Legal Services Act

The Ministry of Justice proposals on how the Legal Ombudsman’s costs for handling complaints against claims management companies are recovered disproportionally penalises those working in personal injury, a leading marketing collective has argued.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has slashed its backlog of ABS licensing applications from 142 in January 2013 to 52 in April this year, it has emerged. The average age of work-in-progress ABS applications is now three months.

The Lord Chancellor has set the Legal Services Board the task of working towards its own abolition as part of a push to reduce the burden of regulation on the legal profession, he revealed yesterday.

In the third part of our series in which we catch up on the progress of the new breed of alternative business structures (ABSs), we speak to Castle Park Solicitors, which was the first ABS to be created by a legal advice charity.

A set of chambers specialising in direct access cases and working only on a fixed fee basis has opened in Cheltenham. Cotswold Barristers also claims to have landed the biggest direct access case so far.

Trading in shares in National Accident Helpline (NAH) began on AIM yesterday as it emerged that Minster Law – the major claimant practice owned by insurance group BGL – is taking 15% of potential clients the company receives.

Sir Michael Pitt, the new chairman of the Legal Services Board, has said that primary legislation will be needed to reduce the complexity of legal regulation and ensure it moves “at market pace”.

Public awareness of the Legal Ombudsman is continuing to fall, while the number of dissatisfied clients who do not bother to complain is increasing, a survey has found.

In the latest in our series tracking the fortunes of the new breed of alternative business structures (ABSs), we profile Bobby Dhanjal Wealth Management, which a year ago became the first financial services business to set up a legal arm.

Online barrister service myBarrister last week exceeded its target of raising £150,000 through crowd-funding. It has now raised more than £163,000 in just over two months from 65 individual investors – the largest of whom has put in £50,000.

Quindell chairman and chief executive Rob Terry saw his pay increase by nearly 50% in the last financial year, the alternative business structure’s annual report has revealed.

The Bar Standards Board (BSB) is unlikely to become an ABS licensing authority until 2015 and will not be regulating non-ABS firms, such barrister-only practices, before October this year, it has emerged.

Two of the country’s largest trade unions – the GMB and Communications Workers Union – have today broken new ground by creating an alternative business structure (ABS). Unionline is essentially a not-for-profit ABS as any profits will be ploughed back into the unions.

There is a huge unmet need for legal services among individual consumers, the most detailed ever study of the issue has revealed, with fewer than one in 10 people experiencing a legal problem seeking advice from a lawyer.

Clients are paying law firms fixed fees in almost half of all transactions, while unbundling is becoming a significant feature of the market place, a survey for the Legal Services Consumer Panel has found.