Legal Services Board

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has slashed its backlog of ABS licensing applications from 142 in January 2013 to 52 in April this year, it has emerged. The average age of work-in-progress ABS applications is now three months.

The Lord Chancellor has set the Legal Services Board the task of working towards its own abolition as part of a push to reduce the burden of regulation on the legal profession, he revealed yesterday.

Sir Michael Pitt, the new chairman of the Legal Services Board, has said that primary legislation will be needed to reduce the complexity of legal regulation and ensure it moves “at market pace”.

There is a huge unmet need for legal services among individual consumers, the most detailed ever study of the issue has revealed, with fewer than one in 10 people experiencing a legal problem seeking advice from a lawyer.

Frontline regulators need to trial a range of materials to help consumers make better decisions in the wake of the legal aid cuts, academic research commissioned by the Legal Services Board has urged.

The Legal Services Board has told the government that if it wants to appoint ‘small business appeals champions’ for legal services, it should appoint them to the boards of the eight front-line regulators rather than the super-regulator.

Chris Kenny, chief executive of the Legal Services Board, has said that the government is “not saying never” to the idea of a single regulator for the entire profession, and it was likely to happen anyway in the coming years.

Leading market commentator Professor Stephen Mayson is to begin working with the Legal Services Board, it has been announced. He is to work with the oversight regulator on its 2015-2018 strategic plan and planned project on the cost of regulation.

The Legal Services Board is to tell the approved regulators that they must consult those they regulate about setting the level of practising fees beyond what is needed simply for regulation, it has emerged.

Control over the appointment of the next chairman of the Solicitors Regulation Authority was taken away from the Law Society yesterday after the Legal Services Board introduced new rules governing the process.

The outgoing chairman of the Legal Services Board has fired a parting shot at the Law Society and Bar Council – which he described as “two very strong trade unions” – for their “hostile attitude to change” and acting out of self-interest, rather than in the public interest.

The timetable for advocates to register for the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates has been thrown into chaos as a result of the continuing judicial review of its legality. Meanwhile, the Bar Standards Board has begun the search for a new chair.

Plans to simplify the approval process for non-lawyer owners of alternative business structures are being considered by the Legal Services Board, it has emerged. Private equity purchasers are proving particularly tricky under the current regime.

A senior lawyer at telecoms giant BT – which owns an alternative business structure – has become the newest member of the Legal Services Board. David Eveleigh has been joined on the board by Marina Gibbs, the director of competition policy at Ofcom.

The Legal Services Consumer Panel has conducted a ‘mystery shopping’ exercise to assess consumers’ experience of online self-help tools for a divorce. Meanwhile, work by the panel to open up data held by regulators to be used by legal comparison websites took a major step forward.