Legal Services Act

Internet behemoth Google has made its second foray into the legal market by investing in US online legal service Rocket Lawyer. Its venture capital arm, Google Ventures, has joined a group of investors putting $18.5m (£11.4m) into the company, which provides a subscription-based legal document assembly service.

A London barrister has launched an online referral service that passes instructions to public access barristers as well as solicitors. Karen Taylor, head of Themis Chambers, runs Find A Legal Specialist, which filters the needs of potential clients – including the complexity of the case – through a series of questions.

A leading City lawyer is targeting major Chinese and Indian law firms with a view to using alternative business structures to help them build global practices from the UK. Stephen Kines said ABSs will provide them with a flexible structure.

Legal Pioneers is a major new Legal Futures series profiling innovative legal services providers. In the first instalment, Neil Rose travels to Bromley in Kent to visit MTA Solicitors, which has three different legal practices, a shopping centre store, and nine (soon to be 10) other ancilliary businesses.

A law firm in Blackburn will next week launch a campaign to make legal services more accessible to deaf people as part of its efforts to become what it says is the only law firm in the country for the deaf and hard of hearing. Joseph Frasier Solicitors’ campaign is called “Representing your right to be heard”.

The Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC) has hit back at opposition from the Lord Chief Justice and the Law Society to its application to grant rights to conduct advocacy and litigation. The Legal Services Board is currently considering the CLC’s application, and as one of its statutory consultees, the Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge has expressed his total opposition.

The Legal Ombudsman is stepping up pressure on the Legal Services Board to sort out the current regulatory regime by commissioning research that will look at consumer confusion caused by reserved and unreserved legal activities and how it could be exacerbated by alternative business structures.

QualitySolicitors’ (QS) deal to run ‘Legal Access Points’ (LAPs) within WHSmith stores was launched on Friday with celebrity fanfare and national TV coverage. Britain’s Got Talent judge Amanda Holden unveiled the first of an eventual 500 nationwide LAPs at Westfield shopping centre in west London, before a crowd of onlookers and autograph hunters.

The regulation of both residential conveyancing and corporate law, as well as general legal advice, is set to be reviewed by the Legal Services Board as it begins a major investigation into the boundaries of regulation and also looks at whether Parliament needs to undertake a “root and branch overhaul of the current system”.

A new online service that allows potential clients to ask solicitors a question for free – and get a response within an hour – is set to launch to the profession shortly. The website, www.rightsolicitor.co.uk, already ranks at the top of Google behind only the Law Society for the words ‘solicitor’ and ‘solicitors’.

Law firms and chambers whose workforces are significantly at odds with the make-up of the wider profession can expect questions from their regulators, the Legal Services Board (LSB) has warned. The LSB today confirmed that it is pressing ahead with controversial plans to make firms and chambers survey and publish the levels of diversity and social mobility in their workforces.

Outcomes-focused regulation will go ahead on 6 October even though it is unlikely that the Solicitors Regulation Authority will be able to start licensing alternative business structures “much before the end of the year”, chief executive Antony Townsend has confirmed.

There is a strong consumer protection justification for making the whole conveyancing process a reserved legal activity, Professor Stephen Mayson has argued in the final version of his influential report on the case for reservation. He said the “guarantee” of title registration is incomplete.

The Legal Services Board looks set to force legal practices to gather and publish equality and diversity data, despite concern that the policy could provoke non-compliance and create a false view of the profession because of relcutance to disclose sensitive information such as sexual orientation or religious belief.

Competition over fees, reduced work volumes and other worries will result in far fewer firms specialising in conveyancing in the future, a new survey has predicted. The poll of Conveyancing Association members found them anxious about the future, with alternative business structures and reduced lender panels key sources of concern.