Legal Services Act

A majority of barristers think they should be able to conduct litigation whether they are working inside “entities”, such as law firms, or whether they are self-employed, according to emerging findings from the Bar Standards Board’s survey of the profession. There was also a majority in favour of extending public access.

Referral fees in personal injury and conveyancing do not harm consumers and so there is no case to ban them or take any other regulatory action, a major piece of research released today has concluded. In fact, it found that referral fees actually result in cheaper conveyancing fees and improved access to justice for injured people.

The Co-operative Legal Services (CLS) has launched a comprehensive, one-call accident management service for brokers and insurers. The new service highlights the way that non-legal brands can pull together a range of services, of which legal help is just one part, to offer consumers a full package that lawyers willl struggle to match.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) will be able to formally rebuke solicitors and fine them up to £2,000 from next month, it has been confirmed. However, the potential conflict between the civil standard of proof that will be applied in such cases and the criminal standard used by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal – which will hear appeals against SRA decisions – has not yet been resolved and is likely to require further work.

The Law Society is offering staff at its Legal Complaints Service (LCS) financial incentives to join the new Legal Ombudsman service, Legal Futures can reveal. The Society has pledged a year’s worth of “bridging payments” to those who move over, which will go some of the way to making up the difference between their current salary and the lower wage the ombudsman is offering.

A row is brewing between the Law Society and Legal Services Board over the wind-down of the Legal Complaints Service, Legal Futures can reveal. Law Society chief executive Des Hudson has told us that the LSB’s insistence that the LCS’s current performance targets stay in place as it heads towards closure, despite dwindling staff, is “unthoughtful and an error of judgement”.

Separate surveys from Sweet & Maxwell and accountants BDO indicate that confidence is returning to the big law firms, with renewed interest in mergers and lateral hires, while also scaling back further plans for redundancies. But cross-selling and tighter credit control are also on the agenda.

The council of the Law Society of Scotland has today ditched its support for all forms of alternative business structures and instead backed a compromise that favours majority ownership of law firms remaining with solicitors, or solicitors with other regulated professionals.

Barristers were yesterday given the tools to bolt a corporate vehicle onto their chambers which can bid for work, instruct solicitors and also bring clerks and others into ownership roles. The Bar Council’s new business model, dubbed ProcureCo, raises the possibility of barristers competing with solicitors for work.

No claimant personal injury (PI) law firm will exist in five years’ time if it does not have 20-30 fee-earners, a leading PI practitioner predicted last week. Richard Langton, managing partner in the Birmingham office of Russell Jones & Walker, said this would enable firms to open from at least eight in the morning to eight in the evening, and perhaps on Saturdays too.