ABS brings together conveyancing with estate agency and financial advice


SRA: application process “a nightmare”

A solicitor has merged her law practice with the family estate agency and finance business in an alternative business structure (ABS) that is thought to be the first in Cumbria.

Sole practitioner Kelly Walsh is winding up her Grange-over-Sands-based firm, KW Legal, in order to join her father-in-law’s business, Home and Finance IFA Limited (H&F).

The ABS will be called H&F Legal. It received its licence from the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) in March, effective from the beginning of this month. But the application process was described as “a nightmare”.

H&F, headquartered in Ulverston, combines an estate agency, financial advice, insurance and life cover, and has branch offices in Millom and Barrow-in-Furness.

Ms Walsh told Legal Futures she had been referred H&F’s conveyancing for some years but that “as a sole practitioner I was finding it difficult to get on all the mortgage panels”. The hope was that “by becoming an ABS, we’d be able to circumnavigate that problem”.

The ABS will immediately employ a further two lawyers and paralegal support staff “so we can have lawyers in all three of the offices”, she said.

She said the business would be a “standalone” service and “it will increase its growth without just relying on the existing customer base”. Creating an ABS “shows other local legal firms that we mean business and we are not just doing it to complement the estate agency, for instance”.

Ms Walsh said the ABS application process was “a nightmare” that only improved once the application – submitted at the beginning of August – was assigned a case handler in December. The handler was “really helpful and very good”. However, she added: “The questions we’ve been asked at times have been a little ridiculous.”

She said the firm had only decided to put in the application when it heard the process had been speeded up. “We thought that’s fantastic, we will submit the application now and we can be trading in January.” But the time taken by the SRA meant the plan had been delayed by several months.

Last week the SRA announced plans to encourage more multi-disciplinary ABSs.

Tags:




Leave a Comment

By clicking Submit you consent to Legal Futures storing your personal data and confirm you have read our Privacy Policy and section 5 of our Terms & Conditions which deals with user-generated content. All comments will be moderated before posting.

Required fields are marked *
Email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Blog


GEO – the impact of AI on digital marketing for law firms

GEO represents the biggest change in online business generation that I can remember. You cannot afford to stick with the same old engine optimisation techniques.


What the law can learn from fintech’s onboarding revolution

Client onboarding has always been slow. It’s not just about the paperwork and manual workflows; it’s also about those long AML checks and verifications.


Civil enforcement – progress at last with CJC report

‘When do I get my money?’ is a question that litigators acting for successful parties are used to fielding. The value of judgments is of course in the recovery made.


Loading animation