Legal Services Board

The cab-rank rule is ineffective and should be removed from the barristers’ code of conduct – and instead applied as a principle to all providers of legal services, including alternative business structures – a report published today has urged.

The Legal Services Board and Legal Services Consumer Panel have thrown their weight behind Friday’s Office of Fair Trading report that urged continuing simplification of the regulatory regime for lawyers, particularly around complaints.

Regulators need to speed up their processes for approving alternative business structures, the Office of Fair Trading said today. It also called for further simplification of the complaints system, recommended actions to increase the number of available pupillages and gave cautious support for the move away from title-based regulation.

Personal injury firms have weathered the recession better than any other area of practice – and are far more likely to be looking for external investment than any other as well, one of the largest-ever surveys of solicitors’ firms has found. It said employment, family and corporate / commercial specialists also performed better than average.

Controversial rule changes that scrap the minimum salary for trainee solicitors and allow solicitors to refer clients to tied financial advisers were approved last month by the Legal Services Board. In both cases the LSB found that there was no reason to refuse the applications.

The Legal Services Board has rejigged and expanded its legal advisers panel, although its two previous main sources of external advice – City firm Hogan Lovells and London chambers 39 Essex Street – have retained their places on it.

Some of the frontline regulators have hit back at the Legal Services Board’s assessment of their performance. A detailed report on the “smaller” regulators found a wide range of competence, both across the different regulators and within each of them individually.

The Legal Services Board has no agenda for fundamental reform of the profession and would like to see a new era of co-operation between frontline regulators on matters of common interest, its chair David Edmonds told barristers last week.

Regulators should explore alternatives to conveyancers holding client money in a bid to tackle the risks of fraud, the Legal Services Board has recommended. However, it found regulators are working hard at the issue and that it need not intervene any further.

Introduction of the controversial Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA) has been delayed, it was announced today. It was meant to start at the end of January, but no new date has now been set as more details are worked out.