Legal Executives

When small businesses believe they can trust the transparency of legal providers on fees, they are twice as likely to seek the advice of lawyers, according to the Legal Services Board.

The Legal Services Board is to impose reform that will end the “different treatment” for accountancy regulators which also oversee legal services.

The Chartered Institute of Legal Executives is set to become the sixth body allowed to license alternative business structures after its application was approved by the Lord Chancellor.

The Legal Services Board has approved an application by CILEx Regulation to license alternative business structures, which will now go to the Lord Chancellor for a final decision. If successful, the regulator of chartered legal executives will become the sixth ABS licensing authority.

CILEx Regulation has moved to reassure the Lord Chief Justice over his concerns about its application to license alternative business structures. The regulator of chartered legal executives said that it would only look to regulate firms “that are relatively low risk and straightforward”.

Dame Elizabeth Filkin, a former Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, has become one of four lay members appointed to the new Chartered Institute of Legal Executives group board. The move comes as CILEx introduces a group structure with three companies

If the Legal Services Board is serious about promoting access to justice it must end its silence on the legal aid cuts, lawyers’ organisations have said. The Bar Council accused the oversight regulator of acting like “another department of government” by refusing to comment.

Legal regulators have urged the Legal Services Board to use its review of the internal governance rules to give them greater independence from their representative bodies. The Solicitors Regulation Authority said the rewrite of the rules should allow it to become a “separate legal entity” from the Law Society.

The Bar Standards Board is to regulate a law firm led by a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives, it has emerged. No practising barristers will be involved in the firm, but its principal is also an unregistered (ie, non-practising) barrister.

A law firm regulated by the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives is aiming to supervise the training of solicitors in what is understood to be the first move of its kind. In a separate development, a law firm regulated by the Bar Standards Board has started a pupillage scheme, in what might well also be a first.