Legal Services Board

The updated draft of the single Handbook that will govern both traditional law firms and alternative business structures from October 2011 is being unveiled today by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA). This is the last opportunity to comment on it. The latest stage in the SRA’s move to outcomes-focused regulation also includes a call for the Legal Services Board to extend the definition of reserved legal activities to cover all “solicitor activities”.

The Law Society is to enlarge the board of the Solicitors Regulation Authority so as to introduce parity between the number of solicitor and lay members in a deal struck with the Legal Services Board. It follows a similar agreement between the LSB and Bar Standards Board, whose offer to introduce parity on the road to a lay majority has been accepted.

Plans to merge the Legal Services Consumer Panel into Citizens Advice will need to overcome issues around confidentiality and conflicts of interests as the charity is also a provider in the legal market, Legal Services Board chairman David Edmonds has warned.

Regulators should consider making diversity training mandatory for senior partners and line managers in law firms, say academics after research uncovered a complex web of barriers between minorities and women, and the upper reaches of the legal profession. The findings will be backed up by a forthcoming study into pay disparity by the Law Society that has uncovered “a kind of structural inequality”.

Chartered accountants are set to compete with lawyers for probate work after the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) signalled its intention to apply for the right to undertake reserved probate work. An ICAEW survey of 2,500 small practices found that around a quarter were interested in offering the service.

The Legal Services Board (LSB) has confirmed that it does not back reinstating the ban on referral fees but said that instead all agreements between lawyers and their introducers should be published. As first reported on Legal Futures last month, the LSB said today that there is insufficient evidence to make the case for a ban, but that transparency and disclosure need to be improved. It also said there should be the same rules for the different parts of the regulated legal market so far as possible.

The will-writing debate moved towards the end-game today after the Legal Services Consumer Panel launched its investigation into whether the industry should be regulated. However, the Legal Services Board is currently trying to secure £110,000 in funding for the panel to undertake market research.

The Law Society has rejected Legal Services Board (LSB) calls to introduce a lay majority on the board of the Solicitors Regulation Authority before 2013, Legal Futures can reveal. The move is likely to lead to a stand-off with the LSB that could end up in the courts, with the society warning that it reserves the right to challenge any formal action which the LSB takes against it as a result.

A range of law firms and commercial interests have been wining and dining representatives of the Legal Services Board (LSB), according to information released to Legal Futures under the Freedom of Information Act.

The Legal Services Board is pushing ahead with plans to require law firms and chambers to publish comprehensive diversity and class information about their staff from next year, Legal Futures has learned.

The Legal Services Board believes that reserving will-writing work to lawyers could lead to fewer people making wills and would do nothing about unfair bundling of estate administration charges, Legal Futures can reveal.

The Legal Services Board’s initial reaction to the Law Society of Ireland’s threat of legal action over the new rules for overseas lawyers requalifying as solicitors was that it might just be a “negotiating ploy”, Legal Futures can reveal.

The Legal Services Board would be “unwise” to increase or reduce the list of reserved legal activities at the moment, the Legal Services Policy Institute has warned. Professor Stephen Mayson said it first needs a set of criteria to judge the case for reservation.

The Legal Services Board has continued making contingency plans to regulate alternative business structures itself if none of the current approved regulators are up to the task, it has emerged from a consultation on the arrangements for appeals against the decisions of ABS licensing authorities.

The Legal Services Board has fired a warning shot across the bows of the Law Society over the way the practising certificate fee is divided up after expressing concern that some money is being applied to “non-permitted purposes”.