Legal Services Act

Vulnerable people could lose out under the latest plans by the Solicitors Regulation Authority for the regulation of consumer credit work, the Legal Services Consumer Panel has warned. Meanwhile the Law Society called for greater clarity on payment of legal fees by instalments.

The number of potential shareholder claims against Quindell plc has hit 850 in the wake of last week’s “breathtaking” financial restatements, it has emerged. The number of potential claimants had been “increasingly fairly steadily”, but “there was a surge over the last week or so”.

A former Chief Crown Prosecutor has been named as the new chief executive of the Legal Ombudsman. Barrister Nick Hawkins, who spent 15 years in the Crown Prosecution Service, is currently chief operating officer for the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

A boutique firm of external in-house counsel has launched an alternative business structure in order to expand and strengthen its non-lawyer management. London-headquartered Cleveland & Co received its ABS licence from the Solicitors Regulation Authority, effective from 1 August.

Personal injury specialist Minster Law has signed an exclusive two-year contract with national chambers Clerksroom and Parklane Plowden, to provide barristers for its fast and multi-track cases. Stephen Ward, chief executive of Clerksroom, said he hoped similar contracts would follow.

A global legal outsourcing brand has launched an alternative business structure to add legal services to its motor claims business. WNS, based in Mumbai, has delivery centres across the world.

The Bar Standards Board (BSB), which predicted at one point last year that it would authorise 400 firms in 2015, has authorised only 32 in its first four months as an entity regulator, it has emerged. Meanwhile it may not be regulating alternative business structures until later next year.

Local authority legal departments are being forced to set up alternative business structures by restrictive rules on in-house lawyers, leading to the “privatisation” of public sector legal services, the director of Essex Legal Services has claimed.

Peninsula Business Services, one of the largest unregulated providers of legal services in the country, has blamed Solicitors Regulation Authority rules for scuppering its plans to set up an alternative business structure. The company provides employment law, HR and health and safety advice to over 30,000 small businesses in the UK.

The removal of regulatory restrictions on in-house lawyers could provide greater access to justice for consumers, the Legal Services Board has said. It also warned the Solicitors Regulation Authority and Bar Standards Board that the reviews of the rules for in-house lawyers they are starting “will need to be far reaching”.

Kent County Council, which tendered for a joint venture partner to set up alternative business structure last autumn, has narrowed the list of potential candidates to one, it has emerged. The bidder will make a presentation to Kent’s commissioning advisory board in early September.

There is a “compelling case to introduce a new regulatory settlement” for the legal market in the medium term, the Legal Services Board told the government today. A report said it was “increasingly clear” that the absence of full separation between the representative bodies and legal regulators is proving “a strong impediment to progress”.

The agreement between Slater & Gordon’s professional services division (PSD) and the country’s biggest high street insurance broker has come to an end just months after it signed a multi-year renewal.

The Bar Standards Board is to dispense with its ‘list of defaulting solicitors’ and replace it with a new rule allowing barristers to refuse work under the cab-rank rule where there is an “unacceptable risk” that they will not get paid.

The Legal Services Board has approved radical reforms of the separate business rule for solicitors, while noting that the changes “carry some risks to consumers”. Information on the difference between regulated and unregulated services is to be tested with consumers before the change comes into force.