Market monitor

Two new alternative business structures are set for approval next week, as the Leeds-based Progeny Group comes into life. The group will combine a commercial law and private client ABS with a separate, FCA-regulated wealth management business.

Fairpoint Group plc – the one-time debt management operation that has transformed into a mainly legal services operation – has reported a “strong financial performance” for 2015 and plans to keep growing in 2016. Meanwhile, turnover at Minster Law, which is owned by BGL Group, more than halved.

A City solicitor who qualified at Ashurst has set up a contract lawyer and paralegal matching service designed particularly for firms needing help with e-discovery. Toby Gascoyne said the web platform was currently working with three law firms and around 100 lawyers and paralegals.

Britain’s changing demographics will mean a huge shift in demand for legal services, towards managing the wealth and lives of the growing proportion of elderly people in the population, according to a study forecasting legal needs in 2025.

One Legal’s acquisition of Kaim Todner sets the foundation for further deals on the back of “significant investment” it has received to expand, the alternative business structure’s founder has said. Trevor Howarth, who shot to prominence as the boss of now-defunct Stobart Barristers, also did not resile from his controversial description of criminal legal aid firms as “very wounded animals ready to die”.

A UK-based litigation funder is to back a shareholder class action against Slater & Gordon as its share price continues to tank following Monday’s announcement of huge losses. Having started the week at 83c, the embattled firm saw its shares finish trading on the Australian Stock Exchange today at just 26c, their lowest ever point.

Slater & Gordon is to conduct a major restructuring of its UK operation – with office closures and redundancies on the cards – after it unveiled an eye-watering loss of £493m for the six months ending 31 December 2015. The loss was mainly attributable to a write-down of goodwill arising from its acquisition of Quindell, but also underperformance of the entire UK operation.

Cardiff firm NewLaw yesterday confirmed that it is working with the Royal College of Nursing to launch an alternative business structure from 1 April. The news came with its owner, AIM-listed Redde plc, announcing big rises in income and profits for the second half of 2015.

Slater & Gordon was yesterday granted a voluntary suspension of its shares on the Australian Stock Exchange following a period when their value has been increasing modestly. The request came ahead of the troubled law firm’s announcement of its financial results for the second half of 2015 next Monday.

The original contract lawyer business, Lawyers on Demand, is to merge with Australia’s AdventBalance in the first corss-continent merger of its type. The new business, to be called LOD from June, will still have Berwin Leighton Paisner – from which Lawyers on Demand sprang in 2007 – as a shareholder.

Four local authorities in the south of England are set to create an alternative business structure in a bid to increase their income in a time of budget cuts. Brighton & Hove City Council, East Sussex County Council, Surrey County Council and West Sussex County Council are first to bring together their legal teams in a partnership.

Knights, the law firm backed by leading businessman James Caan, is targeting accountants, tax specialists and town planners as part of a plan to recruit a 100 more professionals this year. Chief executive David Beech said he expected around half of the new recruits to be non-lawyers.

Cardiff-based Capital Law has today launched a £50m fund – backed by a hedge fund – to help its clients pursue litigation, in a first for a law firm. Senior partner Chris Nott said the fund had already helped a small business sue a government department for £1m and another client bring a professional negligence claim against one of the big four accountants.

Business as usual “is not an option for many, if indeed any, traditional legal service providers”, the Law Society has warned today in a major report on what the legal market may look like in 2020. It said that the opportunities for solicitors in the coming years “cannot be distinguished from the opportunities for other types of lawyer, or non-lawyer-owned businesses”.

The AA has shut its alternative business structure, AA Law, to new clients, it has emerged. The motoring giant said: “Following a strategic review the AA decided that the level of customers it was introducing did not justify the maintenance of a standalone business.”