Legal Services Act

The frontline regulators will be required to have lay chairs in future after the Legal Services Board (LSB) pressed ahead with its controversial change to the internal governance rules.

The case for ‘micro’ law firms – small, boutique practices spun out of larger firms – is growing as lawyers struggle to control the ‘Leviathan’ of big practices, a top academic has argued.

The legal challenge to the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA) is not yet dead after it emerged that the claimants have gone to the Court of Appeal to seek permission to appeal.

One of the UK’s largest debt management companies, Harrington Brooks, which has an annual turnover of around £30m, has created an alternative business structure run by its head of legal services.

A long-standing seller of legal documents is set to launch a venture selling simple packages of documents aimed at website developers and people running online businesses.

Slater & Gordon has become “one of the UK’s largest general law firms” after completing the acquisition of Manchester-based Pannone on Friday – and indicated that it has not finished buying up practices.

The focus of the Legal Services Board on competition in the legal market looks set to intensify after it appointed the inquiry director at the Competition Commission as its new strategy chief. It is one of several key appointments announced recently.

An online legal service aimed at small businesses and “democratising the law” has almost completed its second round of ‘crowdfunding’, raising more than £100,000 in less than a month as it targets ambitious expansion.

Many of the big insurance companies that have set up alternative business structure (ABS) joint ventures have signed up to a new code of practice laying out how they can point policyholders who may have a personal injury claim towards their law firms.

A string of recent cases indicate that judges may be increasingly tempted to remind solicitors of their duty to act impartially in litigation, in an era of alternative business structures (ABSs) where their loyalties might be tested, according to a leading criminal lawyer.

Slater & Gordon is to concentrate on improving the performance of its UK operations, after an acquisitions spree that it claims has given it a 5% share of the claimant PI market. It remains unclear what progress is being made with the previously announced deal to buy Simpson Millar.

A central London firm of accountants has set up an alternative business structure (ABS) as a means of keeping control of legal work that it previously referred to third party law firms.

A consultation on a fresh attempt by the Solicitors Regulation Authority to increase its powers to fine law firms has closed with familiar battle lines drawn, with the Legal Services Board backing the move and the Law Society opposing it.

Alternative business structures (ABSs) will create additional demand for legal services outsourcing (LSO) and could in time become LSO providers themselves, a new book has predicted.

Comments made by the new Bar Council chairman in an interview with Legal Futures have led the Legal Services Board to doubt whether the Bar Council truly accepted the recent findings that it improperly influenced its regulatory arm.