Market monitor

Four in ten managing partners at leading law firms see alternative providers such as the Big Four accountants and insurers as the biggest threat to the legal profession, according to a survey published today. It also found firms more likely to see growth coming from investment in technology and hiring teams, rather than mergers.

Four law firms have joined forces to launch Collaborative Employment Law (CEL), a group aiming to bring a novel mediated approach to employment disputes as an alternative to litigation, modelled on a technique developed by family lawyers.

The legal market is set for a “second wave” of external investment, a leading corporate financier said today, describing it as “an inevitable snowball that is gathering pace”. He identified several markets – from criminal law to large commercial firms – where there were opportunities for investors.

One-time network Connect2Law has been reborn as an alternative business structure that has acquired leading referral business Contact Law, Legal Futures can reveal. It is part of a strategy to establish C2L as “the UK’s leading provider of branded consumer legal services” on behalf of businesses entering the legal market.

Well-known recovery specialist Leonard Curtis has today launched an alternative business structure to create a multi-disciplinary offering to businesses in financial distress. The solicitor founder said his experience to date showed how accountants were much better at being SMEs’ ‘trusted adviser’ than law firms.

Redde plc – the AIM-listed accident management company that owns two law firms, announced record results yesterday, and also that it has taken full ownership of the smaller of its alternative business structures. Turnover grew 53% to £379m, with profit before tax up a similar amount to £34.6m.

A niche health and social care alternative business structure has incorporated as a public limited company as a prelude to a future expansion and stock exchange listing. Ridouts Solicitors has no immediate plans to become a listed company but was getting it “ducks in a row” so as to be ready for when it happens.

The move to move Kent County Council’s legal team into an alternative business structure (ABS) is now well underway, with a white-label service to private law firms for routine work likely to be part of its offering, Legal Futures can reveal.

Slater & Gordon’s core UK business lost A$64m (£37m) in the year to 30 June 2016, while it spent A$33m on reorganising operations over here, the listed firm’s annual results have revealed. The company had already prepared the market for the group’s headline loss of A$1.02bn but still its shares fell 15% in trading.

A lawyer-matching service for SMEs has raised £50,000 in less than three days as it bids to crowdfund £360,000 for the next stage of its development. LawyerFair told potential investors that “legal services are an inefficient, low innovation marketplace” and that within three years it would be turning over £4.6m.

Slater & Gordon has seen its performance improve significantly in the first half of 2016 – with changes in the UK starting “to bear fruit” – and its upcoming annual results will show that the acquisition of Quindell’s professional services division has nearly doubled its turnover.

The uncertainties around the personal injury reforms in England and Wales has caused Australia’s ‘other’ listed law firm to row back on plans to enter the market. Shine Lawyers, a leading personal injury practice, has been talking about expanding to the UK, but in its 2016 annual report indicated that these are on hold.

Law firms of the future are likely to succeed by integrating non-lawyer specialists, such as project managers, into their businesses and collaborating with technology companies, it has been predicted. The profession also needs to train “ethically minded legal professionals who are equipped to keep modernising how they deliver legal services”.

A lawyer-matching platform has answered the growing clamour for charging transparency with a price index based on its database of 15,000 quotes, broken down into detailed categories of commercial work. The move should give clients an idea of average fees at market rates.

AIM-listed Fairpoint Group is set to become almost entirely a legal services business after announcing that it will stop offering debt management plans – which was once a key part of its business. It said that from next year the group would focus on its “higher-growth legal services segment”.