Legal Services Act

In the second part of his series looking at external investment in law firms, Jeremy Black of Deloitte looks at the good and not-so-good circumstances in which investment may be sought.

Accountants should promote and extend their ability to give clients legal advice, and also have the right to conduct litigation and advocacy, the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales has said.

Jeremy Black, associate partner in Deloitte’s professional practices group, begins a week-long look at the issue of external investment in law firms by considering the forces of change that will encourage them to investigate the options available.

Solicitors should not be allowed to enter into any binding contracts for the sale of a law firm to a non-lawyer investor ahead of 6 October 2011, the board of the Solicitors Regulation Authority will be told this week. Certain conditional contracts should be off-limits too because they threaten the independence of law firms.

Chartered accountants are set to compete with lawyers for probate work after the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) signalled its intention to apply for the right to undertake reserved probate work. An ICAEW survey of 2,500 small practices found that around a quarter were interested in offering the service.

The Legal Ombudsman (LeO) received 497 calls on its first day, with the first complaints about a solicitor who missed a court date after going on holiday and not telling his client. Many of the complaints were rejected for various reasons, such as being out of time, but 22 investigations were opened on the first day, and 14 are awaiting allocation.

The Scottish Parliament yesterday approved the introduction of alternative business structures (ABSs) which are majority owned by solicitors and other regulated professionals. The Legal Services (Scotland) Bill completed its passage through Holyrood and allows external investors to hold 49% of any new legal services business.

The Legal Complaints Service (LCS) closed its doors to new complaints yesterday with 3,718 cases still live, its board heard today. The LCS was almost exactly on its projected work-in-progress figure for today, when the Legal Ombudsman (LeO) opened for business, with 2,340 ‘general’ complaints still outstanding. Almost all the other 1,378 open complaints relate to mining clients of one particular firm.

The Legal Services Consumer Panel has had to put on ice plans to develop best practice standards for legal comparison websites, Legal Futures has learned. The work formed part of the panel’s 2010-11 workplan, published in March, but has been shelved because the panel has since been asked by the Legal Services Board to investigate will-writing regulation.

Indian legal process outsourcers see “a fat, complacent and profitable market place” in England and Wales “and they want a piece of it”, solicitors were warned last week. Mark Jones, former managing partner of Addleshaw Goddard, described legal process outsourcing as “a game changer for all of us” – 25% of Slaughter and May’s work is outsourceable, as is 50% of his own firm’s and maybe 100% for firms outside the top 50.