Legal Services Act

With a month to go until the Legal Ombudsman opens for business, I went up to Birmingham last week to see how things are shaping up. So, how are the profession’s millions being spent?

West Midlands law firm Forum Law is planning to give legal advice over the Internet after buying Capita Assistance’s legal helpline business. Called Legal Assistance Direct (LAD), the service already had contracts to provide legal advice to over five million client customers of various institutions. It currently receives around 35-40,000 calls a year.

The controversial prospect of publishing law firms’ complaints records will be put firmly back on the agenda with a consultation by the Legal Ombudsman, Legal Futures can report.

Law firms preparing to become alternative business structures should not enter into binding contractual agreements with prospective external owners, the Solicitors Regulation Authority is likely to warn this week.

The Legal Services Board is pushing ahead with plans to require law firms and chambers to publish comprehensive diversity and class information about their staff from next year, Legal Futures has learned.

The Legal Services Board believes that reserving will-writing work to lawyers could lead to fewer people making wills and would do nothing about unfair bundling of estate administration charges, Legal Futures can reveal.

The Legal Services Board’s initial reaction to the Law Society of Ireland’s threat of legal action over the new rules for overseas lawyers requalifying as solicitors was that it might just be a “negotiating ploy”, Legal Futures can reveal.

The latest edition of my series looking at who’s who on the various bodies overseeing the legal profession takes us to the Legal Services Consumer Panel, the public face for which is chairwoman Baroness Dianne Hayter of Kentish Town – one of four members of the eight-person panel who are declared Labour supporters in the register of members’ interests that has just been published following a Freedom of Information Act request by Legal Futures.

The Legal Services Board would be “unwise” to increase or reduce the list of reserved legal activities at the moment, the Legal Services Policy Institute has warned. Professor Stephen Mayson said it first needs a set of criteria to judge the case for reservation.

The Legal Services Board has continued making contingency plans to regulate alternative business structures itself if none of the current approved regulators are up to the task, it has emerged from a consultation on the arrangements for appeals against the decisions of ABS licensing authorities.

The Legal Ombudsman has rejected suggestions from the Law Society that the new complaints-handling service will not prove any cheaper for solicitors, Legal Futures can reveal.

The profession’s regulators have been urged to put consumer engagement at their heart of their strategies after talks last month found their efforts to date have been limited. The Legal Services Consumer Panel says this is “an essential part of being a credible regulator”.

The Legal Services Board has fired a warning shot across the bows of the Law Society over the way the practising certificate fee is divided up after expressing concern that some money is being applied to “non-permitted purposes”.

The world’s only two publicly listed legal practices, both in Australia, have announced strong results for the 2009/10 financial year. Slater & Gordon announced a 16% rise in profits to A$19.8m (£11.3m), with revenues up 21% to A$125m. Integrated Legal Holdings saw revenue grow 41% to A$24m, with profits up 44% to A$853,494.

As part of our commitment to be your central resource for all that is happening in the world of legal regulation and the Legal Services Act, we are starting a weekly round-up of other key stories and opinions that have emerged during the past seven days, starting with a warning that City firms accepting external capital could end up in the European Court of Justice.