Market monitor

A corporate approach to working, with joint strategies and common vision, can enable elements of the Bar to continue to operate as an independent referral profession, with the Bar Council’s proposed new Bar Business Standard a good start, it has been claimed.

An innovative Scottish legal services business that works on fixed fees and offers clients an outsourced in-house legal function is looking to replicate its model south of Hadrian’s Wall. Vialex is also eyeing up becoming an ABS.

The prospect of the first football-related alternative business structure moved closer to reality this week after a Norwich law firm set up a football agency. Leathes Prior has also launched an innovative litigation risk analysis tool.

Innovative legal businesses such as Riverview Law, Co-operative Legal Services and Parabis are demanding a new approach to educating and training new lawyers as they create different roles for them, such as project management and data analysis.

Early interest in the Scottish form of alternative business structures is coming from solicitors looking to form partnerships with other professionals, rather than seeking external investment, the Law Society of Scotland has revealed.

Big brands providing legal services will face “risks and pressures” which are not present in smaller private practice law firms – but the measures in place to control them “are likely to be substantial”, a senior member of the Co-operative Legal Services team has claimed, explaining what new entrants to the law will bring.

‘Alternative’ law firm Halebury, a specialist business and sport law firm, has announced plans to formalise that tag and become an alternative business structure after substantially bulking up its team.

It will take up to 10 years for the true effects of alternative business structures (ABSs) to be felt, Professor Richard Susskind said this week. He said the only certainty at the moment was that much of the £25bn legal market is “very inefficient”.

Well-known business services provider Jordans Ltd is to set up an alternative business structure aimed at handling outsourced legal work for both companies and law firms, it has emerged.

A surprising number of top law firms are eyeing up merger with or acquisition of a firm from another profession, accountants BDO have found. Ten firms in the top 25 said it could happen in the next three years.

A will-writing and probate services company in Birmingham has become the latest alternative business structure, and only the second licensed by the Council for Licensed Conveyancers.

A family law practitioner from Wakefield is calling on solicitors, barristers and chartered legal executives to unite to promote to the public the benefits of lawyer mediators over non-lawyer competitors.

There is a much higher chance of merger among mid-sized law firms than small practices in the coming year but the well of good merger partners is far from bottomless, new research has found. The survey found that most had thought about merger in recent months.

The Legal Services Act will play a role in transforming the legal market around the world, with English lawyers well placed to take advantage as a result, Professor Richard Susskind predicted last week. He also gave a preview of his new book – Tomorrow’s lawyers: An introduction to your future.

Lawyers are “in denial about what customers hate about law firms” and it will take entrepreneurs from outside the profession to deliver the wholesale change to the business model that is required, the founder of Freeserve claimed last week.