Legal Services Act

The Bar Standards Board has fulfilled its side of the deal struck with the Legal Services Board over its lay/professional composition, with four new members taking office this month. There is now an equal number of lay and professional members ahead of a lay majority being in place after further changes next year. Later this year the Solicitors Regulation Authority will also move to parity before a lay majority is appointed for 2013.

The three main professional bodies have all set out their stalls against lawyers being “named and shamed” if found guilty by the Legal Ombudsman (LeO) of providing an inadequate service. The Bar Council has this week joined the Law Society and Institute of Legal Executives in criticising the idea.

Senior managers at the Legal Services Board (LSB) earn between £80,000 and £120,000, it has emerged in data released under the government’s transparency agenda. The LSB is funded by a levy on the eight legal professions it oversees, and the top-paid senior managers under chief executive Chris Kenny are general counsel Bruce Macmillian, paid between £115,000 and £120,000, and strategy director, Crispin Passmore (£110,000 and £115,000).

Alternative ways of delivering legal services continue to grow with the launch of two web-based, fixed-fee Q&A services, and what is claimed to be the first Twitter “law firm”. The two websites – www.expert-answers.co.uk and www.questiontheexpert.com – both use panels of qualified lawyers to answer questions put by users, while @thelegaloracle is the brainchild of the founder of personal injury referral network Loyalty Law.

The Legal Services Board is explicitly threatening the Solicitors Regulation Authority, Bar Standards Board and ILEX Professional Standards with using its formal enforcement powers for the first time over their quality assurance for advocates scheme, Legal Futures can reveal. The regulators have branded the move as neither “helpful nor necessary”.

Barristers going into competition with solicitors to offer litigation services could reduce costs and make services “more efficient for consumers through packaged delivery”, the voice of legal consumers has said. The Legal Services Consumer Panel also backed the Bar Standards Board as the sole regulator of advocacy services.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has slated the suggestion by the Legal Services Board that approved regulators should collect and publish all referral agreements between introducers and lawyers, which the SRA estimates run to many thousands.

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) is opposing the regulation of will-writers, saying it may well be disproportionate and unnecessary. It has also emerged that the OFT is working with the Solicitors Regulation Authority and Institute of Professional Will-writers to improve advice to consumers on executor services.

The Legal Ombudsman service has issued its first formal decision, it has emerged. The first case to go all the way through to a final decision by an ombudsman concerned a complaint over delay and whether the costs were explained clearly.

Alternative business structures face a fine up of to £150 million for misconduct or non-compliance, with a figure of £50 million for individuals working within them, under plans released by the Legal Services Board (LSB). The LSB said such large figures “will have strong deterrence in the market and avoid situations where any entity or individual may consider ‘pricing in’ non-compliance”.