demanding business clients and the need to raise capital to invest in technology to bring legal costs down will eventually lead to more commercial law firms listing on stock exchanges, according to a senior corporate adviser. He said listing offered a number of advantages.

The High Court has criticised an unregulated legal business run by a non-practising barrister for “sailing too close to the wind” by failing to be clear in correspondence that it was not a solicitors’ firm. However, service of a claim by the company on behalf of a litigant in person was not invalid.

The first ever investor conference aimed at the business of law in a listed environment has heard that while investment opportunities in the legal sector are limited, the sheer value of assets makes it attractive. The broker which organised it said: “We remain convinced that we will see more legal services businesses using a listing over time.”