Legal Services Act

New “dumbed-down” entrants to the personal injury market will be “quick and wrong”, whereas lawyers can be “quick and right”, the new president of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers has claimed. David Bott said claimants might prefer to deal with a “new breed of dumbed-down, legal ‘light’ adviser” – at least at first.

The Legal Services Board has an “absolute right” to intervene whenever it believes frontline regulators are dragging their heels, such as acting to improve diversity, the Legal Services Board chairman, David Edmonds, told the Legal Futures conference.

Doubts over whether alternative business structures (ABSs) will start on 6 October persist after justice minister Jonathan Djanogly today refused to confirm that they will happen on that day. “Quality is paramount and I will not shortcut a complicated process involving no less than a dozen parliamentary orders,” he said.

Lawyers around the world are watching to see how alternative business structures (ABS) work, giving UK law firms a possible competitive advantage if they can meet “unprecedented” client demand for value, Professor Richard Susskind told the Legal Futures Conference. He also said it was “unimaginable” that investors and entrepreneurs would ignore the opportunities presented by legal market.

QualitySolicitors is preparing to eject a member firm for failing to meet the network’s quality standards, its chief operating officer told the Legal Futures Conference yesterday. Law Society chief executive Des Hudson also questioned QS’s use of the word “quality” in the brand.

The legal regulatory system is “defective” and in time it might be right for a single regulator to replace the eight frontline regulators, the chairman of the Solicitors Regulation Authority, Charles Plant, told yesterday’s Legal Futures Conference.

A groundbreaking assessment of the progress in delivering the legal services reforms from a consumer perspective is the centrepiece of the Legal Services Consumer Panel’s plan for the forthcoming year, delegates at today’s Legal Futures Conference will hear. The idea of a “single regulatory badge” will also be floated, along with good practice standards for legal comparison websites

As the interest of law firms in external investment goes up, “the interest of funders seems to be firmly in decline”, a new alternative business structures consultancy has found. A survey of 51 of the top 200 law firms by ABS Advisory Partners found that 12% thought it “very likely” or “likely” that they will seek direct external investment.

Dragon’s Den stars Theo Paphitis and Deborah Meaden are backing a major online initiative to provide small business customers of RBS and NatWest with all the online tools they need to run their operations, including legal services.

National law firm network QualitySolicitors has signed a “game changing” deal with WHSmith to place “Legal Access Points” in hundreds of the high street retailer’s stores following a successful pilot. All QS firms will also soon start opening on Saturdays and introduce a wide range of fixed-fee services.