Legal Services Act

There is still a long way to go before there is “effective competition” in the legal market, the Legal Services Board has told the Competition and Markets Authority. The oversight regulator urged the CMA not to rule out the possibility of conducting a full market investigation at this stage.

Knights, the law firm backed by leading businessman James Caan, is targeting accountants, tax specialists and town planners as part of a plan to recruit a 100 more professionals this year. Chief executive David Beech said he expected around half of the new recruits to be non-lawyers.

Law firms should be required by their regulators to publish details of complaints and average prices on their websites, the Legal Services Consumer Panel has said. The panel also called for the publication of firms’ litigation outcomes and success rates.

Cardiff-based Capital Law has today launched a £50m fund – backed by a hedge fund – to help its clients pursue litigation, in a first for a law firm. Senior partner Chris Nott said the fund had already helped a small business sue a government department for £1m and another client bring a professional negligence claim against one of the big four accountants.

The number of complaints about lawyers has fallen to its lowest level since the opening of the Legal Ombudsman, its much-delayed annual report and accounts have shown. The delay was caused by the continuing problems with LeO’s accounts, which for the second year running have been qualified by the National Audit Office over nearly £250,000 paid to staff in benefits.

Business as usual “is not an option for many, if indeed any, traditional legal service providers”, the Law Society has warned today in a major report on what the legal market may look like in 2020. It said that the opportunities for solicitors in the coming years “cannot be distinguished from the opportunities for other types of lawyer, or non-lawyer-owned businesses”.

The AA has shut its alternative business structure, AA Law, to new clients, it has emerged. The motoring giant said: “Following a strategic review the AA decided that the level of customers it was introducing did not justify the maintenance of a standalone business.”

The Legal Services Board is set to make encouraging comparison sites to enter the legal market one of its goals for the next year, along with telling regulators to be clearer about how they spend the profession’s money.

Fairpoint plc, owner of national law firm Simpson Millar, has said it is ready for more acquisitions after achieving “double-digit growth” in the last calendar year. The firm also reassured investors over the impact of the government’s whiplash reforms.

The Legal Ombudsman has set out plans for further cuts in the amount it spends on complaints about law firms, but more on claims management companies. LeO also warned that the Ministry of Justice was imposing “increasingly restrictive spending controls”.