Other lawyers

The Council for Licensed Conveyancers is investigating a new name for both itself and those it regulates as part of plans to attract alternative business structures shopping around for a regulator. It plans to use its position as an ABS licensing authority to strengthen and grow its “regulated community”.

The Legal Services Board yesterday approved the Council for Licensed Conveyancers’ application to become the first licensing authority for alternative business structures, despite the opposition of the Lord Chief Justice.

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 Lord Chief Justice has spoken out against licensed conveyancers being granted rights to conduct litigation and advocacy. Lord Judge said they are areas of work which lie outside the proper sphere of activity of a licensed conveyancer and he could see no strong public interest in giving them those rights.

Regulators of alternative business structures could expose consumers to risk if they demand an overly high standard of proof in disciplinary hearings, the Legal Services Consumer Panel has warned. Meanwhile, the Bar Standards Board is to consider switching to a civil standard of proof.

The Council for Licensed Conveyancers’ bid to license alternative business structures could allow firms to dodge regulation of their unreserved legal work, the Legal Services Consumer Panel has warned.

A shortfall in the funding of claims management company (CMC) regulation – due to escalating enforcement action and a contraction in the size of the industry – has led to a cash call this month on the 3,000-plus businesses in England and Wales.

The Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC) is on course to become the first body licensed to regulate alternative business structures, after submitting its application to the Legal Services Board. The CLC, which oversees 10-15% of the conveyancing market, has also applied to extend the range of reserved activities it regulates from conveyancing and probate to awarding rights of audience and the right to conduct litigation.

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.

Patent attorneys have litigation rights in a wider range of cases than previously thought, including disputes over license agreements and related intellectual property, the High Court has ruled in what is believed to be the first judgement on the scope of patent attorney litigators’ rights.

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.

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.

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”.

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”.