ABS for nurses to focus on personal injury

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RCN Law to launch next month

An alternative business structure to be launched by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) and Cardiff-based NewLaw next month is to limit its offering to personal injury, it has emerged.

The British Medical Association (BMA) launched an ABS last spring in association with NewLaw, providing doctors with the full range of consumer law services, including family law, private client and immigration.

Unlike BMA Law, which is owned by the BMA through a trust, it is understood that RCN Law will operate as a joint venture ABS, owned equally by both partners.

A spokeswoman for the RCN said: “RCN Law is an ABS set up in partnership with NewLaw Solicitors to handle personal injury cases for members in England and Wales.”

The RCN is the world’s largest nursing union and professional body, representing more than 435,000 nurses, student nurses, midwives and health care assistants in the UK and internationally.

Legal Futures revealed in November that RCN Law LLP had been incorporated as a company earlier that autumn, with Philip Dicken, managing director of NewLaw, as one director and NewLaw Legal as the other.

RCN Holdco Ltd was later added as a director. This company was incorporated in the summer, and is based at the RCN’s HQ in Cavendish Square.

Redde plc, the AIM-listed owner of NewLaw, announced last month that the law firm was working with the RCN to launch the ABS from 1 April.

Meanwhile Carter Thomas Solicitors, a niche immigration firm specialising in services for education providers, has become an ABS. The firm is based at the Sheffield Digital Campus, with an office in London.

Another new ABS is St James Legal Services, trading as Archerfield Partners, a three-partner media firm in London. According to its website, the firm provides “bespoke legal services with particular expertise in reputation management (involving defamation, privacy and breach of confidence issues), commercial litigation and media, entertainment and sports law”.

Lockings, a general civil practice based in Hull, Beverley, Hedon and Hessle and part of the QualitySolicitors network, is due to become an ABS on 1 May.