Legal Services Act

The Bar Standards Board is to regulate advocacy focused alternative business structures and allow barristers to conduct litigation, its board decided yesterday. However, it has placed significant restrictions on the range of entities it is prepared to regulate.

City firm Hogan Lovells and 39 Essex Street chambers have retained their roles as general legal advisers to the Legal Services Board. The pair, as well as five specialist providers, have been reappointed following an internal review on their existing terms and rates until 31 March 2012.

Manchester firm Pannone is to target big businesses with a white label legal services offering, it announced today. From next week it is pulling all of its white label services into a standalone and separately branded division – Affinity Solutions – to partner with organisations with a large customer base.

Advocates seeking accreditation under the quality assurance for advocates (QAA) scheme will be allowed to opt for an assessment centre route rather than judges’ evaluations alone, under new proposals being debated today.

More than three-quarters of law firms have changed their plans to reflect the coming of alternative business structures, but firms seeking to attract investors will have to develop credible growth strategies. Neil Kinsella, managing partner of Russell Jones & Walker, said his firm had already begun to draw up a list of potential law firm acquisitions.

Irwin Mitchell today became the first major law firm to announce its intention to seek external investment. The Sheffield-headquartered national practice has appointed Espirito Santo Investment Bank as its financial adviser to review the options.

Customer experience will largely define the success of legal providers in the post Legal Services Act world, according to a survey of delegates at last week’s Legal Futures Conference. Understading the client is vital but doing it will be difficult for some firms, the survey found.

A new website called “We buy any files” is keen to acquire business from practices looking to shed personal injury work ahead of alternative business structures and the Jackson reforms. Meanwhile, a survey of consumers has highlighted dissatisfaction with the PI claims system, and leading legal expenses insurer DAS has hit back at yesterday’s report on BTE insurance.

Our regular round-up of snippets of news that you need to know takes in the Legal Ombudsman, conveyancing, financial difficulties for law firms, a shortfall of LPC graduates, the first divorce app, new members for LawNet, an LPO survey, the new Law Society deputy vice-president, and Expert Answers’ affiliate programme.

The government has strongly supported the publication of complaints and other data as a way for consumers to hold businesses to account, in a move likely to put further pressure on the Legal Ombudsman to name law firms that are subject to complaints.