Legal Services Act

Admiral Insurance and national law firm Lyons Davidson – which received its alternative business structure licence in November – are having talks about linking up, but it will not involve the law firm being acquired, Legal Futures can report.

Legal regulators have failed to open up their professional registers containing disciplinary information to price comparison websites, despite having been instructed to do so by the Legal Services Board, the Legal Services Consumer Panel has complained.

The Bar has clashed with academics calling for an end to the cab-rank rule over whether the problem of finding lawyers to represent the accused in the recent Delhi rape and murder case is proof of the rule’s continuing value.

The government does not intend to extend legal professional privilege to non-lawyers, the Ministry of Justice confirmed yesterday after accountants urged Parliament to level the playing field for multi-disciplinary entities.

The cab-rank rule is ineffective and should be removed from the barristers’ code of conduct – and instead applied as a principle to all providers of legal services, including alternative business structures – a report published today has urged.

A new marketing collective that is targeting consumer and commercial legal work – Simply Lawyers – is preparing for launch, Legal Futures can reveal. Meanwhile, Accidents Direct hopes to become the country’s leading claims management company by bringing more firms onto its panel.

The Legal Services Board and Legal Services Consumer Panel have thrown their weight behind Friday’s Office of Fair Trading report that urged continuing simplification of the regulatory regime for lawyers, particularly around complaints.

Regulators need to speed up their processes for approving alternative business structures, the Office of Fair Trading said today. It also called for further simplification of the complaints system, recommended actions to increase the number of available pupillages and gave cautious support for the move away from title-based regulation.

Not all alternative business structure applicants have understood what is required of them, which in part explains delays in approving some licences, the chief executive of the Solicitors Regulation Authority has said in a robust defence of the regulator’s performance that also dealt with compliance officer approvals.

The millionaire co-founder of Betfair – the world’s largest betting exchange – is the principal investor behind new alternative business structure Brilliant Law, it has emerged. Brilliant Law said it is the UK’s first law firm set up by non-lawyers, a team “renowned for challenging the markets within which they operate”