Alternative business structures

Express Solicitors, the Manchester personal injury firm, is poised to make further acquisitions after securing £10m funding from the Royal Bank of Scotland. It said the money allowed a focus on growing the business “without having to compromise” on other areas.

Insurance giant RSA, formerly Royal and Sun Alliance, has entered the legal services market by obtaining a licence for an alternative business structure in partnership with national firm Parabis. RSA Law will go live next month.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has put in place plans to fast-track alternative business structure and other new entity applications from criminal law firms in the event that the legal action against the government’s plans to reform legal aid fails.

Large law firms are most worried about the threat from alternative business structures (ABSs) and accountancy firms, but interest in becoming ABSs themselves is waning fast, new research has found.

Does non-lawyer ownership end damaging short-termism within law firms and improve both the economics and culture of legal practice, or does it risk standards and offer little in the way of increasing access to legal services?

London-based Mishcon de Reya, a rural firm in the Lake District, and a firm that currently carries out no reserved legal work at all are among the latest businesses to obtain alternative business structure licences.

NewLaw Solicitors is eyeing up another three alternative business structure joint ventures, its publicly listed owner revealed yesterday. NewLaw – itself only the fourth ABS licensed by the Solicitors Regulation Authority – already has four joint venture ABSs

Delegates at the Global Law Summit have questioned why a major report on the health of the legal services industry included so little on new entrants to the market, smaller firms and diversity.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is to remain on report over its performance in licensing alternative business structures until it outlines how it will stop making “disproportionate” requests for information from applicants, it has emerged.

Liverpool-based 7 Harrington Street Chambers has launched what is believed to be the first alternative business structure attached to a barristers’ chambers. It opened for business last week, with three barristers and 7HS practice director as its directors.

The growth capital fund which became the first external investor in a high street law firm last week has said it will consider investing in other legal practices.

McMillan Williams, which has 20 offices in London and the south of England, has become the first high street law firm to take external investment after securing a £5m private equity deal.

Plans by the Solicitors Regulation Authority to relax the separate business rule could cause “irreparable damage” to the solicitor brand and “drive significant numbers of the profession” into the unregulated sector, the City of London Law Society has warned.

Alternative business structure gunnercooke has taken its pioneering law firm model of only employing senior lawyers and used it to set up a consultancy business.

The number of current and former shareholders in AIM-listed alternative business structure Quindell registering with a Liverpool law firm for a potential group action has doubled to over 500.