Legal Services Act

The Bar Standards Board is to regulate advocacy focused alternative business structures and allow barristers to conduct litigation, its board decided yesterday. However, it has placed significant restrictions on the range of entities it is prepared to regulate.

City firm Hogan Lovells and 39 Essex Street chambers have retained their roles as general legal advisers to the Legal Services Board. The pair, as well as five specialist providers, have been reappointed following an internal review on their existing terms and rates until 31 March 2012.

Manchester firm Pannone is to target big businesses with a white label legal services offering, it announced today. From next week it is pulling all of its white label services into a standalone and separately branded division – Affinity Solutions – to partner with organisations with a large customer base.

Advocates seeking accreditation under the quality assurance for advocates (QAA) scheme will be allowed to opt for an assessment centre route rather than judges’ evaluations alone, under new proposals being debated today.

More than three-quarters of law firms have changed their plans to reflect the coming of alternative business structures, but firms seeking to attract investors will have to develop credible growth strategies. Neil Kinsella, managing partner of Russell Jones & Walker, said his firm had already begun to draw up a list of potential law firm acquisitions.

Irwin Mitchell today became the first major law firm to announce its intention to seek external investment. The Sheffield-headquartered national practice has appointed Espirito Santo Investment Bank as its financial adviser to review the options.

Customer experience will largely define the success of legal providers in the post Legal Services Act world, according to a survey of delegates at last week’s Legal Futures Conference. Understading the client is vital but doing it will be difficult for some firms, the survey found.

A new website called “We buy any files” is keen to acquire business from practices looking to shed personal injury work ahead of alternative business structures and the Jackson reforms. Meanwhile, a survey of consumers has highlighted dissatisfaction with the PI claims system, and leading legal expenses insurer DAS has hit back at yesterday’s report on BTE insurance.

Our regular round-up of snippets of news that you need to know takes in the Legal Ombudsman, conveyancing, financial difficulties for law firms, a shortfall of LPC graduates, the first divorce app, new members for LawNet, an LPO survey, the new Law Society deputy vice-president, and Expert Answers’ affiliate programme.

The government has strongly supported the publication of complaints and other data as a way for consumers to hold businesses to account, in a move likely to put further pressure on the Legal Ombudsman to name law firms that are subject to complaints.

New “dumbed-down” entrants to the personal injury market will be “quick and wrong”, whereas lawyers can be “quick and right”, the new president of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers has claimed. David Bott said claimants might prefer to deal with a “new breed of dumbed-down, legal ‘light’ adviser” – at least at first.

The Legal Services Board has an “absolute right” to intervene whenever it believes frontline regulators are dragging their heels, such as acting to improve diversity, the Legal Services Board chairman, David Edmonds, told the Legal Futures conference.

Doubts over whether alternative business structures (ABSs) will start on 6 October persist after justice minister Jonathan Djanogly today refused to confirm that they will happen on that day. “Quality is paramount and I will not shortcut a complicated process involving no less than a dozen parliamentary orders,” he said.

Lawyers around the world are watching to see how alternative business structures (ABS) work, giving UK law firms a possible competitive advantage if they can meet “unprecedented” client demand for value, Professor Richard Susskind told the Legal Futures Conference. He also said it was “unimaginable” that investors and entrepreneurs would ignore the opportunities presented by legal market.

QualitySolicitors is preparing to eject a member firm for failing to meet the network’s quality standards, its chief operating officer told the Legal Futures Conference yesterday. Law Society chief executive Des Hudson also questioned QS’s use of the word “quality” in the brand.