Legal Services Board

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is set to “streamline” the alternative business structure (ABS) application process, its chief executive has revealed after its approach and the time it takes were criticised at a high-profile event yesterday.

Compensation arrangements for consumers involved in legal transactions that go wrong are outdated and need to be improved, the Legal Services Board has said in calling on its consumer panel to undertake research and provide advice on the issue.

The Legal Services Board yesterday expressed continuing concerns about the independence of the Solicitors Regulation Authority from the Law Society. This has led the LSB to issue a new statutory notice requiring the society to provide it with information.

Accountants should be excluded from Legal Services Board plans to reserve will-writing and estate administration, their professional body has argued. Meanwhile, it is not yet clear whether the SRA will be allowed to regulate will-writers.

The reservation of will-writing and estate administration should boost the amount of work and allow existing providers such as solicitors to become more competitive, the Legal Services Board said today as it laid out how the regime will work.

The possibility of the Law Society and other representative bodies being cut off from any of the money raised by practising fees has been raised by a Legal Services Board call for an “open debate on the cost of regulation”.

Regulators of the legal profession will have to gather and publish evidence of where lawyers are falling down on quality – including information on disciplinary action – following a wide-ranging review by the Legal Services Board.

The Legal Services Board yesterday laid out how it will monitor the impact of alternative business structures and other reforms on access to justice. The attempt to “baseline” access to justice and to evaluate change over time proposes 18 measures.

The introduction of alternative business structures – along with scandals in other sectors – means regulators need to monitor ethics across the legal profession more closely, new research has argued.

The Legal Services Board has warned regulators not to go further than the legislative requirements for the impending ban on referral fees in personal injury, calling for “a liberal approach” that does not prevent alternative business structures effectively circumventing it.

Government plans to give the Legal Services Board powers to raid the premises of frontline regulators and seize documents have been strongly criticised for their lack of safeguards and inadequate protection of legal professional privilege.

Elisabeth Davies was yesterday reappointed as chair of the Legal Services Consumer Panel. The decision to keep Ms Davies in the role will keep the panel’s wide-ranging workplan on track.

The Legal Services Board has begun work on moving towards regulating lawyers based on the work they do, rather than on their professional title, Legal Futures can reveal. However, it acknowledged that there will be huge historical and cultural barriers to overcome.

It is hard to see which of the frontline regulators would regulate banks if will-writing and estate administration become reserved legal activities, the British Bankers Association has said. It also said FSA regulation covered what the Legal Services Board was seeking to do.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority and Bar Standards Board have been warned to improve the way they regulate immigration practitioners or risk enforcement action by the Legal Services Board – including the ultimate sanction of losing their ability to regulate the area at all.