Legal Services Act

Frontline regulators need to trial a range of materials to help consumers make better decisions in the wake of the legal aid cuts, academic research commissioned by the Legal Services Board has urged.

Potential investors in Saga have been told that the over-50s specialist sees a “significant opportunity” to expand the customer base of its alternative business structure, Saga Law.

The Legal Services Board has told the government that if it wants to appoint ‘small business appeals champions’ for legal services, it should appoint them to the boards of the eight front-line regulators rather than the super-regulator.

Chris Kenny, chief executive of the Legal Services Board, has said that the government is “not saying never” to the idea of a single regulator for the entire profession, and it was likely to happen anyway in the coming years.

Preventing mortgage lenders from claiming on solicitors’ compulsory indemnity insurance will “destroy high street conveyancing”, Law Society chief executive Des Hudson has said, in a wide-ranging speech on the state of the profession.

The new chief executive of the Solicitors Regulation Authority, Paul Philip, has used one of his first public platforms since being appointed to outline the new “back to basics” approach he wants the regulator to take.

In the first of a new series tracking the experience of the new breed of alternative business structures (ABSs), we profile Crabtree Law, which was the first in-house team to become a standalone law firm.

Leading market commentator Professor Stephen Mayson is to begin working with the Legal Services Board, it has been announced. He is to work with the oversight regulator on its 2015-2018 strategic plan and planned project on the cost of regulation.

Stobart Barristers – the most controversial new business of the Legal Services Act era to date – will no longer provide legal advice to the public, Legal Futures can reveal.

Two comparison websites have become the latest to sign up to the groundbreaking good practice standards pioneered by the Legal Services Consumer Panel.

Claims management companies will have to pay a separate ‘Lord Chancellor’s complaints fee’ of up to £40,000 on top of their annual regulation fee with the shift in complaints handling from the Ministry of Justice to the Legal Ombudsman.

The Legal Services Board is to tell the approved regulators that they must consult those they regulate about setting the level of practising fees beyond what is needed simply for regulation, it has emerged.

Leading private client firm Withers has launched a programme including start-up legal advice and magazine subscriptions aimed at helping entrepreneurs grow and protect their businesses.

Solicitors who consider themselves entreprenerial are proving much more active in changing the way they practise law, new research has suggested. However, only 22% of those polled said they believed the introduction of ABSs was a “positive”.

Consumers of legal services do not all need the same level of protection and some of them, such as big corporations, might not need “any protection at all”, the SRA has said in a policy statement on its approach to regulation.