Legal Services Board

The Legal Services Board made “a mountain out of a molehill” with its investigation into Bar Council interference with its independent regulator, the new chairman of the Bar has claimed.

Responses to the Legal Services Board’s (LSB) legal education and training framework have revealed broad opposition to its proposal to invoke statutory powers to ensure frontline regulators fall into line behind the LSB’s vision.

The Attorney General has warned about the “danger” of regulators micro-managing the legal profession, but also indicated that the government is unlikely to roll back the Clementi reforms that led to the creation of independent regulators.

The Legal Services Board was on the verge of issuing an unprecedented public censure of the Bar Council over its interference with the independence of the Bar Standards Board, new papers have revealed.

Chartered legal executives are set to have full parity with solicitors after the Legal Services Board gave them the right to practise litigation and advocacy independently.

The Bar Council and Bar Standards Board have published a protocol for ensuring the latter’s regulatory independence, fulfilling undertakings the pair gave to the Legal Services Board.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has hit back over a report questioning why it introduced both entity and outcomes-focused regulation, saying it was acting in the interests of both consumers and lawyers.

The move by the Solicitors Regulation Authority to embrace entity-based and outcomes-focused regulation is hard to understand, major new research commissioned by the Legal Services Board and Law Society has claimed.

Criminal law barristers need to consider significant changes to their business models if they are to remain competitive, the Legal Services Board has argued. It said liberalisation is one of the reasons the government does not need to intervene in the criminal advocacy market.

Competition in the law is to increase further after the Legal Services Board backed accountants to handle reserved probate work and set up alternative business structures, as well as chartered legal executives to set up their own conveyancing and probate practices.

The Law Society and Bar Council’s call for the government to return large swathes of regulation to them is self-serving and aims to restrict competition, the chairman of the Legal Services Board has claimed.

The Legal Ombudsman should swap the telephone for the internet as the main way it deals with the public and in doing so reflect the market it serves, according to the man likely to become chair of its oversight body, the Office for Legal Complaints.

The prospect of external investment in intellectual property firms is set to soar after the Intellectual Property Regulation Board won the support of the Legal Services Board to become the third alternative business structure licensing authority.

The Legal Services Board has pledged to attack the “cultural resistance to radical change” that it said was necessary for the legal market to thrive. It will also target unnecessary restrictions on new business structures and the cost of regulation.

The Bar Council has accepted that breached the independence of the Bar Standards Board by interfering in controversial changes to the cab-rank rule, it emerged today. The Legal Services Board has however agreed to an informal resolution, having considered a censure.