Legal Executives

Growing student debt means the length of time would-be lawyers spend studying needs to shrink, the chairman of the Legal Services Board has declared. David Edmonds also floated the idea of adopting the accountants’ training model, in which professional training takes place during full-time employment, while appearing to throw cold water on the idea of aptitude testing for students before they begin postgraduate legal education.

The three biggest legal regulators have set out the terms of their two-year joint review of education and training. The review – being undertaken by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, the Bar Standards Board and ILEX Professional Standards – will examine the educational requirements placed upon individuals entering the sector and their regulatory function.

Legal Services Board (LSB) chairman David Edmonds will tomorrow back a review of legal education and training but warn that he expects it to be far-reaching, Legal Futures has learned. However, we understand that the LSB had originally planned to conduct the review itself, but has been persuaded to let the Solicitors Regulation Authority, Bar Standards Board and ILEX Professional Standards take the lead under the LSB’s oversight.

The Legal Services Board is expected take over responsibility for overseeing the regulation of immigration advisers by the legal professional bodies from the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner (OISC), starting in April 2011.

Mandatory quality assurance for criminal advocates is welcome but the scheme currently proposed by the legal profession falls short in several significant ways, the Legal Services Consumer Panel said today. Among the problems are a failure to consider consumer needs, weaker standards than had been consulted on, and allowing advocates to choose which cases they are assessed on.

The chief executive of the Legal Services Board (LSB) has issued a robust defence of its plans to require every firm and chambers to carry out and publish an annual workforce diversity survey. Chris Kenny confirmed that the LSB was not talking about imposing quotas or targets, nor publishing a sector-wide league table, but said such information “will enable individuals and researchers to better hold firms to account through highlighting the best and worst performers – and the nature of the gap between them”.

The Bar Standards Board (BSB) should be the sole regulator for advocacy, the chairman of the Legal Services Board has said. Speaking at a BSB-organised session at Saturday’s Bar Council annual conference in London, David Edmonds said he agreed with the Master of Rolls, Lord Neuberger, who had earlier told the conference that the number of regulators “all regulating [advocacy] is ridiculous” and that if the 2007 Legal Services Act “does not lead to activity-based regulation, it will have failed”.

Solicitors are set to shoulder the vast majority of the Legal Services Board (LSB) and Legal Ombudsman’s (LeO) £25m annual running costs for the next three years at least, it emerged today. The LSB confirmed that it would proceed with its plan to levy its own £5m costs on the basis of the number of authorised persons overseen by each approved regulator, and most of LeO’s £20m costs based on the number of complaints generated by each group.

The Legal Ombudsman (LeO) will seek to determine complaints that cross over into professional negligence, it has emerged. Chief ombudsman Adam Sampson said that while its predecessor bodies, such as the Legal Complaints Service, would shy away from complaints about the quality of legal advice offered, the Legal Services Act “makes no mention of any such limitation of our powers”.

The controversial prospect of publishing law firms’ complaints records will be put firmly back on the agenda with a consultation by the Legal Ombudsman, Legal Futures can report.

The Institute of Legal Executives has unveiled plans to apply for the ability to grant Fellows and Graduate Members independent rights to conduct criminal litigation. The moves come as applications to grant civil litigation and probate rights have been formally made to the Legal Services Board.

Common advocacy standards for criminal law specialist barristers, solicitors and legal executives should be in place by July 2011, it has been announced. Judges will play a major role in assessing top advocates and in the ‘traffic light’ system that will identify poorly performing advocates.

The Legal Services Board is on a collision course with the Law Society and Bar Council after demanding that both introduce lay majorities on the boards of their regulatory arms sooner than planned, Legal Futures can reveal.

Two of the legal profession’s regulators are to begin recruitment exercises following senior resignations, Legal Futures can reveal. Mandie Lavin is stepping down as director of the Bar Standards Board, while Nick Smedley has resigned from the board of ILEX Professional Standards.

The Legal Services Board has set out its plans to recoup its running costs, and those of the Office for Legal Complaints, based on a per capita basis and of complaints against each part of the legal profession.