Market monitor

A debt collection business has become an alternative business structure (ABS) and can now offer an end-to-end service that enables it to collect, litigate and enforce clients’ debt.

A new lawyer-matching service aimed particularly at tech start-ups has secured £260,000 of funding from e-commerce funder Forward Partners and Jonathan McKay, chairman of JustGiving.

A new firm formed by some of the country’s best-known private client lawyers is promising to provide high net-worth clients with a service provided only by “exceptionally knowledgeable” senior lawyers.

The British Printing Industries Federation is aiming to meet the unmet need for legal advice in the sector, having finally revealed its plans for the alternative business structure licenced by the SRA some seven months ago.

Alternative business structure Quindell plc was finally on the up last week, with its share price soaring 58% in four days. And they were up a further 30% in early trading today after heavyweight figures were appointed to the board.

US online legal services provider LegalZoom – which claims to be the best-known legal brand in America – has today become the first US business to be licensed as an alternative business structure.

The chief executive of Quindell plc’s legal services division has left the company, it has emerged. The news comes in the wake of the ABS’s announcement that it is in talks to sell one of its operating divisions to generate cash.

David Hassall, a senior partner turned barrister whose career mirrors recent changes in legal services, has set up an alternative business structure – which he intends to operate on a ‘John Lewis’ profit share model.

More than 250 current and former shareholders in AIM-listed alternative business structure Quindell have already registered their interest in a potential group action, Liverpool law firm Camps has said.

US company LegalZoom today makes plain its ambitions for the UK market by saying there is “no question” that it will become the best-known legal brand on this side of the Atlantic.

Liverpool law firm Camps is trying to pull together a group action over losses suffered by investors in alternative business structure Quindell plc following the dramatic collapse in the AIM-listed company’s share price, it announced today.

Business consultancy Assure Law has acquired a majority stake in HighStreetLawyer.com, the network of small firms, and plans to expand it substantially.

The share price of alternative business structure Quindell went into meltdown again today after it emerged that founder and former chairman Rob Terry has sold 25m shares over the last fortnight.

Alternative business structure Quindell has called in PwC to conduct an independent review of the business, with the issue of its cash flow a key focus, it announced this morning.

Private equity company Duke Street Capital has invested a further £13m in Parabis Group in a show of long-term commitment to the top 50 firm. Duke Street was the first private equity investor in a solicitors’ firm.