Market monitor

Slater & Gordon’s share price tumbled by more than 50% overnight as investors reeled at the potential impact of the personal injury reforms unveiled yesterday in the Autumn Statement. It fell below A$1 for the first time since the firm listed in 2007.

The average price of a standard will from a law firm has fallen from £124 to £118 over the last year, new research has indicated. The report, by IRN Research, warned that a highly competitive market had become even tougher with the arrival of accountants and chartered legal executives.

Any person thinking about taking their case to court should be able to see a lawyer without cost at least once, according to an opinion poll conducted as part of work on the public perception of justice. The research by Citizens Advice said that the increased restrictions on legal aid were discouraging people from accessing the courts at all.

Private equity-backed alternative business structure Parabis Group has today been broken up into seven pre-pack sales after entering administration, as first predicted this morning by Legal Futures. Meanwhile, another private equity-backed firm, Knights, is set to break into the top 100 with the acquisition of Darbys.

Slater & Gordon has changed the strategy of the personal injury business it bought from Quindell and is now generally not accepting low-value road traffic accident accident claims that are more than a year old because they are harder to win, it has emerged.

The Law Society is set to review its governance structure as part of a new strategy set against a background of a legal market which it said by 2020 would see more and faster consolidation among law firms, changing employment practices and an increased number of “diverse business models”.

The Parabis Group – the first law firm to be bought by a private equity business – is on the verge of being broken up, two months after problems first emerged. Meanwhile, England cricket captain Alistair Cook has helped launch a drop-in centre at Slater & Gordon’s flagship Manchester office.

The slow pace of change in the legal profession means it is “not surprising” to see new types of firms, with completely different business models, winning market share, an authoritative survey has found, adding that “the market is ripe for change”.

The ‘Big Four’ accountants are proving “intense competition” for mid-tier law firms and “quietly” taking the more commoditised work away from them, the head of legal services at RBS has said, predicting that the accountants will move on to compete with bigger firms.

A lawyer-matching service originally designed for tech start-ups and SMEs has secured a second, much larger cash injection of £850,000 from a range of investors led by e-commerce specialist Forward Partners. Ih-house lawyers at large companies are now using the service to save money.

The listed company that owns NewLaw Solicitors has completed its acquisition of a fleet accident management group that itself has a joint venture alternative business structure (ABS) with NewLaw. Meanwhile, would-be ABS Metamorph Law will shortly have a £4m warchest that will enable it to buy at least five firms next year.

Mergers have been unveiled across the country in recent days, with firms of all sizes and practice areas choosing to join forces. There is usually a rush of mergers each year timed to coincide with the 30 September deadline to secure professional indemnity insurance, and 2015 has proven no different.

Any short-term “bonanza” in legal work triggered by Britain’s exit from the EU would be followed by a drought, City lawyers have warned in a report by the Law Society. The society highlighted the impact on England and Wales as a centre of international dispute resolution.

Barristers are shunning the chance to go into direct competition with solicitors and conduct litigation for clients in addition to their advocacy, it has emerged. Delegates at Saturday’s Bar conference also heard that while public access also remains “under the radar”, there is evidence of clients preferring the cheaper option of going direct to a barrister.

Most of the top 100 law firms now recognise ‘the need to respond to the digital age’ in the face of market disruptors, but less than a quarter have actually done so, accountants PwC have found.