Legal Services Board

A decision by the Legal Services Board (LSB) on whether will-writing should become a regulated activity will not be made until 2012, it emerged today. The LSB’s draft business plan 2011/12, published today for consultation, revealed that the board is also considering what it calls a “deep dive” investigation of conveyancing.

The Legal Services Board (LSB) is set to probe how independent the Solicitors Regulation Authority truly is from the Law Society. In letters to both bodies, LSB chief executive Chris Kenny said its focus would be on ensuring that “independent regulation is being delivered in practice”.

Growing student debt means the length of time would-be lawyers spend studying needs to shrink, the chairman of the Legal Services Board has declared. David Edmonds also floated the idea of adopting the accountants’ training model, in which professional training takes place during full-time employment, while appearing to throw cold water on the idea of aptitude testing for students before they begin postgraduate legal education.

The Bar is “out of step” with fellow regulators over its operation of the criminal standard of proof in its disciplinary tribunal, a Bar Standards Board meeting in London was told yesterday, potentially causing problems with the admissibility of regulators’ disciplinary findings in the post-ABS world. Meanwhile, the board also argued about the strength of the disciplinary sanction for failing to meet continuing professional development requirements.

Legal Services Board (LSB) chairman David Edmonds will tomorrow back a review of legal education and training but warn that he expects it to be far-reaching, Legal Futures has learned. However, we understand that the LSB had originally planned to conduct the review itself, but has been persuaded to let the Solicitors Regulation Authority, Bar Standards Board and ILEX Professional Standards take the lead under the LSB’s oversight.

The Legal Services Board is expected take over responsibility for overseeing the regulation of immigration advisers by the legal professional bodies from the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner (OISC), starting in April 2011.

Universities minister David Willetts has expressed interest in aptitude testing as a way to address “inequities in earlier educational experience” for those looking to enter the professions, it has emerged. The news comes as a survey released today shows that having a public school education makes it seven times more likely you will become a legal professional than if you are state-educated.

The chief executive of the Legal Services Board (LSB) has issued a robust defence of its plans to require every firm and chambers to carry out and publish an annual workforce diversity survey. Chris Kenny confirmed that the LSB was not talking about imposing quotas or targets, nor publishing a sector-wide league table, but said such information “will enable individuals and researchers to better hold firms to account through highlighting the best and worst performers – and the nature of the gap between them”.

The independence of the legal profession from government is under threat from Whitehall, Legal Services Consumer Panel chairwoman Dr Dianne Hayter warned on Saturday. Speaking at the Bar Council annual conference, Dr Hayter revealed that the Legal Services Board (LSB), Legal Ombudsman and consumer panel have all been told to close their websites, while she highlighted the threat from legislation that will allow government to abolish or amend the terms of the LSB.

The Bar Standards Board (BSB) should be the sole regulator for advocacy, the chairman of the Legal Services Board has said. Speaking at a BSB-organised session at Saturday’s Bar Council annual conference in London, David Edmonds said he agreed with the Master of Rolls, Lord Neuberger, who had earlier told the conference that the number of regulators “all regulating [advocacy] is ridiculous” and that if the 2007 Legal Services Act “does not lead to activity-based regulation, it will have failed”.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and Office of Fair Trading (OFT) have each pledged around £30,000 to support the Legal Services Board’s (LSB) research into the will-writing market, Legal Futures can reveal. However, the Law Society has declined to contribute, citing concerns over the impact its involvement could have on how the impartiality of the research is viewed.

Solicitors are set to shoulder the vast majority of the Legal Services Board (LSB) and Legal Ombudsman’s (LeO) £25m annual running costs for the next three years at least, it emerged today. The LSB confirmed that it would proceed with its plan to levy its own £5m costs on the basis of the number of authorised persons overseen by each approved regulator, and most of LeO’s £20m costs based on the number of complaints generated by each group.

Legal Services Board chief executive Chris Kenny has spoken out in favour of the “holy grail” of diversity neutral aptitude testing across legal careers. Addressing a legal education conference at Harvard University in America – one of the first times the LSB has seriously addressed its role in legal education – Mr Kenny also hit out at lawyers who see their ethical training as creating “a wall of professional exclusivity”.

The chairman of the Legal Services Board has called on the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) to be more flexible in its approach to law firms which are looking to do deals with external investors before alternative business structures (ABSs) become a reality on 6 October 2011. In a major speech, David Edmonds also suggested that the rules which prevent solicitors having unregulated separate businesses carrying out unreserved legal work are anti-competitive.

The introduction of controversial new standard contractual terms for solicitors instructing barristers has been further delayed by confusion over the split of responsibilities between the Bar Council and Bar Standards Board, Legal Futures can reveal. The BSB also has a new director and has formally launched its chambers monitoring scheme.