Legal Services Act

Six criminal law barristers have set up a chambers structured as a partnership and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Artesian Law is already looking to expand due to the number of instructions it has received.

New York lawyers are banned from running the Big Apple office of a UK alternative business structure with non-lawyer owners, the New York State Bar’s committee on professional ethics announced yesterday.

More than a third of conveyancing firms are considering becoming an alternative business structure, new research has found. The survey also revealed predictions of large-scale closures of traditional law firms as a result of new competition.

The Bar Council has attacked the Legal Services Board’s “overconfidence” and criticised its apparent desire to become a “super-regulator” rather than an oversight body. It said the LSB’s plans has ambitions to be involved in areas of activity where it should not be.

Innovative legal business Axiom has become the latest to open an operation in Belfast, with £1.6m of government support. Unlike at other law firm operations in the city, the 100 lawyers and paralegals will be the primary client-facing fee-earners for global companies.

There is in excess of £1bn of private equity money available for investment in the legal market, while at least one UK law firm will proceed to a public listing this year, one of the profession’s leading bankers, James Tsolakis of RBS, has predicted.

The Legal Services Consumer Panel has called upon the ongoing Legal Education and Training Review to propose a revalidation scheme for lawyers. At the same event, delegates were told that judicial evaluation in the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates is flawed.

Consumers of probate and estate administration services are significantly more satisfied when they receive their advice face to face, rather than by e-mail, post or telephone, major research has found, while those on fixed fees pay a third less than those charged by the hour.

Probate and estate administration services should become reserved legal activities, the Legal Services Consumer Panel has recommended. It follows the panel’s call last year for will-writing to be regulated as well, which sparked a formal LSB investigation into the issue.

The legal aid reforms will open up opportunities for law firms, with alternative business structures (ABSs) offering one way to exploit them, justice minister Jonathan Djanogly claimed last week. The significance of ABSs “cannot be overstated”, he said.

The Law Society has warned the Legal Services Board that it is overstepping its role as an oversight body by trying to become a market regulator. The society said the board plans for the future suggested an “inappropriately proactive approach for an oversight regulator”.

The Legal Services Board has given the clearest hint yet that it is supporting the position of solicitors in the row over the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates. Legal Futures also understands that the LSB is pushing the Bar Standards Board to accept a compromise.

Regulators should empower consumers to drive improvements in the quality of legal services, while professional indemnity insurers could hand over firm-specific claims data to help target poorly performing practices, the Legal Services Board has suggested.

Our latest round-up of news includes Fisher Meredith winning an appeal against a big wasted costs order, SRA figures on the number of firms and solicitors, the first law firm to ‘pin’ on growing social media service Pinterest, fee income up at the largest law firms, and more.

QualitySolicitors will this month launch the largest advertising campaign in the history of the legal profession ahead of a blitz that will see 8,000 adverts hit TV screens throughout May. The first of the new-look ads will be shown on Sunday 25 March, during the final of Dancing on Ice.