News

Customer experience will largely define the success of legal providers in the post Legal Services Act world, according to a survey of delegates at last week’s Legal Futures Conference. Understading the client is vital but doing it will be difficult for some firms, the survey found.

A new website called “We buy any files” is keen to acquire business from practices looking to shed personal injury work ahead of alternative business structures and the Jackson reforms. Meanwhile, a survey of consumers has highlighted dissatisfaction with the PI claims system, and leading legal expenses insurer DAS has hit back at yesterday’s report on BTE insurance.

Our regular round-up of snippets of news that you need to know takes in the Legal Ombudsman, conveyancing, financial difficulties for law firms, a shortfall of LPC graduates, the first divorce app, new members for LawNet, an LPO survey, the new Law Society deputy vice-president, and Expert Answers’ affiliate programme.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority should investigate the practice of panels of solicitors taking cases from before-the-event legal expenses insurers on a conditional fee basis after paying referral fees, a consumer watchdog has argued.

Proposals from the “timid” Solicitors Regulation Authority to reform the market for professional indemnity insurance are inadequate and will only worsen already fears for the future of the market, the Association of British Insurers has warned. However, the SRA’s blueprint has been welcomed by the Law Society and the Council of Mortgage Lenders.

The government has strongly supported the publication of complaints and other data as a way for consumers to hold businesses to account, in a move likely to put further pressure on the Legal Ombudsman to name law firms that are subject to complaints.

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.

Too many lawyers believe they are “somehow immune” from the effects of technology that are profoundly impacting the rest of society, Professor Richard Susskind has warned. He also highlighted how the profession has embraced legal process outsourcing.

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.