Legal Services Board

The Legal Services Board yesterday put the seal of approval on the SRA’s plans to regulate the referral fee ban. The news came as the Law Society pressed the LSB to provide reassurance that the way referral fees are regulated will be consistent across the entire legal profession.

The Legal Services Board has overstepped its bounds, distorted the Legal Services Act’s regulatory balance, aligned itself too closely with the government, and intervened in matters beyond its competence, the Solicitors Regulation Authority has charged.

The Bar Council has renewed its assault on the Legal Services Board by questioning its decision to spend thousands on academic research into the cab rank rule and intervening in the Prudential case – which it said was proof of “mission creep”.

All legal services providers should undertake and publish equal pay audits, the Legal Services Board (LSB) has suggested – this would ideally be voluntary, “but only if it results in the changes needed”. It came in an LSB review of the evidence on equal pay.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has “substantial work” to do before it can consider its performance satisfactory, including making its rules less prescriptive, the Legal Services Board said today.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has rejected a demand by the Legal Services Board that it start a review of the separate business rule, saying it can see “very little public interest justification” for doing so.

The rule which prevents solicitors and alternative business structures from hiving off non-reserved legal work into unregulated businesses risks making legal services more expensive, distorting competition and preventing innovation, the Legal Services Board has warned.

The Chartered Institute of Legal Executives and Council for Licensed Conveyancers have thrown their hats into the ring to regulate will-writers, amid further criticism of the Legal Services Board’s decision not to extend regulation to estate administration.

The Legal Services Board (LSB) will today formally recommend to the Lord Chancellor that will-writing – but not estate administration – should be regulated legal work. The LSB had initially intended to include estate administration.

The Bar has clashed with academics calling for an end to the cab-rank rule over whether the problem of finding lawyers to represent the accused in the recent Delhi rape and murder case is proof of the rule’s continuing value.

The cab-rank rule is ineffective and should be removed from the barristers’ code of conduct – and instead applied as a principle to all providers of legal services, including alternative business structures – a report published today has urged.

The Legal Services Board and Legal Services Consumer Panel have thrown their weight behind Friday’s Office of Fair Trading report that urged continuing simplification of the regulatory regime for lawyers, particularly around complaints.

Regulators need to speed up their processes for approving alternative business structures, the Office of Fair Trading said today. It also called for further simplification of the complaints system, recommended actions to increase the number of available pupillages and gave cautious support for the move away from title-based regulation.

Personal injury firms have weathered the recession better than any other area of practice – and are far more likely to be looking for external investment than any other as well, one of the largest-ever surveys of solicitors’ firms has found. It said employment, family and corporate / commercial specialists also performed better than average.

Controversial rule changes that scrap the minimum salary for trainee solicitors and allow solicitors to refer clients to tied financial advisers were approved last month by the Legal Services Board. In both cases the LSB found that there was no reason to refuse the applications.