Legal Services Act

Private equity firms are showing “considerable interest” in volume legal practices, the man behind Duke Street’s acquisition of the Parabis Group has said. The head of strategic projects at Irwin Mitchell claimed that most PE firms are considering investing in the law.

Law firms are overwhelmingly failing to follow up referrals for basic legal work from comparison websites, in what is described today as a “massive own goal by the profession”. In a mystery shopping exercise, eight out of ten online referral requests for a simple will were ignored.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has so far received more alternative business structure applications than it expected, chief executive Antony Townsend admitted yesterday. He also suggested that there will in time be growing momentum towards consolidating the eight current legal regulators into one.

Duke Street has become the first private equity company to buy a legal practice after acquiring “a significant stake” in the Parabis Group, whose law firm Cogent Law sits behind both the AA and Saga’s legal services websites. It plans to turn Parabis into a business process outsourcer.

Slater & Gordon’s takeover of Russell Jones & Walker is evidence that law firms are “joining the real business world” and that there is realisable value in legal practices, leading consultants have said.

A new service has been launched that allows solicitors to contact numerous sets of barristers chambers simultaneously to check what counsel are available for a case they are looking to cover. Meanwhile, another online service aimed at helping consumers find tradesmen is now targeting the legal market.

Our latest news round-up takes in an innovative partnership to combine financial, taxation and legal advice, an update on ABS applications, the role for ABSs in the conveyancing market, growing fraud claims against solicitors, support for provisional assessment, and new blood at the OLC.

Russell Jones & Walker aims to use its new access to capital to become one of the two or three players that will “dominate” the consumer legal market in the years to come, its chief executive has said.

The world’s first listed legal practice, Australia’s Slater & Gordon, is to enter the UK market after agreeing to buy national law firm Russell Jones & Walker for £53.8 million. All of RJW’s principals will continue to work in the new business and are becoming shareholders in S&G.

The conveyancing market is consolidating fast, with the big getting bigger and the small getting out, figures from the Land Registry have indicated. Some 1,300 fewer legal practices made applications to the registry for transfers in 2011 than in the previous 12 months.