Legal Services Board

The average time taken by the Solicitors Regulation Authority to approve alternative business structure applications has fallen to an average of three months, it has emerged. As a result the Legal Services Board may end its formal monitoring of the authority’s progress.

The Legal Services Board (LSB) has rejected plans by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) to cut the indemnity cover limit for law firms from £2m to £500,000.

Chris Kenny, chief executive of the Legal Services Board, said he had written to “senior officials” at the Ministry of Justice objecting to plans that risk “undermining our independence from government”.

Chris Kenny, the outgoing chief executive of the Legal Services Board, yesterday called on legal regulators to implement a “trade off” between access to the law and quality of service, with a “safety net” of easy redress when things go wrong.

Regulated lawyers should be viewed in the future as “a small part of an increasingly diverse ecosystem”, the Legal Services Consumer Panel has said in a report being launched at today’s Legal Futures Annual Conference.

The Competition and Markets Authority is considering whether to launch a review of the legal services market, it has emerged. It was a report in 2001 by its predecessor, the Office of Fair Trading, which began the process that led to the Legal Services Act 2007.

The Bar Standards Board is facing a bill for over £100,000 after the Court of Appeal ruled that there was no need for it to be separately represented at the hearing of a judicial review against the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates.

The Legal Services Board has approved the introduction of restrictions that prevent large organisations from making claims on the Solicitors Compensation Fund. Claims will only be considered if they are made by individuals, small businesses, small charities or small trusts.

The Legal Services Board has backed a new “flexible” approach by the Solicitors Regulation Authority aimed at making it easier for multi-disciplinary partnerships to become licensed as alternative business structures.

The director of regulation at water company Affinity Water has been named the new chief executive of the Legal Services Board (LSB). Richard Moriarty will join the LSB in early 2015 with a background spanning a number of regulated sectors across the economy.

The legal regulators should have full independence, and ‘approved regulator’ role of the Bar Council, Law Society and other professional bodies should be abolished, the chair of the Bar Standards Board argued yesterday.

Chris Kenny, outgoing chief executive of the Legal Services Board, is to join the Medical and Dental Defence Union of Scotland, it has emerged. The union is a fund of over half a billion pounds being managed for the benefit of 40,000 members throughout the UK.

The Court of Appeal today comprehensively dismissed four criminal law barristers’ challenge to the Legal Services Board’s approval of the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates. With the Master of the Rolls, Lord Dyson, giving the lead judgment, the court found that the scheme is lawful.

There has been a hitch in the Legal Services Board approving the Bar Standards Board’s bid to regulate entities, meaning that the LSB has had to issue a formal warning notice that it is considering whether to refuse the application.

In his first interview since taking over as chairman of the Legal Services Board, Sir Michael Pitt has cooled talk of a single regulator for all legal services. Sir Michael also praised the Solicitors Regulation Authority for its current programme of reform.