Legal Services Act

Alternative business structures (ABSs) in Scotland are set to need majority ownership of solicitors or other professionals after a vote in the Scottish Parliament yesterday.

The Legal Services Consumer Panel has indicated its desire to see the composition of the board of the Solicitors Regulation Authority change before the end of the current members’ terms so as to achieve a lay majority.

The chairman of the Legal Services Board has hit back at Law Society criticism of his organisation, and warned that Chancery Lane is creating an unnecessarily complex relationship with the Solicitors Regulation Authority that goes against the recommendations of the Hunt review.

The Coalition government has scotched rumours that it is to scrap alternative business structures (ABSs), Legal Futures can confirm. We further understand that both ABSs and the Office for Legal Complaints are likely to get the green light from the Cabinet committee set up last week to review all upcoming regulation.

Complaints against conveyancers are on the rise, but complaints against personal injury lawyers have fallen dramatically, figures from the Legal Complaints Service have shown.

Nearly half of large law firms are planning to become alternative business structures (ABSs), Investec Specialist Private Bank has reported. A poll of 30 managing partners at an Investec event held last month revealed that 45% are considering establishing an ABS, and 36% are contemplating becoming a multi-disciplinary practice.

A new Cabinet committee is to review whether the Office for Legal Complaints (OLC) and alternative business structures (ABSs) should be implemented, it emerged yesterday. The news comes as The Times speculated today that the new team at the Ministry of Justice might kick ABSs into the long grass, but investigations by Legal Futures indicate that there is no foundation for this.

The Scottish government has decided to push ahead with regulating non-lawyer will-writers, it has emerged. In a move that will intensify pressure on the Legal Services Board in England and Wales, the government plans to apply a set of regulatory rules, enforcement measures and sanctions to ensure non-lawyer will-writers conform to acceptable industry practice.

Consumers of legal services are not tempted by the prospect of household name brands moving into legal services, research has found. It also revealed that ‘expense’ or ‘expensive’ was the word most commonly associated with the word ‘solicitor’, while almost half of those interviewed felt the experience represented poor value for money.

The Institute of Professional Willwriters today became only the tenth trade body to receive Office of Fair Trading (OFT) approval for its code of practice. This means that the OFT is satisfied that the code provides consumers with protection and offers a higher level of customer service.