Legal Services Board

The Legal Services Consumer Panel has indicated its desire to see the composition of the board of the Solicitors Regulation Authority change before the end of the current members’ terms so as to achieve a lay majority.

The chairman of the Legal Services Board has hit back at Law Society criticism of his organisation, and warned that Chancery Lane is creating an unnecessarily complex relationship with the Solicitors Regulation Authority that goes against the recommendations of the Hunt review.

A new Cabinet committee is to review whether the Office for Legal Complaints (OLC) and alternative business structures (ABSs) should be implemented, it emerged yesterday. The news comes as The Times speculated today that the new team at the Ministry of Justice might kick ABSs into the long grass, but investigations by Legal Futures indicate that there is no foundation for this.

The Scottish government has decided to push ahead with regulating non-lawyer will-writers, it has emerged. In a move that will intensify pressure on the Legal Services Board in England and Wales, the government plans to apply a set of regulatory rules, enforcement measures and sanctions to ensure non-lawyer will-writers conform to acceptable industry practice.

The Legal Services Board’s powers to seize control of regulation from the approved regulators is unnecessary and casts a shadow over the independence of the legal profession, the Law Society president has claimed.

Referral fees in personal injury and conveyancing do not harm consumers and so there is no case to ban them or take any other regulatory action, a major piece of research released today has concluded. In fact, it found that referral fees actually result in cheaper conveyancing fees and improved access to justice for injured people.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) will be able to formally rebuke solicitors and fine them up to £2,000 from next month, it has been confirmed. However, the potential conflict between the civil standard of proof that will be applied in such cases and the criminal standard used by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal – which will hear appeals against SRA decisions – has not yet been resolved and is likely to require further work.

A row is brewing between the Law Society and Legal Services Board over the wind-down of the Legal Complaints Service, Legal Futures can reveal. Law Society chief executive Des Hudson has told us that the LSB’s insistence that the LCS’s current performance targets stay in place as it heads towards closure, despite dwindling staff, is “unthoughtful and an error of judgement”.

ILEX Professional Standards (IPS) is to seek conveyancing and criminal advocacy and litigation rights for legal executives, it has emerged. It forms part of IPS’s plan to become a regulator of alternative business structures.

The Legal Services Board is making contingency plans to regulate alternative business structures itself if none of the current approved regulators are up to the task, it has emerged. The LSB’s 2010/11 business plan, published today, says that it will scope out the requirements for direct licensing during the summer.

The Legal Services Board has delayed a decision on whether the civil standard of proof should apply to the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s new powers to publicly rebuke and fine solicitors because of concerns raised by the Law Society and Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has overcome a raft of concerns from the Legal Services Board to win approval for the new Qualified Lawyers Transfer Scheme. Some 26% of new solicitors in 2009 were either former barristers or international lawyers.

The Legal Services Board has told barristers’ regulator that it will need to up its game – and perhaps embrace outcomes-focused regulation – to keep pace with liberalisation of the bar. “We expect that the BSB will invest in its skills and regulatory capacity,” it said.

Now the Legal Services Board has taken on its full powers to supervise the legal profession, Legal Futures Editor Neil Rose talks to its chairman, David Edmonds, to see what lawyers can expect of it.

The Legal Services Board has approved plans to allow barristers to become partners in legal disciplinary practices but warned that the changes “go only part of the way towards opening up the market in the interests of consumers”.