Alternative business structures

Two of the country’s best-known conveyancing practices have become alternative business structures, while an insolvency and litigation practice has also achieved ABS status.

Two of the UK’s first alternative business structures – Slater & Gordon and Co-operative Legal Services – have reported strong increases in income, although profits at the Co-op have been hit by its expansion plans.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has placed controls around the Parabis Group’s offshore operation in South Africa, it has emerged. Parabis received its alternative business structure licence yesterday.

The Legal Services Board has warned regulators not to go further than the legislative requirements for the impending ban on referral fees in personal injury, calling for “a liberal approach” that does not prevent alternative business structures effectively circumventing it.

Duke Street today became the first private equity firm to own part of a law firm after the Parabis Group received its alternative business structure licence, the twentieth so far issued by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

The process of enabling chartered legal executives to set up their own practices has begun with their regulator looking for the power to award them rights to conduct litigation, conveyancing and probate without needing the supervision of a solicitor.

Irwin Mitchell has today become the largest law firm to become an alternative business structure and also received the first ‘multiple’ licences. In April 2011 the firm became the first to state its intention to seek external capital.

A 12-partner law firm with offices in Northampton and Milton Keynes has become the latest alternative business structure. Franklins Solicitors, which has 80 staff in all, provides a range of private client and commercial law services.

Alternative business structures are not a simple solution to circumvent the impending ban on referral fees, but referrers are starting to see real opportunities to enter the legal market themselves, a leading adviser has said.

A London property management company has become the first multi-disciplinary alternative business structure. Crabtree Property Management is also the first company to use the ABS structure to enter the legal services market.

The advent of huge amounts of “unthinking external capital into the fragile ecosystem of the legal profession” could create many unforeseen and irreversible effects among City law firms, a well-known consultant has warned.

One of the country’s leading non-solicitor probate providers will today be unveiled as the newest alternative business structure. Kings Court Trust has chosen to be regulated by the Council for Licensed Conveyancers.

Ian Dodd of the Bar Consultancy Network responds to our article earlier this week on the apparent disappearance of the ProcureCo concept a little over two years after the Bar Council launched it with great fanfare.

A firm in Plymouth has become the first criminal law practice to become an alternative business structure as the pace of new licences from the Solicitors Regulation Authority continues to step up.

Gloucestershire high street firm Langley Wellington yesterday became the latest alternative business structure (ABS). Meanwhile, Berlad Graham has become the latest ‘virtual’ law firm to apply to become an ABS.