Legal Services Act

The Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches (FIEC) has set up an alternative business structure to provide legal services to its 500 member churches and other Christian groups. Edward Connor Solicitors, a charity regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, went live on 1 March and is named after FIEC’s founder, Edward Poole-Connor.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales has launched judicial review proceedings against the Ministry of Justice over the decision to deny its members the right to conduct litigation, advocacy and legal instruments work, Legal Futures can reveal.

A dispersed commercial law firm based in Birmingham is offering solicitors the chance to set up their own firms while working as self-employed consultants. Sandip Sohal, director of My Business Counsel, said two partners from a London media firm and two more from an international City practice had taken up the offer.

Law firm consolidator Metamorph Law has unveiled its first acquisition of 2018 with a deal to buy leading Shropshire general practice Terry Jones Solicitors, which has a turnover of around £5m. Following four acquisitions last year, Metamorph said this latest addition meant it was looking to generate a fee income in excess of £23m in 2018.

If the Legal Services Board is serious about promoting access to justice it must end its silence on the legal aid cuts, lawyers’ organisations have said. The Bar Council accused the oversight regulator of acting like “another department of government” by refusing to comment.

High street solicitors are losing out to specialist conveyancing businesses in capturing clients, new research has shown, but all lawyers still have much to improve on client communication. More than a third of clients would even consider paying more for a premium service, it found.

New competition since the introduction of alternative business structures, along with client demands is changing the face of the legal market, research has suggested, with the number of ABSs now topping 1,000. It also showed that 44% of law firms are now incorporated companies, while the number of traditional partnerships shrinking to only 17%.

Listed law firm Gordon Dadds has made its third acquisition in a month in buying Cardiff firm Thomas Simon. The acquisition vehicle is paying £1.875m plus an amount related to net tangible assets. If all the turnover targets are met for the four firms it has bought since listing, Gordon Dadds will have paid around £20m.

Legal regulators have urged the Legal Services Board to use its review of the internal governance rules to give them greater independence from their representative bodies. The Solicitors Regulation Authority said the rewrite of the rules should allow it to become a “separate legal entity” from the Law Society.

Only 11% of small businesses consider solicitors to be good value for money, and most choose not to use them when faced by a legal problem, seeing them as a last resort, according to major new research. It also found that the annual cost of small businesses’ legal problems to the UK economy to be roughly £40bn.

The plan by Carillion Advice Services to become an alternative business structure looks to be at an end after the business was bought by magic circle firm Clifford Chance. We also report on two private equity backed ABSs that have used their financial muscle to expand, and a private client firm that has decided to enter regulation with the CLC.

Conveyancers saw their first annual drop in workload since 2011 last year, with volumes down 12% to under a million transactions, according to new research. It also found that the number of conveyancing firms has dropped by 28% over the past decade.

The Legal Services Consumer Panel is on the hunt for a new chair after the incumbent jumped ship after just a year to become a member of the Office for Legal Complaints, the body that oversees the Legal Ombudsman. Meanwhile, the Law Society has named the members of its new main board, a key part of its new governance structure.

The government plans to introduce its whiplash reforms in April 2019, it emerged today. The Motor Accident Solicitors Society said it has today been told that ministers have agreed for the personal injury reforms to be implemented from that date, with an initial focus on RTA.

The Legal Ombudsman has ruled out investigating complaints about unregulated legal services, or collecting data about them, without a new source of funding. The service said it would be “inappropriate” to use money raised by a levy on the profession for this purpose.