News

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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.

The Law Society will this month unveil a £4m conveyancing quality scheme that aims to help solicitors maintain market share and improve profitability. At the centre of the scheme will be an updated conveyancing protocol to which all members will have to adhere from 1 April 2011, alongside core practice management standards.

The anticipated deluge of law firms entering the assigned risks pool has not materialised, but the numbers are still large, Legal Futures can reveal. But they will fall over the next month as firms can backdate their insurance if they find it by the end of October.

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.

Moving your IT into the Cloud is a sensible way to go if firms want to work faster and smarter, but it needs to be done carefully. Chris Cann outlines his experience of doing it at Shropshire firm Martin-Kaye.

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.