Legal Executives

The Law Society has launched what appears to be a last-ditch bid to persuade the Legal Services Board to scrap the proposed scheme to assess the quality of criminal advocacy, saying there is no evidence to support the assertion that standards have fallen.

A former Court of Appeal judge and the one-time senior partner of City law firm Simmons & Simmons have been appointed joint chairs of a new consultation panel to advise on the fundamental education and training review – now known as “Review 2020″.

The Legal Services Board is considering whether to consolidate the disciplinary regimes run by all the different legal regulators, it has emerged. Recent events “suggest we should explore the feasibility of rationalising existing mechanisms sooner rather than later”.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority, Bar Standards Board and ILEX Professional Standards have been forced to change the name of their advocacy quality scheme after they were threatened with legal action.

Advocates seeking accreditation under the quality assurance for advocates (QAA) scheme will be allowed to opt for an assessment centre route rather than judges’ evaluations alone, under new proposals being debated today.

A memorandum of understanding between legal regulators and regulators and professional bodies in the financial, accountancy and property worlds whose members may be part of multi-disciplinary practices is close to agreement, it has emerged.

The Legal Services Board is to launch an assessment of the regulation of immigration advice and services after taking over responsibility for overseeing frontline regulators in the field. The move will save the profession £110,000 in direct costs.

The Legal Services Board has for the first time granted an application to extend the reach of reserved legal activities, giving the Institute of Legal Executives the power to award the right to conduct litigation to associate prosecutors.

Conveyancing, immigration advice, preparing wills and powers of attorney, and estate administration should all become reserved legal activities, a leading thinktank has recommended. However, the report from the Legal Services Institute – headed by Professor Stephen Mayson – says this work should not be the sole preserve of the legally qualified.

Lord Justice Thomas is heading a new expert group to advise the Solicitors Regulation Authority, Bar Standards Board and ILEX Professional Standards on developing and operating the controversial quality assurance for advocates scheme, it has emerged. Meanwhile, the BSB has hit out again at the Legal Services Board’s “unhelpful and ill-timed” intervention over the scheme.

The Bar Standards Board has fulfilled its side of the deal struck with the Legal Services Board over its lay/professional composition, with four new members taking office this month. There is now an equal number of lay and professional members ahead of a lay majority being in place after further changes next year. Later this year the Solicitors Regulation Authority will also move to parity before a lay majority is appointed for 2013.

The three main professional bodies have all set out their stalls against lawyers being “named and shamed” if found guilty by the Legal Ombudsman (LeO) of providing an inadequate service. The Bar Council has this week joined the Law Society and Institute of Legal Executives in criticising the idea.

The Legal Services Board is explicitly threatening the Solicitors Regulation Authority, Bar Standards Board and ILEX Professional Standards with using its formal enforcement powers for the first time over their quality assurance for advocates scheme, Legal Futures can reveal. The regulators have branded the move as neither “helpful nor necessary”.

Barristers going into competition with solicitors to offer litigation services could reduce costs and make services “more efficient for consumers through packaged delivery”, the voice of legal consumers has said. The Legal Services Consumer Panel also backed the Bar Standards Board as the sole regulator of advocacy services.

All workers at law firms and chambers will be asked whether they are straight, gay or bisexual, about their parents’ educational background and what kind of school they attended as part of the Legal Services Board’s push to improve transparency about diversity in the legal profession.