Legal Executives

A new outcomes-focused approach to becoming a chartered legal executive, which could also cut the time it takes to qualify by reducing the ‘time served’ aspect of the process, has been approved by the Legal Services Board.

Criminal barristers are preparing to boycott the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA), but only if there is a pledge from counsel outside those circuits affected first not to step in and take the work.

The prospect of chartered legal executives setting up their own law firms moved closer to reality yesterday after their regulator submitted an application for the full range of independent practice rights. It has won immediate support from a Conservative MP.

All legal services providers should undertake and publish equal pay audits, the Legal Services Board (LSB) has suggested – this would ideally be voluntary, “but only if it results in the changes needed”. It came in an LSB review of the evidence on equal pay.

The Chartered Institute of Legal Executives and Council for Licensed Conveyancers have thrown their hats into the ring to regulate will-writers, amid further criticism of the Legal Services Board’s decision not to extend regulation to estate administration.

The Legal Services Board (LSB) will today formally recommend to the Lord Chancellor that will-writing – but not estate administration – should be regulated legal work. The LSB had initially intended to include estate administration.

The meeting of heads of chambers on the South Eastern Circuit last week ended in unanimous opposition to the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA) in its current form, it has emerged.

The Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA) will start in September, nine months later than planned, it was announced yesterday. The revised timetable was released just hours before heads of chambers met to discuss their response to QASA.

The Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates is illogical in its treatment of QCs and does not serve the public interest by allowing solicitors to act as plea-only advocates, the chairman of the Bar Council has argued. The claims come as the bodies representing criminal law solicitors and barristers united in calling for a halt to the scheme.

Legal regulators have failed to open up their professional registers containing disciplinary information to price comparison websites, despite having been instructed to do so by the Legal Services Board, the Legal Services Consumer Panel has complained.

Some barristers are worried that boycotting the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates will lead to their committing a criminal offence by practising without authorisation, the chairman of the Criminal Bar Association has revealed. Meanwhile, the first wave of judicial training on the scheme has been successfully completed.

The six circuits have each called meetings of heads of chambers to discuss whether to boycott the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA), it has emerged. The leader of the south-eastern circuit said two aspects of QASA remain “entirely objectionable”.

Completion of the much-anticipated Legal Education and Training Review has been delayed, it has emerged. The academic team compiling the report after 18 months of research and consultation was meant to have delivered it by the end of 2012.

More time to obtain judicial assessments and greater recognition for QCs have emerged as key amendments to the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates, leaving some of the most contentious aspects – such as plea-only advocates – unchanged.

Some of the frontline regulators have hit back at the Legal Services Board’s assessment of their performance. A detailed report on the “smaller” regulators found a wide range of competence, both across the different regulators and within each of them individually.