Legal Services Board

Government plans to give the Legal Services Board powers to raid the premises of frontline regulators and seize documents have been strongly criticised for their lack of safeguards and inadequate protection of legal professional privilege.

Elisabeth Davies was yesterday reappointed as chair of the Legal Services Consumer Panel. The decision to keep Ms Davies in the role will keep the panel’s wide-ranging workplan on track.

The Legal Services Board has begun work on moving towards regulating lawyers based on the work they do, rather than on their professional title, Legal Futures can reveal. However, it acknowledged that there will be huge historical and cultural barriers to overcome.

It is hard to see which of the frontline regulators would regulate banks if will-writing and estate administration become reserved legal activities, the British Bankers Association has said. It also said FSA regulation covered what the Legal Services Board was seeking to do.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority and Bar Standards Board have been warned to improve the way they regulate immigration practitioners or risk enforcement action by the Legal Services Board – including the ultimate sanction of losing their ability to regulate the area at all.

Standard contractual terms between solicitors and barristers are set to become a reality at long last after the Legal Services Board approved controversial changes to the cab-rank rule that will underpin them – albeit with some reluctance.

There is a “small but material rate of non-compliance” by solicitors with their complaints-handling requirements – and some bad attitudes towards complaints – confidential research by the Solictors Regulation Authority has found.

The Legal Services Board has approved Bar Standards Board proposals to introduce an aptitude test for prospective Bar students. The test aims to weed out the bottom 10% of candidates.

Satisfaction with legal services providers is high, major new research has found, with those using solicitors likely to get a better result than those who sought advice from other providers. But fewer than half of those with legal needs sought professional help.

Concerns over the standard of will-writing by solicitors are based on limited evidence and the Solicitors Regulation Authority should not have to prove its ability to regulate such work, the Law Society has claimed.