Legal Services Act
Unsustainable pricing means most conveyancing firms are "bust", says leading enterpreneur
Fewer than half of the current number of residential conveyancing specialist firms will be in business within three years and probably just one in ten, according to the entrepreneur who founded the UK’s most successful property website.
Let the Bar regulate solicitor-advocates? Are you having a laugh, asks Law Society?
Law Society chief executive Des Hudson has responded to calls for all advocates – including solicitors – to be regulated by the Bar Standards Board by saying: “Are they having a laugh?” And SAHCA chief says QASA and ABSs give solicitor-advocates a “golden opportunity” to compete with barristers.
Law firm franchise reinvents itself as online legal service for businesses
Simplify the Law – a law firm franchise concept which launched last year – has reinvented itself as an online legal service that aims to help commercial lawyers repel new competition in the market, Legal Futures can report.
MoJ slaps away Bar Council call to scrap Legal Services Board
The Ministry of Justice has thrown cold water on the Bar Council’s call to abolish the Legal Services Board (LSB). On Saturday, Bar Council chairman Michael Todd QC said the new Lord Chancellor, Chris Grayling, was sympathetic to concerns that the legal profession is over-regulated.
Estate agent-owned conveyancing businesses become latest ABSs
Two south-east conveyancing businesses owned by estate agents have become the newest alternative business structure (ABS), meaning that more than 50 licences have now been issued by the two ABS regulators.
Bar Council to press "sympathetic" Grayling to scrap LSB
The new Lord Chancellor has said he is “sympathetic” with the notion that the legal profession is over-regulated, the chairman of the Bar Council has claimed as he stepped up his call for the Legal Services Board to be scrapped.
ABS joint ventures to get around referral fee ban will be fine, SRA says
Joint ventures between solicitors and insurance companies as alternative business structures which enables insurers to take in income what they would have received in referral fees will not be caught by the upcoming ban, the Solicitors Regulation Authority confirmed last week.
ABS conversion deadline for LDPs under review
The Solicitors Regulation Authority is under pressure to extend its April 2013 deadline for legal disciplinary partnerships with non-lawyer partners to become alternative business structures, after the Legal Services Board said it was “unlikely” to insist on it before 2014.
"Oops – we’re actually not as inefficient with ABS applications as we made out," says SRA
Inaccurate statistics published by the Solicitors Regulation Authority over the past six months have painted a worse picture of its handling of alternative business structure applications than the reality, it has emerged. However, there are still around 150 applications in the system.
Concern over emergence of referral fees once will-writing and estate work is reserved
The regulation of will-writing and estate administration needs to be drawn widely to ensure that the referral fee culture that has prevailed in personal injury does not emerge in private client work, the Law Society has warned.
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Divorce escrow: asset sales before final settlement
When significant matrimonial assets are sold before a final financial order is agreed, holding the proceeds safely and neutrally can present real practical challenges.
AML lacks clarity – and standards are suffering
If firms are buckling under the pressure of AML regulations, subject to ever-increasing fines, then something is clearly not working as it should be.
