News

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The Legal Ombudsman (LeO) will seek to determine complaints that cross over into professional negligence, it has emerged. Chief ombudsman Adam Sampson said that while its predecessor bodies, such as the Legal Complaints Service, would shy away from complaints about the quality of legal advice offered, the Legal Services Act “makes no mention of any such limitation of our powers”.

The Law Society is to enlarge the board of the Solicitors Regulation Authority so as to introduce parity between the number of solicitor and lay members in a deal struck with the Legal Services Board. It follows a similar agreement between the LSB and Bar Standards Board, whose offer to introduce parity on the road to a lay majority has been accepted.

Former Linklaters partner Nick Eastwell was today announced as the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s (SRA) first ever chief adviser on City law firms. Mr Eastwell, who spent 29 years with Linklaters, 21 as a partner, will act as a “bridgehead” between the SRA and City law firms, providing expert advice to the SRA executive and board.

There is widespread ignorance of the differences between legal services providers and consumers are shocked to discover not all of them are regulated, research commissioned by the Solicitors Regulation Authority has found. Consumers expect “all legal service providers to be appropriately skilled, qualified and regulated” and so distinguish between providers on such things as customer service and the quality of relationships.

Plans to merge the Legal Services Consumer Panel into Citizens Advice will need to overcome issues around confidentiality and conflicts of interests as the charity is also a provider in the legal market, Legal Services Board chairman David Edmonds has warned.

The Cabinet has given its backing to Lord Young’s blueprint to reform health and safety and curb the excesses of the compensation culture, the peer revealed today. He also expressed a desire to see an end to referral fees and said the Ministry of Justice had agreed to extend the road traffic accident claims process to other areas of personal injury.

The Prime Minister today attacked lawyers for helping to create a compensation culture and promised to “curtail the promotion activities” of claims management companies. Among the other solutions which the government is to investigate following the Young review is a road traffic-style claims process for all low-value personal injury claims, including clinical negligence, while the Jackson report has received strong support too.

The Legal Services Consumer Panel could be a surprise victim of the government’s so-called bonfire of the quangos and be merged into Citizens Advice, it has emerged. The panel’s chairwoman, Dianne Hayter, has hit out at the move, saying Citizens Advice would not be able to replicate the role of the panel during a “critical period” in the development of legal regulation as the introduction of alternative business structures nears.

Regulators should consider making diversity training mandatory for senior partners and line managers in law firms, say academics after research uncovered a complex web of barriers between minorities and women, and the upper reaches of the legal profession. The findings will be backed up by a forthcoming study into pay disparity by the Law Society that has uncovered “a kind of structural inequality”.

Most law firms do not have the balance sheets or the systems to appeal to venture capitalists but those who can pull off deals may see some major benefits, it was claimed yesterday. Sara Hutton, a relationship manager at Royal Bank of Scotland, said venture capitalists would want a return of 20-30% and an exit in three to five years that is “reasonably visible” now, such as a flotation, management buy-out or trade sale.