Legal Services Act

Large law firms are most worried about the threat from alternative business structures (ABSs) and accountancy firms, but interest in becoming ABSs themselves is waning fast, new research has found.

The Legal Services Board should not put the needs of business users of the courts before the “most vulnerable and disempowered”, the Bar Standards Board has argued.

Does non-lawyer ownership end damaging short-termism within law firms and improve both the economics and culture of legal practice, or does it risk standards and offer little in the way of increasing access to legal services?

The Law Society has told the Legal Ombudsman that solicitors’ practising certificate fees should not be used for ‘thought leadership’ exercises that extend beyond legal services.

London-based Mishcon de Reya, a rural firm in the Lake District, and a firm that currently carries out no reserved legal work at all are among the latest businesses to obtain alternative business structure licences.

NewLaw Solicitors is eyeing up another three alternative business structure joint ventures, its publicly listed owner revealed yesterday. NewLaw – itself only the fourth ABS licensed by the Solicitors Regulation Authority – already has four joint venture ABSs

Unnecessary restrictions on in-house lawyers could “impose costs and red tape, frustrate innovation and adversely affect access to justice”, the Legal Services Board has argued.

The profession’s regulators are not doing enough to understand the consumers of lawyers’ services, the Legal Services Board has warned. But it said there has been progress since the first assessment in 2012/13.

An international lawyer is bringing new meaning to the idea of a multi-disciplinary practice after launching a business in London that combines legal advice for DIY divorce clients with anti-ageing serums and sex therapy.

Delegates at the Global Law Summit have questioned why a major report on the health of the legal services industry included so little on new entrants to the market, smaller firms and diversity.