Legal Services Board

Approval for a 13% increase in the budget of the Legal Ombudsman has come with a warning that it must make deliver this time or face losing its role in dealing with complaints against lawyers.

The Legal Ombudsman has scaled back its planned increased budget for the coming year, but it is still set to increase by 13%, or another £5 per lawyer.

Consumers are “enthusiastic” about the creation of a single digital register of legal services providers, including elements such as fees, reviews and even star ratings, research has found.

The more innovative use of technology like artificial intelligence by unregulated providers of legal services is raising questions of whether there is a widening consumer protection gap.

The Bar Council and Law Society have accused the Legal Services Board of failing to take into account the impact of the pandemic on the profession in its latest draft strategy.

The Legal Services Board is pushing ahead with plans to introduce continuing competence checks for lawyers. This could include feedback from consumers, judges and peers, assurance visits or revalidation.

The Legal Services Board has introduced new rules to ensure legal regulators explain more clearly how they spend the money they raise through the compulsory levies on lawyers.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority and Council for Licensed Conveyancers have been given a clean bill of health by the Legal Services Board in its latest assessment of regulators’ performance.

The case for wholesale reform of the way legal services are regulated is even stronger than it was four years ago when the Competition & Markets Authority last recommended it, the watchdog said today.

The LSB has sketched out a future where most households have a legal expenses insurance policy to access a wide range of legal services, and there are approved ‘simple legal products’ in the market.

The decision on whether to approve a 19% increase in the Legal Ombudsman’s budget is likely to be “finely balanced”, with the possibility of having to find an alternative to it lurking in the background.

There is “much to celebrate” from the first decade of the Legal Services Act but the basic legal needs of many citizens are still not being met, the Legal Services Board said today.

The Legal Ombudsman’s first ever in-year call for supplementary budget, seeking an extra £344,000, has gone to the Lord Chancellor for approval after being given the green light by the Legal Services Board.

The new way of qualifying as a solicitor, including passing a centralised, two-part examination, will go live from 1 September 2021 after the Legal Services Board approved the reforms.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales is considering a new push to regulate reserved legal activities, three years after its last attempt was knocked back.