Legal Services Act

The Legal Ombudsman (LeO) received 497 calls on its first day, with the first complaints about a solicitor who missed a court date after going on holiday and not telling his client. Many of the complaints were rejected for various reasons, such as being out of time, but 22 investigations were opened on the first day, and 14 are awaiting allocation.

The Scottish Parliament yesterday approved the introduction of alternative business structures (ABSs) which are majority owned by solicitors and other regulated professionals. The Legal Services (Scotland) Bill completed its passage through Holyrood and allows external investors to hold 49% of any new legal services business.

The Legal Complaints Service (LCS) closed its doors to new complaints yesterday with 3,718 cases still live, its board heard today. The LCS was almost exactly on its projected work-in-progress figure for today, when the Legal Ombudsman (LeO) opened for business, with 2,340 ‘general’ complaints still outstanding. Almost all the other 1,378 open complaints relate to mining clients of one particular firm.

The Legal Services Consumer Panel has had to put on ice plans to develop best practice standards for legal comparison websites, Legal Futures has learned. The work formed part of the panel’s 2010-11 workplan, published in March, but has been shelved because the panel has since been asked by the Legal Services Board to investigate will-writing regulation.

Indian legal process outsourcers see “a fat, complacent and profitable market place” in England and Wales “and they want a piece of it”, solicitors were warned last week. Mark Jones, former managing partner of Addleshaw Goddard, described legal process outsourcing as “a game changer for all of us” – 25% of Slaughter and May’s work is outsourceable, as is 50% of his own firm’s and maybe 100% for firms outside the top 50.

The body representing senior council lawyers has called on local authority legal departments to make “a step change” in the way they work as they face up to the so-called age of austerity and the opportunities offered by alternative business structures – including the possibility of management buy-outs.

Daniel Curran looks at how ABSs could improve the offering in the wills and probate market, and where probate genealogists fit in with the mix. On the face of it, he says, this should be one area where the benefits of the ongoing reform of legal services regulation should be most keenly and most beneficially felt by consumers.

The Legal Services Board (LSB) has confirmed that it does not back reinstating the ban on referral fees but said that instead all agreements between lawyers and their introducers should be published. As first reported on Legal Futures last month, the LSB said today that there is insufficient evidence to make the case for a ban, but that transparency and disclosure need to be improved. It also said there should be the same rules for the different parts of the regulated legal market so far as possible.

Too many lawyers have lost touch with what clients are really looking for and need to do more to create value for their clients, legal strategy expert Stephen Mayson has claimed. He also argued that major law firms need to rethink their cost base as “stripping out cost, based on the traditional ways of working, has gone about as far as it can”.

Barristers need some carve-outs from the requirements to tell clients about their complaints procedure, the Legal Services Board is to be told. The Bar Standards Board suggests that the drafters did not understand the realities of barristers’ practice.

The Legal Ombudsman (LeO) today reopened the debate about whether the details of complaints against lawyers should be published, including their names, with a strong endorsement from the Legal Services Consumer Panel that they should. In a discussion paper that seeks views on how it should approach the publication of complaints data, LeO says a naming policy could benefit consumers and lawyers, but that there could be unintended negative consequences too.

It is “absolutely inevitable” that criminal legal aid practices will need to morph into a cross between a solicitors’ firm and barristers’ chambers, one of the founders of a groundbreaking firm in the north-east of England has claimed.

The Bar Standards Board (BSB) will become a specialist regulator of entities providing advocacy services, if proposals set out today are approved. Under the plans, BSB-regulated entities could not have passive investors, would need a majority of managers who can practise as advocates in the higher courts, and could only have a maximum of either 10% or 25% of non-lawyer managers.

Volume conveyancers are reaching out to all “serious” conveyancing practitioners in a bid to form a new representative body for the sector. The Conveyancing Association – which has grown out of the Direct Conveyancing Association – launches today with a rallying call against restricted lender panels and for conveyancers to respond to the impending challenge of alternative business structures.

Our weekly round-up of other relevant news from elsewhere finds alternative business structures on the minds of virtually everyone, whether in England, Scotland, Canada or the USA. If one theme emerges, it is that everyone is waking up to the threats and possibilities inherent in them.