News

---

The Bar Standards Board has fulfilled its side of the deal struck with the Legal Services Board over its lay/professional composition, with four new members taking office this month. There is now an equal number of lay and professional members ahead of a lay majority being in place after further changes next year. Later this year the Solicitors Regulation Authority will also move to parity before a lay majority is appointed for 2013.

In the first of a two-part article, Duncan Finlyson of Legal Futures Lawyers Defence Group investigates the reasons for law firms to outsource certain functions and the regulatory issues that they throw up.

Solicitors are facing “bumper” years of claims for professional negligence as recession-driven legal actions start to bite, a leading broker has warned. The latest High Court figures indicate that negligence claims against solicitors rose from 80 to 210 in 2009, which is more than any other type of professional indemnity claim, and Lockton has predicted that the figure will continue to rise.

The three main professional bodies have all set out their stalls against lawyers being “named and shamed” if found guilty by the Legal Ombudsman (LeO) of providing an inadequate service. The Bar Council has this week joined the Law Society and Institute of Legal Executives in criticising the idea.

International law firms face growing threats to their share of the global legal market over the next decade, with likely challenges from Chinese firms, future market crashes and protectionism high on the agenda, a major new report has predicted.

Some of the UK’s leading legal brains – including Professor Richard Susskind and Legal Services Board chief executive Chris Kenny – are teaming up with six law schools in England, the US and China to launch a groundbreaking international legal education project in London this weekend. LawWithoutWalls claims to be the first global venture designed to tackle the problems facing legal education and practice by bridging law schools, students, legal and business professionals, and entrepreneurs.

Seven law firms have joined the second wave of the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s (SRA) relationship management (RM) pilot. RM may be one of the ways the SRA supervises firms according to its assessment of the risks the firm poses as part of outcomes-focused regulation, which goes live in October.

Senior managers at the Legal Services Board (LSB) earn between £80,000 and £120,000, it has emerged in data released under the government’s transparency agenda. The LSB is funded by a levy on the eight legal professions it oversees, and the top-paid senior managers under chief executive Chris Kenny are general counsel Bruce Macmillian, paid between £115,000 and £120,000, and strategy director, Crispin Passmore (£110,000 and £115,000).

Solicitors have had to cover £15m in unpaid premiums of law firms that have been in the assigned risks pool (ARP) during its first 10 years, it has emerged. Of that, £6.1m is for run-off cover for firms that closed without insurance, and the figures reveal that the Solicitors Regulation Authority has collected just £500,000 in run-off premiums since the ARP was set up in 2000.

Alternative ways of delivering legal services continue to grow with the launch of two web-based, fixed-fee Q&A services, and what is claimed to be the first Twitter “law firm”. The two websites – www.expert-answers.co.uk and www.questiontheexpert.com – both use panels of qualified lawyers to answer questions put by users, while @thelegaloracle is the brainchild of the founder of personal injury referral network Loyalty Law.